But the magazine attracted readers with its literary content. The official editor was Mikhail Mikhailovich Dostoevsky; Fyodor Mikhailovich was in charge of the art and criticism department. In the very first book were published "Humiliated and Insulted"; they were followed by "Notes from the House of the Dead", works by Ostrovsky, Nekrasov, Turgenev and Shchedrin. Dostoevsky does not disdain "sensations": he publishes a translation of "The Crimes of Lasener" and excerpts from "The Memoirs of Casanova". For the first issue, he wrote a feuilleton "Petersburg Dreams in Verse and Prose" - one of his most poetic creations. He managed to attract two young gifted critics to cooperate: Apollon Grigoriev and N. N. Strakhov. This is how a group of "pochvenniki" was formed. N. Strakhov in his memoirs sketched Dostoevsky as he was in the era of "Time". He then wore only a mustache and, in spite of his huge forehead and beautiful eyes, had the appearance of a completely soldier, i.e., the features of the common people." He spoke almost in a whisper, but inspired he spoke loudly; he adored Pushkin and loved to read "Just on the Spring Thaws" and "Like the Spring Warm Time". At 3 o'clock in the afternoon, employees usually met in the editorial office; before lunch they walked; in the evening, at seven o'clock, Dostoevsky often called on Strakhov; at twelve he sat down to work and wrote until five or six o'clock in the morning, supporting himself with tea. I slept until two o'clock in the afternoon. This is how he worked all his life. The very process of writing was painful for him. "It has always been more pleasant for me to think over my compositions," says his alter ego, Ivan Petrovich in "The Humiliated and Insulted," and to dream of how they would be written, than to actually write them, and, really, it was not from laziness. Why? "This question is answered by N. Strakhov: "Inner work was constantly going on in him, there was an increase and movement of thoughts, and it was always difficult for him to tear himself away from this work for writing. Apparently idle, he worked tirelessly... His thoughts were boiling; new images, plans for new works were constantly created, and old plans grew and developed." For two years of work in the magazine "Time", Dostoevsky, by his own admission, wrote up to a hundred printed sheets. At what price this terrible tension was bought, this is evidenced by the notebook of 1862-1863: "Fits of falling fever: April 1 - strong; August 1 – weak; November 7 – medium; January 7 – strong; March 2 - medium. " But, Dostoevsky wrote, the success of the magazine that was beginning was dearer to me than anything else, and success was achieved. The editor of "Time" and the author of the sensational "Notes from the House of the Dead" was satisfied. My name is worth a million," he proudly declared to Strakhov.

From January to November 1861, Dostoevsky published articles on Russian literature in Vremya, in which he tried to clarify the ideology of the new movement. The European civilization met the needs of the Russian "soil", but now it "has already completed its entire circle with us; we have already survived it all; we have accepted from it everything that was due, and we freely turn to our native soil." The author is full of joyful hopes: "New Russia is already being felt little by little, is already gradually becoming aware of itself... "He tells "the story of our development": how consciousness arose in Russian society, how analysis penetrated into it, how self-accusation and self-flagellation were born; mentions the enthusiastic admiration for George Sand, the foundation of the "natural school", Russian Byronism, the appearance of "two demons" Gogol and Lermontov, the origin of "accusation".

"No, we have been peering into everything for a long time, analyzing everything; we ask ourselves riddles, we yearn and are tormented by clues... After all, we also lived and lived a lot... "

Dostoevsky sums up the Petrine period of Russian life and asserts its spiritual significance. This is his first experience in the philosophy of Russian culture. Russia's apprenticeship is over, he thinks, it has matured to its original idea: all-humanity. "Yes, we believe that the Russian nation is an extraordinary phenomenon in the history of all mankind... And it's scary, TO) to what extent a Russian person is free in spirit... "In the year of the emancipation of the peasants, the writer predicts for Russia "a new activity, unknown in history." He looks at the future optimistically: the intelligentsia will bring its education to the people, and the people "will lovingly appreciate their teachers and educators in the educated class, will recognize us as their true friends, will appreciate in us not mercenaries, but pastors... ".

Caught up in the idyllic mood of the first days of the reforms, the former convict forgets about the terrible experience of the Omsk prison; the abyss between the civilized class and the people seems to him not so deep: reconciliation is near.

The historiosophy of the "Writer's Diary" is already worked out in the articles of 1861. The ideas of Pushkin's speech "survived by the author for twenty years. The colossal significance of Pushkin "is that he is the embodiment of the Russian spirit, the Russian ideal. " The phenomenon of Push^kina, writes Dostoevsky in "Time", is proof that the tree of civilization has already ripened to fruit, and these fruits are not rotten, but magnificent golden fruits. We "understood in him that the Russian ideal is wholeness, all-reconciliation, all-humanity." Pushkin is the justification of Peter's case, the meaning of the St. Petersburg period of our history, of our "European captivity". For us, he is "the beginning of everything that we now have." The Russian man realized himself in Onegin: "he does not yet know what to do, does not even know what to respect, although he is firmly convinced that there is something that must be respected and loved.

Dostoevsky polemicizes with both Westernizers and Slavophiles, but at first his sympathies are on the side of the former. He is outraged by the contemptuous and arrogant tone of Konstantin Aksakov, the formalism and intolerance of the newspaper "Den". Slavophiles have a rare ability to understand nothing in modern reality. Their ideal consists of "a panorama1 of Moscow from the Sparrow Hills, a dreamy representation of Moscow life in the middle of the 17th century, the siege of Kazan and the Lavra, and other panoramas presented in the French taste by Karamzin." Westernism "was still more real than Slavophilism." In the article "Literary Hysteria" directed against Katkov's "Russian Herald", Dostoevsky ardently defends the "groundless Westernizers". Yes, they had no ground, their activity was false and their life was fantastic. But is it possible to mock this Russian tragedy? Wasn't it a testimony to a busy life? "Blessed is he," exclaims the author, who is able to see even in an ugly phenomenon its historical serious side; Is a mistaken man necessarily a scoundrel? Yes, sometimes it is precisely the uglier life manifests, the more convulsive, the uglier, the more tireless this manifestation is, the more it means that life wants to assert itself at all costs—and you say that there is no life at all. There is anguish, suffering, but what is the matter with you? ". Such was the initial position of the "pochvenniki". Sharply dissociating itself from the Slavophile "Day" and Katkov's "Russian Herald", "Vremya" maintained friendly relations with the radical "Sovremennik"; Nekrasov and Shchedrin collaborated in it. "A contemporary" praised the novel "Humiliated and Insulted" and even placed a hymn to "Time". The government considered the Dostoevsky brothers' magazine to be oppositional and dangerous.

But friendship with the "Westernizers" was unstable. N. Strakhov and other employees of "Vremya" more and more openly showed their hostility to the Nekrasov group. Dostoevsky at first moderated their polemical fervor, made numerous "notes from the editors" to their articles, but soon he himself was caught up in the struggle. The defense of the "Westernizers" was replaced by a fierce polemic with the "nihilists." Dostoevsky's hopes for a touching reconciliation between the intelligentsia and the people were replaced by anxiety about the impending revolution. In 1861, "student history" shattered all his idyllic hopes. Students rebelled. The university was closed; arrests and searches began; students were imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress; In the streets, the crowd gave them a standing ovation. The truce between Vremya and Sovremennik was over; A vicious and merciless struggle began.

At first, it was limited to the field of art. Dostoevsky opposes Dobrolyubov and his utilitarian theory. It is impossible to impose various goals on art and prescribe laws: it has "its own, integral, organic life", it meets the innate need of beauty in man, "without which, perhaps, he would not want to live in the world". When a person is at odds with reality, in a struggle, that is, when he is most alive, the thirst for beauty and harmony manifests itself in him with the greatest force. Art is useful because it instills energy, maintains strength, and strengthens our sense of life. "Art is always modern and really, has never existed otherwise and, most importantly, cannot exist otherwise." This is an important profession de foi of the artist Dostoevsky: he defends the autonomy of art, deducing its usefulness from an aesthetic need, without which a person "might not want to live in the world." The author defends the spiritual nobility of man, humiliated by utilitarians. "A person accepts beauty without any conditions, but only because it is beauty and bows down before it with reverence, without asking why it is useful and what can be bought with it." Beauty is more useful than usefulness, for it is the ultimate goal of existence. At this peak, the path of art meets the path of religion. The idea of beauty is mystically deepened in great novels and ends with the prophecy: "beauty will save the world."

Strakhov tells us that from 1861, the Sovremennik began to act "as a kind of committee of public safety" and systematically engage in literary executions: Pogodin, Sluchevsky, Kostomarov, and the Slavophiles were "destroyed; finally, Turgenev's novel "Fathers and Sons" was destroyed. Strakhov, under the pseudonym "Kositsy", came to his defense. Then the Sovremennik attacked Vremya (article "On the Spirit of Vremya", April 1862). The polemics were interrupted by the arrest of Chernyshevsky. The revolutionary ferment grew every month; proclamations were distributed threatening to "flood the streets with blood and leave no stone unturned"; in May 1862, fires broke out in St. Petersburg; Entire neighborhoods burned for two weeks. In June, the Sovremennik was closed for eight months.

* * *

In the summer of 1862, Dostoevsky traveled abroad for the first time. A lifelong dream is finally coming true: he will see Europe, the "land of holy wonders"! A year ago he wrote to Y. G1. Polonsky to Italy: "You are a happy man! How many times have I dreamed, since childhood, of visiting Italy! Even in Ratcliffe's novels, which I read for eight years, various Alphonses, Catharines and Lucia were ingrained in my head... Then came Shakespeare – Verona, Romeo and Juliet, the chort knows what a charm it was! And instead of Italy, he ended up in Semipalatinsk, and before that in the House of the Dead. Is it possible that now it will not be possible to travel around Europe, when there is still strength, heat, and poetry left? "And finally, he "broke free".

In "Winter Notes on Summer Impressions" he relates: "I have been to Berlin, to Dresden, to Wiesbaden, to Baden-Baden, to Cologne, to Paris, to London, to Lucerne, to Geneva, to Genoa, to Florence, to Milan, to Venice, to Vienna, and to other places twice, and I have traveled all this in exactly two and a half months." The route was made in advance, he was not able to choose places; He wanted to "inspect everything, certainly everything." Lord, how much I expected from this journey! I may not see anything in detail, I thought, but I have seen everything, I have been everywhere; but everything valuable will make up something whole, some general panorama. The whole "land of holy wonders" will present itself to me at once from a bird's eye view, like the promised land from the mountain in perspective.

He stayed in Berlin for only one day and the city made "the most sour impression on him... "I suddenly, at first glance, noticed that Berlin is incredibly similar to St. Petersburg"; therefore, he quickly "slipped away" to Dresden, "nourishing the deepest conviction in his soul that one must get used to the German especially and that it is very difficult to endure him in large masses if he is unaccustomed."