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This article argues that Fyodor Dostoevsky was a literary genius, capable of portraying the inner lives of his characters not only through verbal techniques — such as monologue, dialogue, and free indirect speech — but also through non-verbal means, vividly expressing his unique emotional style. The focus is primarily on the poetics and semantics of the gaze. In Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment, the gaze plays a pivotal role both in depicting characters’ emotions and in creating the novel’s intensely charged atmosphere. The article highlights the significance of the gaze in the novel and its rarity in world literature. Particular attention is given to the semantics of narrowed gaze. The visual behaviors of the characters are also examined as crucial elements of what Vladimir Toporov termed “fiction economy.” These behaviors contribute to the generation of symbolic imagery, such as the recurring image of the wall. The symbolic nature of the wall is analyzed in detail toward the end of the article. The observations presented demonstrate Dostoevsky’s exceptional artistry, challenging the widely held view of his artistic weaknesses — a perspective shared by Bunin, Nabokov, and other notable Russian writers.

The article is dedicated to the analysis of the manga by the classic of Japanese anime Osamu Tezuka, Crime and Punishment, based on the eponymous novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It is no coincidence that Dostoevsky’s novel served as the “material” for the creation of manga, since the problems considered in it, primarily moral, are of a universal nature and remain relevant today. The period of the late 20th and early 21st centuries is marked by tremendous changes in nearly all spheres of human existence and this fact has inevitably influenced human consciousness and its attitude toward the ways of cognition. The tendency to “consume” that emerged at the end of the 20th century gave rise to a special type of information acquisition, known as “infotainment” (from the English “information” and “entertainment”), which has become one of the characteristics of modern mass culture. This technique, being hybrid in nature, uses stylistic resources of various discourses. The article shows that, having gone beyond the national framework, manga ceases to be confined to the exclusively Japanese book publishing industry. The analyzed manga was published in Japanese in 1953, becoming a clear example of a “secondary text” (according to A.I. Novikov’s terminology), the purpose of which is to popularize Dostoevsky’s work among Japanese youth. Tezuka, demonstrating a deep knowledge of Russian culture, Fyodor Dostoevsky’s and Lev Tolstoy’s works, uses Disney animation techniques when creating manga, as becomes evident when analyzing the actual visual techniques of creating the image of Raskolnikov. Osamu Tezuka’s Crime and Punishment was translated into Russian in 2012 and has not yet been the subject of special research as an example of intersemiotic translation.

The article considers for the first time the image of Raskolnikov in the stories by Ivan Shmelev “Why It Happened” and “Notes of a Non-Writer.” It shows how in these stories the writer, using artistic techniques, names, images and quotations from Dostoevsky’s novels, is largely oriented towards the tradition of the latter’s work. The story “Why It Happened” presents the motif of a dream in which a dialogue with the devil takes place, Ivan Fedorovich Karamazov is mentioned, and the name of Rodion Raskolnikov is pronounced. The author of the articles affirms that the hero of Shmelev’s story — a professor, in his youth a revolutionary-minded student and atheist — has a typological kinship with the hero of Crime and Punishment. The words, voiced in a distorted form by the student’s companion during dinner in a restaurant: “And you, Andel, stole so much? or reproached the old woman, like Raskolkin?” help to comprehend the image of Shmelev’s hero more deeply. It also demonstrates the “independent life” of Rodion Raskolnikov outside of Dostoevsky’s novel. The story “Notes of a non-Writer,” considered the beginning of a larger novel, includes many plots. The key one is about the resurrection of Uncle Vasya, and it is also associated with Dostoevsky’s works. Here, Crime and Punishment is quoted directly. Not only the semantic closeness is important, but also the chronological precision in both narratives. An excerpt from Crime and Punishment about Raskolnikov (“in the second week of Great Lent it was his turn to commune together with the entire barracks”) reminds the narrator of the assassination of Tsar Alexander II on March 1, 1881, at the beginning of Great Lent and the reaction of the people to his uncle, an atheist and revolutionary. In both cases, the marker in determining friends and foes for ordinary people is the faith in God. The uncle returns to the family — comes down from his mezzanine — on Easter. This, in turn, reminds the hero of the chapter “Dream in Cana of Galilee” from The Brothers Karamazov and gives courage. The extremely important quote from Crime and Punishment in “Notes of a Non-Writer” showed the same milestones in the spiritual movement of Rodion Raskolnikov and Uncle Vasya from the mezzanine on the way to resurrection.

The study examines Russian-language fanfiction that explores potential continuations of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment. Within the thematic corpus of fanfiction, the analysis distinguishes between local perspectives — secondary texts that develop specific elements of the primary text — and post-canons, fan-created narratives centered around the novel’s epilogue. A noticeable imbalance is observed, as post-canonical essays are rarely produced, reflecting the infrequent re-reading of Crime and Punishment by contemporary students. Instead, fanfiction often focuses on local perspectives, sometimes limited to onomastic parallels, which stems from a broader trend of non-(re)reading of Dostoevsky’s work. The article highlights that fanfiction authors frequently engage with provocative themes, particularly in the genre of “missing scenes.” In cases where these scenes correspond to a “curtain scene,” fanfiction writers often adopt a cynical approach to the characters of Crime and Punishment. When such direct comparisons are not feasible, opportunities arise for young “book enthusiasts” — those capable of engaging with classical texts without succumbing to the distortions of “clip thinking.” The study argues for incorporating the writing of post-canonical essays based on Dostoevsky’s novel into the creative assignments for tenth-grade students. This practice is justified by its potential to increase students’ motivation to read, foster their engagement in a creative dialogue with the original work, and encourage a more thoughtful and responsible approach to literature and language.

The article presents an overview of the 2nd International Online Conference “The Book in the Book,” dedicated to the memory of the outstanding Russian philologist and cultural theorist Alexander V. Mikhailov (1938–1995) and held on October 1–3, 2024 by the Research Center “Dostoevsky and World Culture” IWL RAS and the Commission for the Study of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Artistic Heritage at the Academic Council “History of World Culture” RAS.

The article deals with the ways of expressing concepts of state in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment and the peculiarities of their reproduction in the translation of the novel into Bulgarian by the poet and translator Georgi Konstantinov. The relevance of the work is determined by the insufficient study of Dostoevsky’s linguistic techniques in conveying the state of the characters and the environment, as well as the peculiarities of translating the concepts of state from Russian into Bulgarian. The problem of translatability of grammar, the dependence of discrepancies between the original and translation on the systemic features of languages is investigated. Research methods: comparative, contextual, structural-grammatical, lexico-semantic. The material is collected from the parallel Russian and Bulgarian texts of the novel and the Russian/Bulgarian subcorpus of the National Corpus of the Russian Language. The author of the article concludes that Georgi Konstantinov managed to convey both the global universal meanings of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment and the individual originality of the writer’s language. At the same time, the study reveals natural discrepancies between the original novel and its translation, which are explained by a number of reasons: 1) partial differences in the linguistic conceptualization of the world in the two languages: the Russian language picture of the world is characterized by objectspatial dominance, spatial models serve as a basis for the design of different types of relations, including state concepts; Bulgarian language focuses on the state as an action or a dynamic characteristic of a person; 2) systemic differences between modern Russian and Bulgarian languages, discrepancies in their grammatical, lexicallinguistic, lexical-semantic resources, which is regularly observed in the transition from Russian impersonal sentences to Bulgarian bipartite or definite-personal sentences, from prepositional-padding combinations of Russian to Bulgarian verb forms; 3) the translator’s skill, the nature of his perception of the content of the text, key and precedent words.

The article examines the clothing of the heroes in the novel Crime and Punishment. The clothes of the poor (rags, cheap materials) are analyzed, as well as clothes that hide and reveal (an axe invisible from the outside, blood on clothes), grotesque clothes, etc. The analysis particularly emphasizes the clothing of the lovers. The clothes of the characters speak both about the falseness of love as well as about sincere feelings and the development of love between two couples: Razumikhin-Dunia and Raskolnikov-Sonia. The change of Raskolnikov’s clothes, carried out with Razumikhin’s help, is the first step in the hero’s restoration. Sonia’s headdress (green drap-de-dames scarf) changes as she grows from a girl, almost a child, to a grown woman in the novel’s epilogue.

The article applies the principles of microanalysis to a literary text using Crime and Punishment as an example. Through this lens, Raskolnikov’s “mistake” is revealed, specifically his historical “look back” at the great “founders and legislators of mankind.” Understanding Dostoevsky’s work also requires consideration of the context of Sacred History, which is equally important. The historical and value hierarchies of these contexts are shaped by the differing positions of the author and the protagonist in relation to the figure of Mohammed. Mohammed’s image, which simultaneously enters the perspectives of both the author and the protagonist, takes on different axiological meanings, particularly when compared with Christ: it is elevated in the author’s view and diminished in the protagonist’s. Raskolnikov’s “mistake” is intentionally “corrected” by the author, as evidenced by shifts in the stylistic register, changes in modality, and the distinctive use of quotations, keywords, and details, along with “plot criticism” of the protagonist. A microanalysis (including graphic and punctuation considerations) of the “strange” statement made by a Russian Orthodox student about Allah and his prophet reveals two levels of intertextual citation in the passage, aligning with both the author’s and the protagonist’s perspectives. Within the novel, the series of lawmakers and founders of humanity identified by Raskolnikov (Lycurgus, Solon, Mohammed, Napoleon) is replaced by another sequence (Abraham, Christ, Mohammed). This shift highlights Dostoevsky’s vivid exploration of the genealogical and spiritual connections among the Abrahamic religions and their prophets within the context of Sacred History. Without considering this religious genealogy, an adequate interpretation of Raskolnikov’s final vision of the “bosom of Abraham” is impossible. As he contemplates the “paradise valley,” the novel’s protagonist, like the prudent thief, finds himself alongside the forefather.

The article presents the results of a comparative analysis between Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment and its animated adaptation, exploring how the cartoon can be used in 10th-grade literature lessons. It examines the symbolic language, significant visual and auditory imagery, and cultural codes that contribute to the “metaphysical” nature of Dumala’s animated film. The study analyses the powerful suggestive beginning of the cartoon, and the author argues that the Polish film director perceives Crime and Punishment as a novel of dreams, consciousness and subconsciousness, a novel of memory centered around a single hero, a search and meeting of the hero with himself, a novel of self-recognition in Another. The article addresses key questions such as: Why is there no speech in the cartoon? What role does the music play? How is the plot constructed? Which storylines did the director consider, and how are they interconnected? What is the significance of artistic details, techniques, and cinematography? These and other questions are answered in the article.

During the round table discussion “Teaching the Novel Crime and Punishment in Schools and Universities,” which concluded the 3rd International Online Academic Conference “Crime and Punishment: Current State of Research” (February 28, 29 – March 1, 2024), in-depth researchers, who have been teaching the novel for a long time, shared their reflections and provided answers to questions posed by teachers at all levels during the conference preparation and the conference itself. The discussion covered various topics, including where to begin the conversation about the novel with a class and how students might start their own independent research. Other points of discussion included whether the phrase “Raskolnikov was tormented by his conscience” is a factual error, how to talk about Dostoevsky’s biography, how to engage students in reading, what young people gain from reading the novel, the importance of reading (and reading Dostoevsky) for life rather than for “aesthetic development” or “enhancing educational levels,” the character of Razumikhin as a role model, the meaning of “breaking circumstances” versus “adapting to circumstances,” the price of transfiguration, and much more.

The John Worthy School (JWS) was created at the turn of the twentieth century to house younger male misdemeanants within Chicago's House of Correction separately from older offenders. The JWS reflected reformers', experts', and city leaders' goals of reforming, educating, and punishing juveniles differently from more "hardened" criminals. Although scholars have previously focused on the creation of juvenile courts, few have examined the creation, implementation, and operation of correctional institutions for younger offenders. Doing so highlights the clear tensions in these facilities and the limits of juvenile incarceration. In addition, through the JWS and informal subsidiary institutions, the city of Chicago expanded the reach of the city's power into the lives and families of those detained within the walls of the facility. However, shortly after the JWS closed, such responsibility transferred to county and state authorities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The deterrence function of criminal punishment relies on the credibility of enforcers to carry out threatened sanctions. That credibility may be suspect when enforcers face budgetary constraints, especially if the realized crime rate is high. This leads to the potential for multiple equilibria in the "crime commission game" – one involving a low crime rate, and one involving a high crime rate. The latter potentially arises because a high rate of crimes may overwhelm the ability of enforcers to apprehend offenders, thus leading to a self-fulfilling outcome. When multiple equilibria are possible, the question of which one is "selected" has practical as well as theoretical relevance. The paper assesses the implications of various selection criteria, including payoff dominance, risk dominance, and the global games approach. The conclusions highlight the role of the credibility of punishment in deterring crime, and also shed light on the interpretation of data on crime and punishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is dedicated to one of the heroes of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment, Dmitry Razumikhin, who is usually regarded as a minor, accessory character and often considered an ordinary, average, even mediocre personality in contrast to higher figures. The paper suggests that Razumikhin’s “minority” is a deceptive evaluation that overlooks the real value of the character. His importance is shown by the author through Razumikhin’s extraordinary deeds and through many complimentary remarks about him, which are very unusual for Dostoevsky’s poetics. In the novel, the opposition between the two poor students who have come to the capital from Russian provinces, have left the university as they could not pay for it, and must face their fate alone, is determined by their choices of social behavior. Raskolnikov breaks through the circumstances, trying to get everything at once by committing a terrible crime. Razumikhin is resolved to overcome his poverty by way of petty earnings, complete his university education, become a professional and a financially independent person. Choosing the way of a crime, Raskolnikov rejects the ways of Razumikhin. Of special importance is Razumikhin’s love story. He loves as a noble knight, ready to serve his lady selflessly. For Razumikhin, his love for Raskolnikov’s sister entails an all-embracing care not only for his sweetheart but for all her relatives as well, whatever might happen to them. Razumikhin’s love is a transforming and creative feeling. Dostoevsky, who knew very well the saving mission of work, saw to it that Rodion Romanovich, after his prison term, had someone to come to for advice and support. Sonya Marmeladova promised Raskolnikov her devoted love, but only the Razumikhins, Dunya and Dmitry, could help him recover and find his way in new circumstances.

The article examines the thesis of marginal anthropology as represented by Fyodor Dostoevsky in the novel Crime and Punishment and creatively reinterpreted by Ivan Bunin in the short story “Loopy Ears,” under the influence of the achievements of the Italian school of criminal law. “According to the law of nature,” people are divided into ordinary men and “natural criminals,” the latter identifiable by the atavistic “mark” of Cain. Dostoevsky and Bunin conceptualize the image of the “extraordinary man” differently. Dostoevsky, aiming to show the transformative effect of the “law of Christ” on the individual, nevertheless does not completely debunk the marginal anthropic reality, leaving it “free” in public spaces, thereby potentially “allowing” it to manifest, and it can find its practical and historical confirmation in criminals “by nature” (as in The House of the Dead). Bunin, without doubt or reservations, introduces a “dangerous reality” in the story — a “born criminal”, and endows him with characteristic signs, “stigmata” that are recognizable in the light of criminal anthropology. His appearance in historical life is due not to social circumstances, as researchers claim, but to the laws of atavism. Unlike Dostoevsky, Bunin does not lead his hero to renewal and transformation, but instead plot-wise releases the “born criminal” to freedom, leaving him without punishment. On the other hand, the identification of the “Old Testament code” associated with the “Cain complex” in the works of Dostoevsky and Bunin makes it possible to actualize the eschatological motif of the “second” creation. Historically, the act of the “second” creation is incomplete: culture again and again seeks to correct the onto-anthropological result of the sixth day because Cain comes back again and again to the history of humanity, or maybe he never left. It is necessary to discuss not only Bunin’s polemic with Dostoevsky, but also their detailed exploration of the acute anthropological problem that worried both writers as they sought to unravel the mystery of man, hierarchically related to God and various emerging evolutionary and social anthropic “impurities.”

The author’s realm of ideas undoubtedly influences the inner life of the reader, but the reader’s somatic involvement in the events of the plot should also be considered. In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment this phenomenon is primarily evoked by the dynamics and plastic of the characters. In recent years, researchers have become more interested in the psychological effects of reading (on blood circulation, heart rate, and brain activity). The reader mimics the movements that correspond to the movements of the character, potentially repeating them. Crime and Punishment with its dynamics – both in plot and characters – strongly intensifies this process. The main hero and those characters who gravitate around the center of the novel are people whose behavior is utterly unexpected. Such is their inner life, and such are their behavior and gestures. That is why perfective verbs have special significance in the descriptions of Raskolnikov and his inner circle, while tertiary characters, who stand the novel’s background, are mostly described with the help of imperfective verbs: that is how the author describes a life without meaning and trapped in invariably repeating oppressive situations. The reader belongs both to the world of the protagonist and to the world of the others and is closely associated both with the explosive changes in the behavior of Raskolnikov and with the drawn-out and distressing existence of little people in Crime and Punishment. The attachment of the reader to the world of the characters – given their number – forms multiple connections on ideological, spiritual, and physical levels. The epilogue, in particular, offers a liberating and dynamic experience for readers, as Raskolnikov not only finds solace from his loneliness but also discovers that the convicts are capable of responding to his inner transformation.

The present work is intended for literature teachers. Its purpose, both scientific and methodological, is to provide the most comprehensive, reliable, and relevant research material that meets the needs of modern schools. In contemporary literature teaching, there is a need to combine the methodology of school analysis with literary research, incorporating its achievements, interpretations, and information. Therefore, the work includes extensive excerpts from the research of modern scholars on Dostoevsky. Such works are not always accessible to schoolteachers; however, without them an analysis of Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment that aligns closely with the author’s intention can be challenging or even impossible. Conceptually, the article focuses on identifying what is the true punishment in the novel, offering an interpretation that diverges from traditional views. An original approach is proposed to create a structure of the lessons dedicated to the study of Crime and Punishment, based on the concept of punishment in the novel. This structure can be developed in accordance with the milestones of the protagonist’s journey from crime and spiritual death to salvation and resurrection.

The 3rd International Online Conference “Crime and Punishment: Current State of Research” was held on February 28, 29 – March 1 under the leadership of the Research Centre “F.M. Dostoevsky and World Culture” of the A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Commission for the Study of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Creative Heritage of the Academic Council “History of World Culture” of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The conference was devoted to the latest research on the novel and the problems of teaching Crime and Punishment at school and university. The series of conferences devoted to the novel were held in the perspective of creating a new book for the project Dostoevsky’s Novels: Current State of Research, carried out by a team of scholars from different countries; the first was devoted to the novel The Idiot (Moscow, Nasledie Publ., 2001), the second — to the novel The Brothers Karamazov (Moscow, Nauka Publ., 2007), the third — to the novel The Adolescent (Moscow, IWL RAS Publ., 2022).

How do motion pictures transpose the characters from a well-established literary work into a cinematic narrative, replete with their own narrative potential? Can the resulting film be regarded as an entirely new creation? To explore these questions, we have selected Aki Kaurismäki's 1983 cinematic adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment. The primary objective of this study is to ascertain whether the characters from a literary work undergo a transformation into new personas, enriched by the narrative possibilities inherent to cinema. Kaurismäki's adaptation of Crime and Punishment transposed the narrative to a more contemporary era and streamlined the cast of characters, with the film director imparting his distinctive touch to their transformation. In Kaurismäki's rendition of Crime and Punishment, a metafictional dimension emerges, blurring the boundaries of narrative levels. The film's characters comport themselves as if intimately acquainted with the original novel's story and characters. While maintaining fidelity to the foundational narrative, a novel artistic creation takes shape, wherein the characters exhibit a profound awareness of their origins within the original literary work.

The article is devoted to the analysis of the image of Porfiry Petrovich. The analysis is based on the lexical drawing of the text created by Dostoevsky in Crime and Punishment by distributing the synonymous words “zhirnyi” (“fat”) and “polnyi” (“full” + “plump”) in it. “Fat,” taking a place in the characteristics of “positive” characters and displacing the more expected in this case “polnyi,” shifts the perception of the word “polniy” to another segment of its semantic field: it is displaced from the reader’s consciousness as related to physical complexion (“plump”) and actualizes the general meaning of completeness (integrity, fulfillment). This shift in meaning is supported by the repeated use of various words in the text with the root “poln” precisely with the meaning of final completion. If we proceed from this point, the author’s characteristics of Porfiry Petrovich, which at first glance seem disjointed, strange, derogatory, and marginalizing, begin to gather into a completely coherent whole. They gather into a unity that is fully described by the character’s name, which in Russian reads like “the red stone” or “the red stage in stone making.”

The article examines two publications mentioned in the novel Crime and Punishment: Ezhenedel’naya Rech’ (English: “Weekly Review”) and Periodicheskaya Rech’ (English: “Periodical Review”). It argues that in 1865, Dostoevsky did not use newspapers such as Moskovsky Vestnik and Russkaya Rech’ as prototypes for the editorial office that published Raskolnikov’s article, as these newspapers were insignificant during the 19th century. Instead, the article suggests that the names of the publications were chosen by the writer to distinguish between the types of publications (newspaper and magazine) and to emphasize that Raskolnikov’s article “About Crime…” was published in a magazine. This choice allowed Dostoevsky to highlight, on the one hand, the difficult situation of the protagonist who committed the crime, and on the other hand, to demonstrate that the ideas presented in his article found support in magazine editorial offices, which were more inclined to defend their beliefs and those of their authors compared to newspapers. As evidence, the article refers to Dostoevsky’s correspondence with Mikhail Katkov, with whom he discussed plans for the creation of Crime and Punishment, and to the Journal Note on New Literary Authorities and New Theories (1863), published in the magazine Vremia, which is often regarded as one of his programmatic statements. In this note, the writer expresses his negative views toward newspaper editors, whom he accuses of artificially creating topics for polemics.

The article proposes to consider how the early work of Fyodor Dostoevsky and the novel Crime and Punishment correlate at the level of their internal symbolic stories created by the author behind the external plots of the works. In this work, the hypothesis is put forward that Raskolnikov manages to follow the path of spiritual transformation, which the writer sought to find for his heroes of the 1840s, but then he failed to fully realize it. Despite the ongoing debate in the academic community about the role of the epilogue in Crime and Punishment, it can still be said that this novel, the only one from the Five Great Novels, shows the hero’s path from a complete fall to a directly prescribed spiritual resurrection. The article attempts to show that Raskolnikov follows the path along the “trajectory” described in the early texts, but obviously with some fundamental changes that allowed this path to be realized. The article is a description of the first steps in the development of this topic.

The article is intended for teachers of literature and can help organize a conversation about the novel Crime and Punishment. It offers a variant of a modern reading of one of the most significant works of the school curriculum and summarizes the views of leading Dostoevsky’s scholars on the key problems of the novel, offering topical interpretations of its fundamental images and collisions. A new interpretation of Razumikhin’s image as a true “Russian personality” and the embodiment of the “brotherhood” that will save Raskolnikov is proposed here. The analysis of the multidimensional semantics of the concepts of “crime” and “punishment” included in the title allows the teacher to present a holistic analysis of the novel, organize a conversation about the key images and problems raised in it, help students grasp the depth and significance of the issues that can be “dug out” of it. Answering the questions proposed in the article and completing assignments, the students come to the conclusion that the true crime in the novel is represented by the idea, and the murder of an old woman is the result of its influence. Such concepts as “false” and “true” motives of crime, universal and actual concept of “algorithm of crime” are introduced into the methodology of school analysis of the novel, “dialectics” of a “ideologic crime” is shown. The article proposes a system of questions and tasks that can contribute to a deeper understanding of the great novel by students.

The review is devoted to the monograph by Professor Susan Fusso of Wesleyan University Editing Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy. Mikhail Katkov and the Great Russian Novel, published in 2023 in Russian for the series “Modern Western Russian Studies” (the book was published in the original language in 2017). Fusso’s work reveals and clarifies various aspects of the biography of the charismatic editor of the magazine Russkii Vestnik Mikhail Katkov (1817–1887) and contains valuable observations regarding his difficult personal and working relationship with Fyodor Dostoevsky, whose four great novels (Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons, and The Brothers Karamazov) were first published by Katkov.

Indirect translation, criticized for impurity, played a pivotal role in introducing Russian literature to fin-de-siècle Italy. Initial Italian translations of Russian classics stemmed from French translations, with France serving as a key hub for Russian literary reception in Europe. This article delves into the first Italian translation of "Crime and Punishment" to explore the nuances of this process. It examines the trade-offs—what was lost in translation—and highlights how the mediation through French translation paradoxically aided the reception of Dostoevsky in late 19th-century Italy.

The article is devoted to the significant presence in Crime and Punishment of George Henry Lewes’ Physiology of Common Life, the only book explicitly mentioned by Marmeladov among what constituted his daughter Sonya’s “education,” and to the paired message that Sonia’s historical education ended with Cyrus of Persia. A suggestion is made as to which history textbook Marmeladov used to tutor Sonya. Physiology of Common Life (as well as the figure of Cyrus of Persia) is examined in terms of what philosophy it may have engendered or reinforced in the minds of the character and the reader. The extended table of contents of the Physiology is also provided, in order to offer a partial insight into the character of the book that differs from the insight that scholars and commentators of Dostoevsky’s novel in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have drawn from reviews of it, published shortly after the translation came out, as well as from reviews of Crime and Punishment that mention Lewes’ book.

“Books within books” as a form of intertextuality is a characteristic phenomenon of all world literature. All the writers listed in the title of the present essay may serve as examples of intertextual dialogue between books, as their works were rooted in preceding sources and in turn became part of later literature. The article, however, is based on a report at a conference which proposed to consider how books appear in other books not only as allusions or sources, but as immediate elements of the text. In this essay two of the research directions, suggested by the organizers, are combined and explored: the books read by literary heroes created by writers who influenced Dostoevsky’s work and the role and the artistic image of books in the art of the Russian writer himself. Consequently, the choice of writers and their texts is not a random selection: Dante, Shakespeare, and Pushkin each in his own way had an impact on Dostoevsky; at the same time, in many of their works books appear as physical objects, being at once both “things” and impulse for the reader to think about. The article explores several of Dostoevsky’s compositions where books by Dante, Shakespeare, Pushkin, and even his own, appear either as part of an intertextual mosaic, or as material “artifacts.” The research shows the deep connections between the authors, both on a level of ideas and through the thematic of books. The end of the paper draws a parallel between the episodes of Dante’s Comedy and Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment where two characters together are reading one book that in both cases becomes a guide to Love.

The article uses Svidrigailov’s image to consider the correlation of pagan and Christian themes as dominant in the religious and philosophical understanding of Dostoevsky. The basis of this approach lies in Dostoevsky’s works and letters, where an interest in various philosophical trends that often stood apart from the official teaching of the Orthodox Church can be found: a fact that allows us to talk about religious syncretism in Dostoevsky’s work. One of the most vivid and convincing examples of religious syncretism, implying a layering of mystical and pagan images, intersecting with Christian themes, is the character of Svidrigailov. The article focuses on the concept of eternity presented by Svidrigailov, who, along with Raskolnikov, concurs to the formation of the philosophical and religious level in the novel Crime and Punishment. The article emphasizes that the concept of eternity is the center of Svidrigailov’s metaphysic, figuratively symbolizing his vision of an existence connected with the boundary “now,” related to present time. It is traced the possible temporal-spatial, cosmological, and (anti)theological origins of Svidrigailov’s eternity, expressed in the image of the “bathhouse with spiders,” and its correlations with the second coming of Christ in Marmeladov’s confession and the New Jerusalem mentioned by Raskolnikov. The author points out the mythological saturation, as well as the otherworldly “coloring” of Svidrigailov’s image when related to other characters of the novel. Svidrigailov evokes a special sense of “otherness” and “incongruity” with the surrounding world, according to which a background of visions and hallucinations, rumors and dark backstories, impulsive actions are layered on his concept of eternity and extremely ambiguous future plans.

The article is devoted to theatrical adaptations of the novel Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky staged in Serbia during the first half of the 20th century. These productions are analyzed in the broad context of the transmedial storytelling of the novel, included into intercultural paradigm. In the second part of the article, the author focuses on the analysis of two productions of the 1930s: the first one in Serbian language, with Serbian actors; the second one by a touring troupe, in Russian language, with Russian actors. Using the method of reconstruction, on the basis of the creation of artefacts, the author applies to these cultural events a multidisciplinary theory of photography and illustration, in order to identify a connection between the above-mentioned productions and the original text of Dostoevsky’s novel. Having tried to determine the orginality of Serbian stage productions, the articles comes to the conclusion that they are basically rooted into the original Russian culture, meanwhile terms of unique ‘Balkan recoding’ of Crime and Punishment can only be applied to its poetic transformations in Serbian-Croatian ‘zenitists’ artwork.

The article analyzes the essays by students at the Moscow State Linguistic University about Mikhail Shemyakin’s exhibit in Dostoevsky’s House-Museum in Moscow, presenting a series of graphic illustrations to the novel Crime and Punishment. The exhibit, titled “Raskolnikov’s Delusions,” reflects the dreamlike content of the novel. The aesthetic reactions of contemporary students are considered here as a significant example of receptive polyphony. In their feedbacks, the students draw connections between the artist’s visual interpretations and their prior encounters with Crime and Punishment during their school studies, admitting that the exhibition revealed the text from a new, unexpected side, which confirms the idea that the perception of a classic work deepens thanks to its figurative visualization. Immersed in the inner world of the novel Crime and Punishment, the students paid attention to key paintings such as the first and last illustrations, framing the entire exhibition. Here Shemyakin conveyed the main idea of Dostoevsky’s text on resurrection, which was emphasized in many reviews. The association of non-verbal and literary texts undoubtedly affected the attention to the details. For example, the symbolic light emanating from the pages of the Gospel in the hands of Sonya Marmeladova, along with the figure of Lazarus, was noted as important. A careful contemplation of Shemyakin’s illustrations led the students to a deeper understanding of the meaning of Dostoevsky’s novel. Their essays testify that, despite the difference in opinions and assessments, the attitude of modern youth towards Dostoevsky’s work, refracted in the art of Shemyakin, generally corresponds to the spectrum of adequate readings of the novel Crime and Punishment in the 21st century.

The article proposes a genre definition of Dostoevsky’s novel as a novel of consciousness. The term has been used relatively recently, mainly in English-language literature of the last decades. In this article, it is used in a slightly different sense, emphasizing not the plurality of consciousnesses, but the universalization of consciousness in general. The difference of Crime and Punishment from the tradition of Western European and Russian social and psychological novel was already felt by its first readers and formulated initially by critics N.D. Akhsharumov, N.N. Strakhov, and Fr. Theodore (A.M. Bukharev). The unique fusion of the novel’s hero with the reader was achieved by Dostoevsky on the basis of the postulated common nature of human consciousness. The new aesthetics found its expression in the narrative structure, as the use of improper direct speech builds the communicating vessels (author-hero-reader) of the flowing unified “all-human” consciousness.

The material contains a critical analysis of the article by Ekaterina Mochalova, “Dostoevsky’s Petersburg through the Eyes of a Contemporary Schoolgirl,” published in the journal Dostoevsky and World Culture: Philological journal, 2023, no. 1 (21).

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Indirect translation, criticized for impurity, played a pivotal role in introducing Russian literature to fin-de-siècle Italy. Initial Italian translations of Russian classics stemmed from French translations, with France serving as a key hub for Russian literary reception in Europe. This article delves into the first Italian translation of "Crime and Punishment" to explore the nuances of this process. It examines the trade-offs--what was lost in translation--and highlights how the mediation through French translation paradoxically aided the reception of Dostoevsky in late 19th-century Italy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the questions Dostoevsky's reception in Hungary in the last decades of the 19th and in the first two decades of the 20th centuries. The author investigates the growing interest towards Dostoevsky in the context of the new tendencies of the art and literature and gives a detailed survey of the most characteristic reactions (i.e. reviews, studies, introductions to the books) about the new translations and editions of Dostoevsky's works. Among the most relevant questions are treated the stereotypes about Russian culture and people, living in Hungary through the past centuries, the various interpretations of the Crime and Punishment and some comparative aspects in the analysis of this novel. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is dedicated to the interpretation of Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment elaborated by two Catholic theologians: Romano Guardini (Religiöse Gestalten in Dostojewskijs Werk: Studien über den Glauben) and Divo Barsotti (Dostoevskij. La passione per Cristo). The analysis is preceded by a description of the structure of both works, and it is explained why they are worth of special mention among other pieces of research by Catholic authors on Dostoevsky. It is noticed that their interpretations give little space to Raskolnikov, his theory, and the reason for which he committed his crime. This part of the novel is considered mainly in the light of another character of Dostoevsky’s world, Ivan Karamazov. Remarkably, both authors find the key to the novel in the figure of Sonya Marmeladova. According to Barsotti she represents the presence of God as Wisdom of Love, while for Guardini her character alludes to the concept of “God’s children” and the Beatitudes Sermon. Sonya is the highest image of holiness in Dostoevsky’s work because she accepts all that is demanded from her to the point of giving herself, her body, and her honor; she lives in constant relation with that God who is incarnated in Christ. This is why the text of the Gospel plays a central role in the novel, as both authors notice. Another common element in the books is the attention paid to the story of the “yellow ticket” as an element endowed by Dostoevsky with a profound meaning, with the aim of emphasizing Sonya’s total dedication to the Other and the others.

The article is dedicated to the historical and cultural fusion of the Napoleonic and solar myth and its reflection in Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment. The plea of investigator Porfiry Petrovich to Rodion Raskolnikov during their third conversation “to become the sun” affects not only the Christian, as many researchers have already noticed, but also the Napoleonic side of the personality of the hero, who is trying to become the new Petersburg’s legislator of humanity. Special attention is paid to the evolution of the concept of “the Sun of Austerlitz,” which is usually understood as the highest triumph of Napoleon during his entire military career, and the centennial tradition of identifying great rulers with the Sun (Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Louis XIV, Napoleon, etc.). The formation of the solar cult of Napoleon during the First Empire in France and the role of the sun in the novel Crime and Punishment are considered in detail. It is explained why Raskolnikov, whose name Rodion refers to the island of Rhodes, dedicated to Helios, the god of the sun, mentions a variety of battles and campaigns involving his idol (the Siege of Toulon, the Egyptian campaign, the crossing of the Alps, the War of 1812, Waterloo, etc.) but completely ignores the Battle of Austerlitz, and why the sun the hero comes across is almost always setting. In addition, the article traces the connection between Napoleon and Apollo in the European culture of the first half of the 19th century and in Dostoevsky’s work.

The article discusses the elements of continuity with Russian classics in Nikolay Narokov’s novel Imaginary Magnitudes, namely its orientation towards the work of Fyodor Dostoevsky and his novel Crime and Punishment. Parallels with Crime and Punishment in the plot, but also in the genre and ideological content, can be found in Narokov’s novel. The center of the novel is a Chekist hero obsessed with an idea, like Raskolnikov. He sees salvation in Eulalia, who represents the moral ideal, like Sonechka in Dostoevsky’s novel. Raskolnikov’s idea of people “who have the right” is brought to the limit by Narokov. Studying the psychology of Chekist Lyubkin, he tries to comprehend the tragic era of 1937, the Stalinist repressions. Two types of links with the traditions of Russian literature are found in the novel. On the one hand, there is a conscious adherence to them, a desire to maintain a connection with the native culture in the conditions of emigration. Communication with predecessors becomes an instrument for spiritual and emotional survival. On the other hand, typological connections can also be found. In a situation of loss of moral guidelines, the dark side of life is exposed and becomes evident. In the novel Imaginary Magnitudes Narokov shows the relevance of Dostoevsky’s ideas, its timeless significance, focusing on the falsity and lifelessness of ideas divorced from the enduring truth.

The summary is compiled from the abstracts and summaries provided by the participants of the 2nd International Online Conference “Crime and Punishment: Current State of Research.” The conference is part of the work on the next issue of the series Dostoevsky’s Works: Current State of Research that will be dedicated to Crime and Punishment. The conference reports are devoted to the hermeneutics of the text, the historical and cultural allusions in the text, the role of the books mentioned in the novel, the problems of translation of Dostoevsky into different national and cultural languages, the novel’s reflections in literature, the ways of teaching the work at school and university. The summary provides an account of the latest trends in the study and teaching of Crime and Punishment.

The summary is dedicated to the 25th International Readings “Dostoevsky’s Works in the Perception of 21st-Century Readers,” which took place on April 19–21, 2023, in Staraya Russa, Novgorod region. The conference was organized by the Novgorod Museum-Reserve, the Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Commission for the Study of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Artistic Heritage at the Academic Council “History of World Culture” of the Russian Academy of Sciences. It was attended by more than 40 researchers from four countries: Russia, Italy, Kazakhstan, and Japan. The novel Crime and Punishment was the main text that formed the basis of most of the reports, roundtable discussion, and seminar.

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Herodotus’ logos about Scythians and ξεινικὰ νόμαια – amusing and ominous, as is typical of him, yet insightful – consists of two stories about the sad lots of Anacharsis and Scyles; the story begins with a statement that Scythians shun practicing customs of other peoples, particularly those of Hellas; it ends as an adage asserting the initial statement: that is the way Scythians guard their customs (IV.76–80). Herodotus describes the barbarian neighbours’ attitude towards foreign and alien customs. But these two examples are about their own, Scythian, heroes or rather antiheroes. The Scythian kings make short work not of aliens but of their fellow countrymen who betrayed their own customs and deny their ancestors’ faith. The Scythians regard Anacharsis’ and Scyles’ deeds as a crime against their culture. Both the philhellenes forswear their native religion and customs and abandon themselves to Greek ritual practices; therefore, they suffer for their behaviour. The author of the article holds that Herodotus was sympathetic to Scythians’ resentment against ξεινικὰ νόμαια. The Greek historian writes for his, Greek, readers/audience. The stories about Anacharsis and Scyles are not as much about the notorious ‘otherness’ of different cultures and certainly not about their severity and savageness, their cruelty and antipathy towards outlandishness. The Father of History speaks about piety and patriotism of Scythians, who believe that the offence against νόμαια is a threat to the very foundation of their culture. These illustrative examples are meant for the Hellenic audience; the amusing λόγοι about Oriental themes serve as an entreaty for Hellenes themselves.

This article presents an exercise in the close reading of two adjacent small chapters in Crime and Punishment — 3 and 4, in Part One of the Novel — Raskolnikov’s Mother’s letter and her son’s reaction to it, respectively. The exercise consists of two activities — homework preparation and its discussion in the classroom. The homework consists of a series of questions as reading guidelines, training the students to look for evidence in the text. These guidelines aim at alerting the students to the speaker’s and the listener’s respective attitudes to what matters to each about the topic of their conversation or, no less importantly, about what they deliberately omit: 1. the use of pronouns — personal as well as demonstrative and adverbial: Pointing to what matters instead of naming it, pronouns allow for a shift of referents. This, paradoxically, makes them more “loaded,” entailing a “naked,” shockingly direct, demonstration of attitude clashes. This requires a semiotic approach regarding deixis. 2. ostranenie/defamiliarization of these attitudes: the students initially presume that they understand what ails or concerns the characters but then discover how different their actual sore spots are — not merely from those presumed by the reader but from one another. Here, Russian Formalist Theory may come handy. 3. polyphony in Bakhtin’s sense — when the discourse offered by one speaker or character becomes re-accentuated by another, in both the way they listen and register the speech and the way they respond to it. Thus the theoretic approaches the students will use will be deliberately eclectic — whatever fits the purpose for the task at hand. The purpose of this exercise is two-fold. On the one hand, it makes theoretical approach relevant. The students begin to apply Literary Theories as instruments for understanding the text, rather than “worshipping” theory as the goal of their exercise in literary studies. On the other hand, it lets close readings counter any ideological reductionism. As the students develop their own interpretive skills, they also build up resistance to brain-washing or pre-digested interpretations, or to any attempted surrogates for their unmediated encounter with the primary text. The skill the students will thus acquire will be free, independent critical thinking. This, in turn, will re-invigorate their sense of Dostoevsky’s relevance, both ethical and aesthetic.

The essay explores problems of translating Russian classical Literature into English. It happens that even one word is capable of changing if not the plot, then the profound philosophical message of a text. The double meaning, direct and indirect, of certain words, and their connections with other parts of the text that remain unnoticed, eventually lead to oversimplifying and narrowing the dimension and scale of the composition as a whole in the perception of readers incapable of comprehending the original. Comparative analyses of only two words in several translations of Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment show the complexity and the responsibility of translations, especially the translation of a literary work, where the words rise into “divine height” of their signified and hidden meanings.

The review is dedicated to the monography by Robin Feuer Miller, professor of Russian Literature and Comparative Literature at Brandeis University, Dostoevsky’s Unfinished Journey, translated into Russian in 2022. Miller’s book is written in the spirit of comparative studies and collects different essays about literary influences and intertextuality in Dostoevsky’s work.

In the tenth grade we read Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment, where several real-life places in St. Petersburg are described. Few names of these places are written in full; the very fact that the action takes place in a designated place indicates realism and affects the characteristics (and sometimes the meaning) of it. However, Dostoevsky “encrypts” some of the addresses. In order to find the places not directly indicated, I decided to follow the footsteps of the heroes of this work, and after getting acquainted with the research on the topography of the novel, I went to St. Petersburg. After studying various archives, maps, and other sources, I was able to find the house of the Marmeladov family, which is not indicated in academic works. This study demonstrates a way of reasoning leading to an unambiguous conclusion and opening new meanings in the novel Crime and Punishment, such as the way of Raskolnikov’s thought, the reasons why Dostoevsky settled his characters on a certain street, and so on.