Notes from the Underground: A Letter to Stalin in Defense of Dostoevsky

The article publishes a previously unknown letter to Joseph Stalin in defense of Dostoevsky’s legacy, written in 1948. Until now, this document was preserved in the archival collection of the prominent Dostoevsky scholar A.S. Dolinin in the Manuscript Department of the Russian National Library as a letter by an unknown author. The present article not only identifies the author’s name but also introduces a previously unknown figure into the history of Dostoevsky studies, whose biography the author attempts to reconstruct. This figure is Elena Ivanovna Nesterova (1916–?), born into an Old Believer family, who graduated from a teachers’ institute and worked as a librarian at the Udmurt Republican Pushkin Library in the 1940s. Living and working in Izhevsk, Nesterova dreamed of becoming a scholar of Dostoevsky’s works and continuing her philological education in graduate school. In 1946, she wrote an essay on Dostoevsky’s humanism for this purpose, which was sent to Leningrad University and came into the hands of Professor A.S. Dolinin. The correspondence that ensued between them reveals not only Dolinin’s compassionate, generous, and truly pedagogical character but also paints a portrait of Nesterova, who, though shaped by Soviet upbringing, had been deeply influenced by Dostoevsky’s works from a young age. Moreover, she managed to gather around her a circle of literary enthusiasts who shared her views. When the campaign against Dostoevsky erupted in December 1947, Nesterova found the courage to stand up in defense of her beloved writer by writing a letter to Joseph Stalin.