Fyodor Dostoevsky Museum
It’s St.Petersburg but not Moscow that was the favourite city of Moscow-born Fyodor Dostoevsky. The famous writer lived here during 28 years.
The writer’s admirers know building 5 in Kuznechny lane in St.Petersburh because the Dostoevsky family lived in an apartment in this building in 1878-1881. Some of Dostoevsky’s most notable works including the novel The Brothers Karamazov and the Pushkin Speech were written here. It’s here that the great Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky died in 1881.
It wasn’t before November 13 1971, the writer’s 150th birthday, that the place became Dostoevsky Literary Memorial Museum.
Today, the Museum consists of the writer's former apartment and a Literary exhibit about his biography and works.
The apartment, which was on the second storey and had six rooms – the entryway with a storage space for books, a washing room, a nursery, the writer’s wife Anna Grigorievna’s room, a dining room, a sitting room, and the writer’s office – was reconstructed based on photographs, old plans, and Anna Grigorievna’s memoirs. The contribution of the writer’s grandson Andrei Dostoevsky was invaluable.
Only a few of the writer’s personal items have survived and are displayed at the museum: his hat, books from his library, and a clock which belonged to his brother. Anna Grigorievna’s shorthand notes and personal bookkeeping records both made by her own hand are on display in her room.
Books, family photographs, documents of that time, letters, a copy of the writer’s death-mask can be seen in the Literary part of the museum. They give insight into the writer’s, his family’s and friends’ lives, stories which were behind his novels, and where characters of his books lived.