Mikhail Mikhailovich Dostoevsky

Born Oct. 13 (25), 1820, in Moscow; died July 10 (22), 1864, in St. Petersburg. Russian writer. F. M. Dostoevsky’s elder brother.

Most of M. M. Dostoevsky’s novellas, written in the traditions of the naturalistic school, tell about the lives of St. Petersburg bureaucrats and commoners. The novella Mr. Svetelkin (1848) seems to have been written under the influence of N. V. Gogol’s Overcoat. In collaboration with his brother he published the magazines Vremia (Time) (from 1861) and Epokha (Epoch) (from 1864), in which the ideas of pochvennichestvo (the movement back to cultural and natural roots) were developed.