Dostoevsky and Dystopia

In this course we look at Dostoevsky’s ideas about dystopianism and existentialism in several short works and how these ideas blossomed in further works, both Russian and non-Russian. Some of the most important dystopian texts in the 20th century can be traced back to Dostoevsky, although frequently this genealogy is not known or understood. Written as a response to his contemporary Chernyshevsky’s utopian novel What is to Be Done (Lenin’s favorite novel), Dostoevsky’s 1864 Notes from Underground focuses on the failings of logic and the painful excesses of consciousness. Many later texts grow out of or relate to Notes from Underground, such as writings by Nietzsche, Zamyatin’s We, Olesha’s Envy, Orwell’s 1984, and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man. What do these texts have in common, and how is it that Dostoevsky’s work, including his prison memoir Notes from the House of the Dead, becomes such an important “ancestor” for writers such as Ellison?