F. M. Dostoevsky about Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

It is the first time when the works of F. M. Dostoevsky related to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels are analyzed systematically. The paper reveals that the book “The condition of the working class in England” by Friedrich Engels is interpreted within the economic context while the considerations on Karl Marx are interwoven with geopolitical thoughts of Dostoevsky on the historical destiny of Christianity and the Russian Empire. The ideas of Marx and Engels became of particular interest to Dostoevsky in the 1960s. In the March issue of the journal of Dostoevsky brothers “Vremia” (“Time”) 1961, there was an anonymous review of the book “Political economy of the present and future” by German economist Bruno Hildebrand. The book was translated into Russian by M. P. Shchepkin and published in 1860. It is a detailed overview of Germanic economic thought, with special attention to the book “The condition of the working class in England” by Engels. Hildebrand and anonymous reviewer of the journal “Vremia” (“Time”) sharply criticized this work of Engels. In the column “Foreign events” published in “Grazhdanin” (“The Citizen”), Dostoevsky interpreted modern European political events as an opposition between Christianity and “Karl Marx and Bakunin” pointing that the latter would succumb. Marx and Bakunin are entwined into Dostoevsky’s thoughts on Russia as an Empire and Peter I as its founder, on the fate of Orthodox as an “Eastern Christianity.” Dostoevsky states that faith in Christ is “our Russian socialism.”

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