Is Dostoyevsky a prophet of Putin that we are no longer allowed to read? Broken fingers and bruises – attack on Russian journalist in Chechnya

Russia’s national saints like Tolstoy or Dostoyevsky have been frowned upon in Ukraine since Putin invaded the country. Like anything Russian, they are suspected of legitimizing great power thinking. That is understandable. What is less understandable is the zeal with which Ukrainian intellectuals want to drive us to Western Europe out of love for Russian literature.

Now this culture war is escalating completely. Since Carlo Masala, German military expert and popular TV talk show guest, recommended Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 1848 novella “White Nights” and counted it among the lesser known but “most beautiful, tender, fragile and at the same time most powerful works” of the poet, the former Ukrainian ambassador to Germany, Andrij Melnyk, is unstoppable.

Ended up in the “Worst Nationalist Manure”?

«The ‘tender’ Russian soul. Bah,” he tweeted – advising Masala to read Ukrainian literature. In turn, he warns Melnyk to hold back, “before you get into the worst of nationalistic muck.” But Melnyk, the rowdy among discreet diplomats, is now really getting down to business against “Dostoyevsky fans”.

On Twitter, he commemorates the Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina, who was killed by a Russian missile a week ago. Their attackers were certainly “inspired by your genius Dostoyevsky”.

Chauvinistic and obscure ideas in Dostoevsky

Is the 19th century Russian national classic a spiritual stimulator of contemporary war? Can he be held indirectly responsible for the death of the young Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina and thousands of other citizens?

In fact, Dostoyevsky has long been co-opted by Great-Russian fanatics and thus also by Putin. And he undoubtedly wrote something chauvinistic and obscure.

But that’s only a fraction of his job. In his epics “Crime and Punishment”, “The Idiot”, “Evil Spirits” or “The Brothers Karamazov” he banishes people in all their complexity, with their freedoms and limitations, their ups and downs. Every conceivable voice is expressed in the novels, which deal with humanity as well as the abuse and perversion of power. Again and again Dostoyevsky turns against murder and violence.

These books can still be read with great profit, even though Dostoyevsky himself was a terrible author: he thought first like an early socialist, then a conservative, was addicted to gambling, was sentenced to death and nearly executed, then sentenced to hard labor in Siberia precisely because he left Russia, he wanted to innovate with his ideas for world improvement.

Yes, he also represents deeply autocratic and imperialist ideas that Putin’s political, cultural and religious power apparatus likes to evoke. But like all great literature, Dostoyevsky does not lend itself to propaganda.

Dostoevsky can only be dismissed as a purely ideological prophet of Putinism by those who primitively brought him down. But then you have to cancel almost every classic, including our Swiss. Gotthelf’s work, for example, is also not clean and can easily be abused by all kinds of demagogues.