WITH HIS LETTERS, F. DOSTOEVSKY replaced his personal diary, in contrast to Leo Tolstoy, who systematically and meticulously kept autobiographical notes.
Initially, in the letters to his father and later - after his murder in 1839 - to his guardians and relatives, especially to Michael, the efforts of the young Fyodor in his academic life within the aristocratic environment with its rigid military customs are reflected, where he is forced to constantly count every last kopeck and make desperate pleas for financial help.
At the same time, he seeks redemption in literature and philosophy, experiencing with romantic passion deep emotional outbursts that foreshadow the future transformation of the author's soul.
The letters of 1849 to Michael from the torturous cell of isolation in the prisons of Fort Petropavlovsk, after his arrest for participating in the revolutionary Petrashevsky Circle, hold particular weight and value.
After 1849, a prolonged silence follows. Dostoevsky's correspondence is abruptly interrupted and begins only after February 22, 1854, when the author returns from the penal servitude, to serve the remainder of his sentence exiled as a simple soldier in various cities of Siberia.
