“Dear Mikhail Mikhailovich! I have been appointed editor of your book…”: From the history of the publication of Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics

The background and publication history of Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics is an important part of the scholarly biography and reception of Mikhail Bakhtin’s personality and ideas. The second edition of this work, which appeared in 1963, marked a new milestone in the development of Russian literary studies, combining the best traditions of the literary scholarship of the pre-revolutionary period and the first post-revolutionary decade and the new trends of the post-Stalin era humanities. Refuting the myth that the 1929 book on Dostoevsky had been forgotten, the authors emphasize that by the mid-1950s and early 1960s it was well remembered by a large number of Soviet literary critics. Anatoly Lunacharsky’s review in the anthology F.M. Dostoevsky in Russian Criticism (1956) only strengthened the authority and relevance of Bakhtin’s old monograph, which was borne out by the extensive polemic with this work, in particular in Viktor Shklovsky’s book Pro et Contra (1957) and in the collection F.M. Dostoevsky’s Oeuvre (1959), whose authors strongly objected to Bakhtin’s polyphonic novel theory. The article pays special attention to the activities of Sergey Bocharov as the editor of the book, revealing his contribution to the work on the manuscript. The article introduces a number of previously unknown archival documents, including fragments of correspondence between Bocharov and Bakhtin in 1962-1963. It also contains the memoirs of Bocharov and Vadim Kozhinov, studies by Nikolay Pankov, etc. The letters of Bakhtin and Bocharov represent a kind of a dialogue between the author and the editor, in which the proposed changes were discussed. Bocharov’s editorial “intervention” was quite limited and as tactful as possible. None of the principles of the 1929 book was corrected. All of Bakhtin’s additions, including the new fourth chapter, were approved. The alterations affected the philosophical terminology of the book (it became simpler and clearer to the modern reader), individual quotations from Dostoyevsky were expanded, and the structure of paragraphs was partially changed. On this basis, it is concluded that Bocharov’s efforts to revise the manuscript were in fact more significant than what he claimed to have done in his lifetime, and the words of gratitude expressed by Bakhtin to his editor in his letters receive further validation. The authors declare no conflicts of interests.