Editing Fyodor Dostoevsky (section)

=== Release from prison and first marriage (1854–1866) ===

[[File:Image dost 01.jpg|thumb|upright|Dostoevsky as a [[Military engineering|military engineer]] in 1858 or -59,<ref>{{cite web | url=https://fyodor-dostoevsky.com/gallery/ | title=Gallery }}</ref> portrait by [[Solomon Leibin]] (Соломон Лейбин)]]

After his release on 14 February 1854, Dostoevsky asked Mikhail to help him financially and to send him books by [[Giambattista Vico]], [[François Guizot]], [[Leopold von Ranke]], [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel]] and [[Immanuel Kant]].{{sfnp|Frank|1988|pp=8–20}} ''[[The House of the Dead (novel)|The House of the Dead]]'', based on his experience in prison, was published in 1861 in the journal ''[[Vremya (magazine)|Vremya]]'' ("Time") – it was the first published novel about Russian prisons.{{sfnp|Sekirin|1997|pp=107–21}} Before moving in mid-March to [[Semey|Semipalatinsk]], where he was forced to serve in the Siberian Army Corps of the Seventh Line Battalion, Dostoevsky met the geographer [[Pyotr Semyonov]] and the ethnographer [[Shokan Walikhanuli]]. Around November 1854, he met Baron Alexander Egorovich Wrangel, an admirer of his books, who had attended the aborted execution. They both rented houses in the Cossack Garden outside Semipalatinsk. Wrangel remarked that Dostoevsky "looked morose. His sickly, pale face was covered with freckles, and his blond hair was cut short. He was a little over average height and looked at me intensely with his sharp, grey-blue eyes. It was as if he were trying to look into my soul and discover what kind of man I was."{{sfnp|Kjetsaa|1989|pp=112–13}}{{sfnp|Frank|1987|pp=165–267}}{{sfnp|Kjetsaa|1989|pp=108–13}}

In Semipalatinsk, Dostoevsky tutored several schoolchildren and came into contact with upper-class families, including that of Lieutenant-Colonel Belikhov, who used to invite him to read passages from newspapers and magazines. During a visit to Belikhov, Dostoevsky met the family of Alexander Ivanovich Isaev and Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva and fell in love with the latter. Alexander Isaev took a new post in [[Novokuznetsk|Kuznetsk]], where he died in August 1855. Maria and her son then moved with Dostoevsky to [[Barnaul]]. In 1856, Dostoevsky sent a letter through Wrangel to General [[Eduard Totleben]], apologising for his activity in several utopian circles. As a result, he obtained the right to publish books and to marry, although he remained under police surveillance for the rest of his life. Maria married Dostoevsky in Kuznetsk on 7 February 1857, even though she had initially refused his marriage proposal, stating that they were not meant for each other and that his poor financial situation precluded marriage. Their family life was unhappy and she found it difficult to cope with his seizures. Describing their relationship, he wrote: "Because of her strange, suspicious and fantastic character, we were definitely not happy together, but we could not stop loving each other; and the more unhappy we were, the more attached to each other we became". They mostly lived apart.{{sfnp|Sekirin|1997|p=168}} In 1859 he was released from military service because of deteriorating health and was granted permission to return to European Russia, first to [[Tver]], where he met his brother for the first time in ten years, and then to St Petersburg.{{sfnp|Frank|1987|pp=175–221}}{{sfnp|Kjetsaa|1989|pp=115–63}}

[[File:Dostoevskij 1863.jpg|thumb|upright|left|Dostoevsky in Paris, 1863]]

The short story "A Little Hero" (Dostoevsky's only work completed in prison) appeared in a journal, but "Uncle's Dream" and "The Village of Stepanchikovo" were not published until 1860. ''[[Notes from the House of the Dead]]'' was released in ''Russky Mir'' (Russian World) in September 1860. ''[[Humiliated and Insulted]]'' was published in the new ''Vremya'' magazine,{{efn|''Time'' magazine was a popular periodical with more than 4,000 subscribers before it was closed on 24 May 1863 by the Tsarist Regime after publishing an essay by [[Nikolay Strakhov]] about the [[January Uprising|Polish revolt in Russia]]. ''Vremya'' and its 1864 successor ''[[Epoch (Russian magazine)|Epokha]]'' expressed the philosophy of the conservative and [[Slavophile]] movement ''[[Pochvennichestvo]]'', supported by Dostoevsky during his term of imprisonment and in the following years.{{sfnp|Frank|1988|pp=34–64}}}} which had been created with the help of funds from his brother's cigarette factory.{{sfnp|Frank|1987|pp=290 et seq}}{{sfnp|Frank|1988|pp=8–62}}{{sfn|Kjetsaa|1989|pp=135–37}}

Dostoevsky travelled to western Europe for the first time on 7 June 1862, visiting Cologne, Berlin, Dresden, Wiesbaden, Belgium and Paris. In London he met [[Alexander Herzen]] and visited [[the Crystal Palace]]. He travelled with [[Nikolay Strakhov]] through Switzerland and several North Italian cities, including Turin, Livorno, and the central Italian city of Florence. He recorded his impressions of those trips in the essay "[[Winter Notes on Summer Impressions]]", in which he also criticised capitalism, [[Modernisation|social modernisation]], [[materialism]], Catholicism and Protestantism.{{sfnp|Frank|1988|pp=233–49}}{{sfnp|Kjetsaa|1989|pp=143–45}} Dostoevsky viewed the Crystal Palace as a monument to soulless modern society, the myth of progress, and the worship of empty materialism.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Simpson |first=Tim |date=2023 |title=Betting on Macau: Casino Capitalism and China's Consumer Revolution |series=Globalization and Community series |location=Minneapolis MN |publisher=[[University of Minnesota Press]] |isbn=978-1-5179-0031-1 |page=276 }}</ref>

From August to October 1863, Dostoevsky made another trip to western Europe. He met his second love, [[Apollinaria Suslova|Polina Suslova]], in Paris and lost nearly all his money gambling in Wiesbaden and Baden-Baden. In 1864 his wife Maria and his brother Mikhail died, and Dostoevsky became the lone parent of his stepson Pasha and the sole supporter of his brother's family. The failure of ''[[Epoch (Russian magazine)|Epoch]]'', the magazine he had founded with Mikhail after the suppression of ''Vremya'', worsened his financial situation, although the continued help of his relatives and friends averted bankruptcy.{{sfnp|Frank|1988|pp=197–211, 283–94, 248–365}}{{sfnp|Kjetsaa|1989|pp=151–75}}