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Fyodor DostoevskyNotes from Underground
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1864A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Historical Context: Slavophiles Versus Westernizers
The mid-19th century in Russia was a time of change in all areas of society. Cultural and literary traditions, political organization, education and women’s rights, and philosophical ideals were up for debate. As a socially engaged writer, Dostoevsky responds to many of these debates in his work.
One of the main areas of debate at this time was Russia’s relationship with Europe. The intellectuals of Dostoevsky’s day fell into two camps: the Slavophiles and the Westernizers. The Slavophiles believed Russia had a completely different culture and set of values than Europe and should not cling to European culture, ideals, or literary models. The Westernizers were in favor of integrating European ideas, particularly rationalism, modernization, and liberal politics, into Russian society. Slavophiles believed in a religion-centered society based on the premodern values of Russian peasants and Orthodox Christianity, while Westernizers preferred a society based on the Enlightenment reforms instituted by Peter the Great (1682-1725) and the “enlightened despot” Catherine the Great (1762-96). The tsar of Dostoevsky’s day was Alexander II, who ruled from 1855 until 1881. He is known as the “Great Reformer” for freeing the serfs—Russia’s enslaved peasant class—in 1861.
Dostoevsky was a Slavophile when he wrote Notes from Underground, but he was previously a Westernizer. In 1847, he joined the Petrashevsky Circle, a group of liberal intellectuals who read banned literature and espoused European utopianism. In 1849, the group’s members were arrested and sentenced to death, but the tsar commuted their sentences to exile in Siberia at the last moment. Dostoevsky worked in a Siberian labor camp until 1854. During his time in the camp, he had a spiritual awakening. He became an ardent nationalist and founded the movement pochvennichestvo, meaning “rooted in the soil,” with other writers and intellectuals. Dostoevsky’s Slavophile ideology is best represented in the novels Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, and The Idiot. While the Underground Man is not a Slavophile per se, he is a harsh critic of the Westernizers, particularly in his opposition to rational egoism, utopias, and European transcendentalism. His readers are assumed to be intellectuals who hold such views, which is why the tone is mocking and satirical.
Literary Context: What Is to Be Done? and Fathers and Sons
Notes from Underground is a polemic that responds explicitly to Nikolai Chernyshevsky’s 1863 novel What Is to be Done? and, by extension, to Ivan Turgenev’s famous 1862 novel Fathers and Sons. Chernyshevsky was a leader of the radical socialist movement in Russia, which was championed by many young intellectuals. Their ideas were based on nihilism, a pessimistic view that is deeply skeptical of established moral values, institutions, and standards and seeks to destroy them. The character Bazarov in Fathers and Sons represents this perspective. Bazarov is a young doctor who believes in tearing down the old institutions of Russian society that glorified the tsar, Orthodox Christianity, and serfdom. Chernyshevsky expanded on Turgenev’s ideas, and Rakhmetov, a character in What Is to Be Done?, became the prototype for the young revolutionary intellectuals who espoused social reform and fought the romanticism of the older generation.
The Crystal Palace, which is a metaphor for rational utopianism in What Is to Be Done?, is based on the building that housed the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London. At the time, it was an architectural marvel: The building was made of glass panels in iron frames arranged in long, symmetrical rows with a high dome in the center, giving it the appearance of a palace made of windows and earning it the nickname the Crystal Palace. After the exhibition, the building was taken down and reassembled in Sydenham in the London suburbs. Vera Pavlovna, the protagonist of What Is to Be Done?, sees this building in her fourth dream, and it becomes a symbol for scientific utopianism, in which men and women have equal rights, and everyone acts rationally for society’s greater good.
Dostoevsky opposed explaining human behavior rationally. As a pioneer of psychological realism, he explored the often contradictory, irrational mindsets of characters thrust into extreme circumstances. He believed the Crystal Palace and the society it suggests were contrary to human nature: A palace of windows creates uniformity, a lack of privacy, and the loss of individuality. The underground, on the other hand, is a dark, individual space where people can indulge in their vices in secret. Notes from Underground is meant not to present an alternative model of society to those found in Chernyshevsky’s and Turgenev’s novels but to make readers question the popular ideas of the day.
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