Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment answers the nihilist; CCWV.LIFE

In 1866 Fyodor Dostoevsky, who had himself passed through the radical circles and a Siberian sentence, publishes Crime and Punishment. Its hero Raskolnikov acts out the nihilist logic that some men stand beyond good and evil, and the novel follows that logic to confession. The record stands as the movement's greatest literary examination, written from inside its questions by its sharpest critic.

Tagged: Nihilism

The Event

Date: 1866 (exact)
Era: The Word and the Nineteenth Century; Standard periodization of the nihilist movement and idea
Location: St Petersburg; today St Petersburg, Russia
Traditions: Nihilism
Streams: Nihilism
Key figures: Fyodor Dostoevsky
Key texts: Crime and Punishment

How the Tradition Tells It

The record is an examination written against the movement from inside its own questions; it stands in the movement's history because the history is partly the story of its critics.

Connections

Illustration for Chernyshevsky's What Is to Be Done?

History Event Chernyshevsky's What Is to Be Done? 1863 written against the doctrines Chernyshevsky's novel spread

Primary Sources

Dostoevsky, Fyodor. Crime and Punishment. The Russian Messenger, 1866.

Secondary Sources

Crosby, Donald A. The Specter of the Absurd: Sources and Criticisms of Modern Nihilism. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1988.
Gillespie, Michael Allen. Nihilism Before Nietzsche. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Nishitani, Keiji. Religion and Nothingness. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982.
Reginster, Bernard. The Affirmation of Life: Nietzsche on Overcoming Nihilism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.

Provenance: HIST-1350; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-30.