Dostoyevsky, Fyodor

Russian author, born in Moscow. Fyodor Dostoyevsky lived his life against a dark background of both political and personal problems. He was one of seven siblings growing up in a strongly religious environment, something that would form a point of departure for depictions of religious thoughts throughout his literary production. For instance, his mother taught Fyodor and his siblings to read and write using the Bible. His father was a landowner and physician. The family lived in a small department in one of Moscow's most dilapidated and shabby areas, home to a large number of criminals and outcasts. After his mother died from tuberculosis, when Fyodor was 16 years old, his tyrannical, alcoholic and pathologically stingy father sent Fyodor and his brother Mikhail to a free military school in Saint Petersburg for an education that Dostoyevsky would never complete. A few years later, his father died, probably murdered by his own terrorized serfs.