Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (1821- 1881) is one of the most famous and widely translated Russian

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born in the small seaport of Taganrog, Ukraine on January 17th in the year 1860. Today he is remembered as a playwright and one of the masters of the modern short story. He was the son of a grocer and the grandson of a serf who had bought his freedom, that and that his

In addition to writing Notes from the Underground, and The House of the Dead, Dostoevsky completes Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and in 1871, he finishes The Devils. In addition, this decade is marked by personal tragedy, gambling, and debts. Beginning in 1862, Dostoevsky makes the first of several sojourns to Europe and his prolonged stay (from 1867-1871), no doubt, significantly influences his belief in the Great Russian Messianism.8

Born in Tobolsk on February 8, 1834, Dmitri Mendeleev, a Russian chemist, is perhaps one of the most popular. Mendeleev was the son of a teacher and showed early promise in mathematics and physics. When Dmitri was a child his father started experiencing health problems and died when Dmitri was just thirteen years old, forcing his mother to go out and look for a job. She began work in a glass factory which unfortunately burned to the ground in 1848.

Author M.T. Anderson effectively captures the sentiment lived by the Russians in his book Symphony for the City of the Dead when he tells the story of a young man, Dmitri Shostakovich, who survived Joseph Stalin’s deadly regime and Adolf Hitler’s attack on his native city of Leningrad. Throughout the story, Stalin finds new ways to subjugate his people by eliminating anyone who contradicted his ideals. Then, the story takes a sinister path when the Germans attack on Russia during World War II becomes inevitable.

The life of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is marked by his remarkable refusal to abandon that which he loved and believed in, even under the iron grip of oppression. Born in 1918, the Russian spent the majority of his early life in the city of Rostov-on-Don where he lived with his widowed mother. As a young man, Aleksandr developed a passion for writing, and began looking for places to print his works when he was only a teenager. This proved to be more than just a vaporous fantasy of his adolescence; Solzhenitsyn's strong desire to write motivated and inspired him throughout his entire life.

Through the striking change in the narrator’s lifestyle and state of mind, Dostoyevsky demonstrates how one’s life is purposeless without hope. This is similar to the idea that hope is the belief in the ability to achieve one’s desires because the

Anton was born January 29, 1860, in Taganrog, Russia. While growing up his father, Pavel had problems keeping money while his mother stayed at home and read stories to Anton and his five siblings. Fifteen years in 1875 later Anton’s family moved to Moscow for the closer of his business although, Anton stayed in Taganrog to finish his schooling. A short four years later in 1879 Chekhov had moved to Moscow to join his family. While living in Moscow Anton’s father was still having financial issues. This problem pushed Anton to try and help his family with money. Anton started freelance writing for a local magazine for money. In the early 1880’s Anton decided to practice medicine in Moscow while publishing fictional stories. His novel “The Steppe” was awarded the Pushkin Prize in 1888. Chekhov’s most famous short stories that he wrote while in medical school are “Ward No. 6,” “An Anonymous Story” and “Peasant.” Anton was a very dominant figure in Russia for his realism writings. Anton Chekhov’s greatest work was in the 1980’s when he wrote about the understanding of human nature and how ordinary events have deeper meanings. While into his late years of writing Anton realized that theater and plays was a passion in which he liked to write about. Plays that he wrote are Seagull, Uncle Vanya, The Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard. In his last years of life Anton married Olga Knipper in 1901 who was a actress in one

Igor Fedorovich Stravinsky was born in Oranienbaum, Russia in 1882. He was the son of Fyodor Ignat’evich Stravinsky. Igor Stravinsky is known as one of the best composers that Russia has ever produced because of works such as Firebird, Rite of spring, and Petrushka. Stravinsky Career was very interesting in that he was trained by one of the best composer of Russia, he was taken to Paris, and he revolutionized music in his time.

Despite his lowborn status, Smerdyakov greatly values the idea of intelligence, and enjoys appearing as such. After Smerdyakov seemed to display an interest in books in a bookcase, he was offered a fiction book, but he doesn’t recognize the humor, and disapproves of the made-up nature of the stories. He claims to want the truth, but he can’t handle the disappointing nature of the truth. Alternatively, when given a history book that is “all about true things,” Smerdyakov thought it too boring and rejected that as well (164). Since he cannot understand humor and the emotional emotional appeal of fiction, nor the value of the facts in non-fiction works, Smerdyakov is not a true intellectual. He is the kind of person who strives for the perceived appearance of being learned, but refuses the chance to actually learn and gain true knowledge. To the lackey, seeming like an intellectual gives him a feeling of superiority, which further amplifies his disdain for people he thinks are uneducated, like Gregory and Dmitry. Smerdyakov’s appreciation for intellect is reflected in his admiration of Ivan Karamazov, the only character in the book that he seems to have any positive regard for. On the exterior, Ivan is a progressive thinker and an atheist, things that Smerdyakov really latches on to. Ivan’s logical, progressive philosophy attracts

“Diary of a Madman” is told in the form of a diary of an old clerk that goes by the name of Axanti Ivanovitch, and works for a governmental bureaucracy in Russia. He is poor, unmarried and unsatisfied with his life. His diary walks us through his life as be begins to lose his sanity. His struggles with his landlady, boss and even strangers along the street emphasizes how insignificant he feels in

Konstantin Leont’ev, a great Russian writer in his own right, set out to observe when Russian literature had ended its golden period. He concluded that it was well after writers like Pushkin, and was well down in the dreary dregs when it reached the writings of Dostoevsky. He claimed that Dostoevsky wrote in the “decay

In Leo Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilych, a man is suddenly confronted with his own mortality. At first, the man, Ivan Ilych, does not want to confront his inevitable death, but as time goes on, he slowly realizes his life is ending. Knowing that he is going to die, Ivan starts to question his own life, and he questions his relationships with his family and colleagues. Similar the people he surrounds himself with, Ivan is materialistic and his relationships are shallow, except for Geralsim, Ivan’s bedside nurse during his last days. In the end, I believe Ivan began to realize the folly of his shallow and materialistic lifestyle. How is one meant to make meaning out of the end of one’s life?

Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Notes from the Underground (1864/2008) comes across as a diary penned by a self-described “spiteful” and “unattractive” anonymous narrator (p. 7). The narrator’s own self-loathing characterized by self-alienation is so obvious, that he is often referred to by critics as the Underground Man (Frank 1961, p. 1). Yet this Underground Man is the central character of Dostoyevsky’s novel and represents a subversion of the typical courageous hero. In this regard, the Underground man is an anti-hero, since as a protagonist he not only challenges the typical literary version of a hero, but also challenges conventional thinking (Brombert 1999, p. 1).

Both of them had experienced sufferings beyond what one can imagine. Dostoyevsky felt that suffering gives one the chance of puri6cation and transformation. Through his many ordeals of suffering, ranging from the near death of his sick children or his epileptic seizures, to his early imprisonment and exile to Siberia, Dostoyevsky felt that he eventually reached the point of happiness "The way of salvation is the way of suffering" could often be heard mumbled from Dostoyevsky's mouth. For these reasons, critics believe that Raskolnikov may have been a direct symbol of Dostoyevsky and his suffering. (Kjetsaa, 346-349)

At first glance, it is understandable to assume that Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Gambler and F.Scott Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and Damned are incomparable and unrelated in every way. However, when exploring in detail the character development in each novel, an alternate verdict can be presented that shows, beyond peradventure, that both novels share similarities. Granted, The Gambler is about a tutor working for a Russian family and his evolution into a pathological gambler, where as The Beautiful and Damned is concentrated on the relationship of a wealthy young couple in the Roaring 20’s who taste the bittersweet consequences of extravagance as the book traces their mental, moral and physical disintegration. Nevertheless, both novels explore depression as a concomitant of the amalgamation between love and avarice. Both Dostoevsky and Fitzgerald, through different settings, character and circumstances, have created a grandiose psychological portrait of unrequited love as well as depression through addiction and loss.