F. M. Dostoevsky Memorial Apartment Museum

In a building on the corner of Kuznechny Lane and Dostoevsky Street in St Petersburg operates the Literary-Memorial Museum of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky — one of six museums dedicated to the writer in Russia, and the principal one devoted to the St Petersburg period of his life. It was here that the author spent his final years and wrote his last novel. The exhibition combines a recreated apartment with a section devoted to the creative path of the author of Crime and Punishment and The Brothers Karamazov.

The apartment building on this site was built in the first half of the 19th century to a design by the architect Stepan Ponomaryov; in 1882 it was partly rebuilt by the architect Vasily von Witte. The writer rented an apartment here twice: briefly in 1846, from the merchants Kuchin, and from the autumn of 1878 until his death in early 1881, when the house belonged to the merchant's wife Rozalia-Anna Klinkstrom. The writer's widow, Anna Grigoryevna, had already spoken of installing a memorial plaque before the revolution; the plaque was finally put up in 1956, and work on the museum itself began in 1968, during a major overhaul of the building.

The concept for the exhibition was developed by the artist Georgy Piontek. The core of the collection came from the holdings of the writer's grandson, Andrei Fyodorovich, with further items donated by his great-niece, Maria Savostyanova. Since many personal belongings were already held by the museum in Moscow, the apartment was recreated from architectural drawings and the recollections of contemporaries. It has seven rooms: the study, the drawing room, the dining room, the wife's room, the nursery, the washroom and the entrance hall. The study where the writer died was reconstructed from a photograph taken by Voldemar Taube. On a small table stands the clock belonging to Dostoevsky's brother Andrei, stopped at the hour of the writer's death; on the writing desk lie a pen, a medicine box, a purse, pages of A Writer's Diary, and an open volume of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin.

It was here that Dostoevsky finished The Brothers Karamazov and prepared his speech on Pushkin for the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature. The museum opened in the autumn of 1971, to mark the anniversary of the writer's birth; its first director was Boris Fedorenko. The literary section of the exhibition has since been updated twice: the current version, titled “F. M. Dostoevsky. Life and Work: Pro et Contra”, has been on display since the winter of 2009. The bookcase was reconstructed from lists kept by the writer's wife, and in the corner of the study the icon of the Mother of God “Joy of All Who Sorrow” has been preserved.

Today the museum carries out both scholarly and educational work: it offers tours of the apartment and the literary exhibition, walking tours of Dostoevsky-related sites around the city, lectures, children's programmes and audio guides. Each year it hosts the conference “Dostoevsky and World Culture”, runs temporary exhibitions and volunteer projects, and maintains a small in-house theatre. A new building is planned next door to expand the exhibition space.

The house on Kuznechny Lane remains one of the most intimate memorial sites associated with Dostoevsky's name: it preserves the atmosphere of the last years of his life and the authentic topography of the neighbourhood that formed the backdrop to his novels. For the city, the museum serves not only as a memorial to the writer but also as a place where new generations of readers continue to study his legacy.