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."

In Dresden, he "suddenly imagined that there was nothing more disgusting than the type of Dresden women." In Cologne, he did not like the cathedral, but a month later, when he saw it for the second time, he wanted to "on his knees ask for forgiveness." At the entrance to France, his first encounter with the "European spirit" awaited him. At the Aokélin border station, four strange travelers got into the car: they were light, in shabby frock coats, dirty linen and bright ties. Everyone's faces are similar, rumpled and self-satisfied. The Russian traveler is surprised to learn that these are "police spies". In Paris, at the Hotel des Empereurs, the hostess writes down all his signs in detail. "Oh, monsieur, it is necessary!" she exclaims, and Dostoevsky is amazed at the "colossal regulation" of this "most virtuous city on the whole globe." He wrote to Strakhov: "Paris is a most boring city, and if there were not a lot of really wonderful things in it, then, really, one could die of boredom. The French, by God, are such a people that make you sick ... The Frenchman is quiet, honest, polite, but false and he has all the money. There is no ideal... You won't believe how loneliness overwhelms the soul here. A dreary, heavy feeling." From Paris, he went to London for 8 days, visited the World Exhibition, and often met with Herzen. London amazes him. In "Winter Notes on Summer Impressions" he writes: "What broad, overwhelming pictures! This, day and night, bustling and immense, like the sea, city, the screech and howl of machines, these cast-iron stoves laid over the houses (and soon under the houses), this boldness of enterprise, this seeming disorder, which, in fact, is bourgeois order in the highest degree, this poisoned Thames, this air saturated with coal, these magnificent squares and parks, these terrible corners of the city, like Whitechapel, with its half-naked and hungry population, the City with its millions and world trade, the crystal palace, the world's fair... Yes, the exhibition is amazing! "

Returning to Paris, Dostoevsky went from there to Geneva, where he met with N. Strakhov. Together they go to Lucerne. Then through Montseny to Genoa; from Genoa they go by steamer to Livorno, and from there to Florence. Strakhov reports that Dostoevsky was bored in the Uffizi, compared Arno with the Fontanka and read Hugo's new novel "Les Miisierables" with enthusiasm.

In September, they both returned to Russia. Neither in his letters nor in his 'Notes' does the writer say a word about Italy, of which he dreamed so ardently from early childhood. In Europe, complete disappointment awaited him - the "land of holy miracles" turned out to be a cemetery.

* * *

In the November issue of "Time" (1862) Dostoevsky's story "A Bad Joke" appears. The rosy hopes of the first days of the reform dissipated. The liberation of the peasants, for the sake of which the writer "went to the revolution" and for which he paid with ten years of exile, did not make him happy for long. The holiday of reconciliation "between the people and the intelligentsia until recently inspired his journalism; Now he takes revenge on himself for his incorrigible "dreaminess" and mocks his naivety. Instead of a hymn to the era of great reforms, he writes a ferocious satire on it. The reform failed, instead of it it turned out to be a "bad joke".

In the statesmen of the new reign he recognizes the same utopians of the forties, but only suddenly believing in their parliamentary abilities. In the person of the hero, the actual state councilor Ivan Ilyich Pralinsky[117], he draws a murderous caricature of them. Ivan Ilyich is a general, still young, he likes to talk and "take parliamentary poses." In moments of despondency, he calls himself a "parler" and a "phrase-monger." But the renewing Russia suddenly gave him great hopes. He suddenly began to speak eloquently and a lot, and to speak on the most novel topics." He is "a poet at heart" and his favorite subject is humanity. Humanity is the main thing, he exclaims, humanity with subordinates, remembering that they too are people. Humanity will save everything and take everything out... Humanity, I say, can serve, so to speak, as the cornerstone of the forthcoming reforms and in general to the renewal of things."

The author of "Poor People" and "The Humiliated and Insulted", whose humane reputation was affirmed by Belinsky and Dobrolyubov, does not find sufficiently strong sarcasms to joke about the "philanthropy" of the reformers. He wants, like his hero, Prince Volkovsky, "to spit a little on the whole thing." Recently he wrote in "Vremya" that the people will lovingly accept their "shepherds". In "A Bad Joke" this prediction is parodied.