Dostoevsky and the “Pushkin Question”

The Pushkin question is one of the key issues in Russian literary criticism. It has to do with the great poet’s importance and position in Russian literature as well as the development of national culture. The idea that Pushkin was “just an artist” with negative (“real” and Slavophile criticism) or positive (aesthetic criticism) connotations became popular in the 1840s, with speeches by Belinsky and Gogol. Apollon Grigoryev’s writings offered a fresh perspective on the phenomenon of Pushkin from a philosophical and aesthetic standpoint. Fyodor Dostoevsky refined his idea and carried it through to its logical conclusion. The approach was innovative in that it introduced the concept of the ideal, which gave concrete form to the abstract personal provisions of aesthetic criticism in the folk value system. The concept of Russian literature proposed by Dostoevsky — that the writers who came after Pushkin developed his ideas in a way that was similar to grains sprouting — is isomorphic to the essence of Christian culture in that in both cases the development originates at the same point: the Word.