F. M. Dostoevskii's dialogue with Time of Troubles narratives: Reading the Russo-Polish tensions of the 1860s through the lens of histor

This dissertation traces F. M. Dostoevskii's fascination with the seventeenth-century Russian political crisis known as the Time of Troubles. This historical Russo-Polish conflict became a popular period for excavation by various nineteenth-century historians and dramatists after the Polish Uprising of 1863, when increasingly strained relations between Poland and Russia encouraged many Russian litterateurs to explore the history of these two Slavic nations. Dostoevskii's own recognition of the connection between these two historical periods of Russo-Polish conflict is repeatedly demonstrated in his fiction, journalistic writings, and editorial work throughout the 1860s and the 1870s.;Although Dostoevskii had long been interested in the Time of Troubles, as evidenced by his early non-extant drama Борис Годунов in imitation of A. S. Pushkin's Борис Годунов (Boris Godunov), after the 1863 Uprising this historical period occupies a more central role in his literary discourse. In the 1860s, Dostoevskii began to associate narratives about this seventeenth-century conflict with the Russo-Polish tensions of his contemporary period, as is suggested by his decision to publish N. A. Chaev's nationalistic drama, Димитрий Самозванец (Dimitrii the Pretender), as part of the anti-Polish campaign of Эпоха (Epoch). Then in Бесы (The Devils ), Dostoevskii's linking of nineteenth-century Russian political conspirators to the Polish-sponsored pretendership of the seventeenth century serves to highlight the Polish connections of his contemporary revolutionaries, connections which promote the de-stabilization of Russia. This association becomes even more pronounced in his final novel, Братья Карамазовы (The Brothers Karamazov), when Dostoevskii maintains a dialogue with two nineteenth-century Time of Troubles narratives---Pushkin's Борис Годунов and M N. Zagoskin's Юрий Милославский (Iurii Miloslavskii)---in an effort to show that the Poles' historic animosity toward Russia necessarily precludes them from participating in a Russian-led panslav union. Thus, the presence of narratives about the Time of Troubles in Dostoevskii's oeuvre may be read as his attempt to comment upon a politically-explosive topic of the 1860s---the relations between Russia and the Kingdom of Poland.