HISTORICAL DICTIONARY A–Z - Russia: A Reference Guide from the Renaissance to the Present - page 134

work of introducing secular education to the
Kalmyks and Buriats. He composed an alphabet
for the Buriats, compiled collections of Buriat
folklore, and wrote historical studies. In 1913 he
was largely responsible for building a Buddhist
temple in St. Petersburg. During his frequent
visits to Tibet, Dorzhiev became a friend of the
Thirteenth Dalai Lama and represented his
interests to the Russian government. When the
BOLSHEVIKS came to power, Dorzhiev reformed
the lifestyle and curriculum of the Buddhist
monasteries in the Russian Empire. The Soviet
government recognized him as the diplomatic
representative of the Dalai Lama and for a
time relied on his services to maintain friendly
relations with the Buddhist leader. After the
formation of the Mongolian People's Republic,
Dorzhiev and the Buddhist clergy in the Soviet
Union were subjected to repression. In 1936
Dorzhiev was banished from the Buriat-Mongol
ASSR and lived in Lakhta in the Leningrad
region. In 1937, he was arrested and was ban-
ished to Ulan-Ude, where he was imprisoned.
Dorzhiev died in prison the following year.

Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky, ca. 1880
(Hulton/Archive)

Dostoevsky, Feodor Mikhailovich
(1822-1881)
writer
A prolific Russian novelist, Dostoevsky has come
to occupy a prominent place in the canons of
world literature. Born in Moscow, Dostoevsky
attended the Military Engineering College in St.
Petersburg from 1837 to 1841 and was subse-
quently commissioned into the army. While in
college his father, a wealthy landowning doctor,
died with rumors that he was murdered in 1839
by the serfs of his country estate. In 1844 Dosto-
evsky resigned his commission to devote himself
to literature. His first major work, Poor Folk, was
published in 1846 and received high praise,
especially from radical circles. In 1849, he was
arrested for his links to the Petrashevsky Circle,
an intellectual group sympathetic to early social-
ist ideals. He was sentenced to death together
with 14 other members of the circle. Facing the
firing squad, he learned that his sentence had

been commuted at the last moment; instead, he
served four years of hard labor in Siberia, fol-
lowed by two years of internal exile. In 1859 he
was amnestied and returned to St. Petersburg. A
changed man who abandoned his earlier radical
views and in somewhat poor health, Dosto-
evsky now devoted himself fully to writing. His
Siberian experience provided the material for
Memoirs from the House of the Dead (1861-62).
More successful and in line with his later work
was Notes from the Underground (1864). His first
wife, whom he had married in Siberia, died in
1863, and in 1865 he traveled with a female
companion to Germany. The decade that fol-
lowed his return to St. Petersburg saw the publi-
cation of his great novels, Crime and Punishment
(1866), The Idiot (1868), The Possessed or The Dev-
ils (1871), followed by his crowning literary