In Front | Dostoevsky’s New Testament

In 1850 no one would have suspected that Fyodor Dostoevsky would go on to become one of the greatest novelists in history. He was a convicted state criminal on a forced march to a gulag in Siberia. Along the way, one brief encounter changed his life. A woman handed him a recently translated version of the Russian New Testament.

Dostoevsky would read it himself as well as out loud to other prisoners. For those four years, he slept with it under his pillow. 

After he was freed and throughout his life thereafter, Dostoevsky kept that copy of the New Testament on his writing desk. 

His wife would later write: 

He used to say that the Gospel was the only thing that kept hope alive in his heart. Only in that book did he find support; whenever he resorted to it, he was filled with new energy and strength

The author of what many consider the greatest novel of all time, The Brothers Karamazov, often alluded to the Bible in his works. The Idiot alone includes approximately 25 biblical allusions. 

On his deathbed, Dostoevsky asked to have that same copy of the New Testament brought to him.

One of his biographers recorded:

On his deathbed, the great Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky asked that the story of the prodigal son be read to his children, hoping that they would always remember their identity in Christ.

Quotes from: Malcolm Jones, Dostoevsky and the Dynamics of Religious Experience, 2005, p. 55; Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: The Mantle of the Prophet, 1871-1881, 2002, p. 748.