How The Brothers Karamazov Was Written
The Serialization
Published monthly in The Russian Messenger (Russkiy Vestnik), January 1879 – November 1880. Out of 23 months, only 16 installments appeared — 7 months of silence. Dostoevsky used the word taktika (tactics) to describe his approach to the serialization pace — some gaps were strategic, not just health-related.
1879
Jan — Preface, Books 1 & 2 · Feb — Book 3
Mar — nothing. The novel was “the one he had least drafted as he began serialization” (Todd). Epilepsy active throughout; Anna’s diaries record frequent seizures. No specific documented cause for this gap.
Apr — Book 4 · May — Book 5, Ch 1–4 (“Rebellion”) · Jun — Book 5, Ch 5–7 (The Grand Inquisitor)
Jul — nothing. Dostoevsky traveled to Bad Ems for his fourth and final visit. Doctors diagnosed early-stage pulmonary emphysema — the condition that would kill him 18 months later. He was also struggling to compose Book 6 (Zosima’s teachings), his artistic “answer” to Ivan’s rebellion. He wrote to Pobedonostsev: “I tremble for it in the sense of whether it will be a sufficient reply.” He got the diagnosis, came back, and wrote the spiritual heart of the novel knowing his lungs were failing. (Letter to Pobedonostsev, August 24, 1879; Complete Letters, Vol. 5)
Aug — Book 6 (Death of Zosima) · Sep — Book 7 · Oct — Book 8, Ch 1–4 · Nov — Book 8, Ch 5–8
Dec — nothing. Health collapse combined with the novel expanding far beyond its original plan. The journal published Dostoevsky’s apology letter to Katkov in that month’s issue — the only time in the serialization he addressed readers directly:
“This letter is a matter of my conscience. Let any accusations regarding the unfinished novel, if there are any, fall on me alone and not touch the editorial board of ‘The Russian Herald,’ which, if any accuser could reproach them in this case, it would only be for their extraordinary delicacy towards me as a writer and their constant patient indulgence towards my weakened health…”
The novel had spilled into a second subscription year — a serious breach of convention, since readers paid by the year. Dostoevsky took the blame personally so the editors wouldn’t be accused of defrauding subscribers. (Letter to Katkov, December 1879; published in The Russian Messenger, December 1879 issue. Reproduced in Dostoevsky Bookclub, “Q&A: The History of The Brothers Karamazov,” Substack)
1880
Jan — Book 9
Feb–Mar — nothing, both months. On February 3, Dostoevsky was elected vice-president of the Slavic Benevolent Society and invited to speak at the upcoming Pushkin memorial. The novel’s fame was consuming him. He wrote in April:
“They won’t let me write… The Karamazovs are to blame again… So many people come to me daily, so many seek my acquaintance, invite me to their homes — that I am completely lost here and now I’m fleeing Petersburg!”
The novel’s own success was preventing him from finishing it. (Letter, April 23, 1880; Complete Letters, Vol. 5)
Apr — Book 10
May–Jun — nothing, both months. Dostoevsky traveled to Moscow for the Pushkin Monument unveiling. The ceremony, originally scheduled for May 26, was postponed to June 6–8 after the death of the Empress. The Pushkin Speech was delivered June 8 (see below). In August he published a special issue of The Diary of a Writer containing the speech with an extended defense — a major separate publication project overlapping with the final push on the novel.
Jul — Book 11, Ch 1–5 · Aug — Book 11, Ch 6–10 · Sep — Book 12, Ch 1–5 · Oct — Book 12, Ch 6–14 · Nov — Epilogue
Published as a complete book: November 1880. Dostoevsky died January 28, 1881 — less than four months later.
The Writing Process
- Wrote from 10 PM to 6 AM. Slept all morning. Afternoon walks to read newspapers at a coffee shop
- His wife Anna took dictation by stenography — she’d been his stenographer since The Gambler (1866)
- Composed in his head during walks, then dictated
- Anna’s memoirs: “He could have gone carefully through his works, polishing them… and the cause of this was our debts!”
- Unlike Tolstoy and Turgenev (wealthy landowners), Dostoevsky lived entirely off his writing
The Pay Gap
Dostoevsky: 150 rubles per printer’s sheet. Tolstoy: 500 rubles — same journal, same editors. Dostoevsky felt a “painful sense of inferiority to Turgenev and Tolstoy, both held in higher critical esteem (and paid more per page) than himself” (J.M. Coetzee).
The Grand Inquisitor — Dostoevsky’s Own Fear
He called Ivan’s argument “irrefutable” in a letter to his editor (May 10, 1879): “My hero takes up a theme that I think irrefutable — the senselessness of the suffering of children.”
Then immediately promised to refute it. After writing Book VI (Zosima’s response), he wrote to Konstantin Pobedonostsev: “I tremble for it in the sense of whether it will be a sufficient reply.” His concern: the answer was “not point by point, but so to speak, in an artistic picture.”
He was never sure his own answer worked.
The Censorship Anxiety
Dostoevsky feared the censors would cut the Grand Inquisitor: “I don’t think the censorship will object…” — the tentativeness says everything. His experience with The Devils (1871–72) had been scarring: the editor Katkov refused to publish the Stavrogin confession chapter (describing the seduction of a child). Despite numerous rewrites, it was never restored. That censorship permanently damaged the novel.
The editors also removed paragraph breaks from the Grand Inquisitor chapter, running it as one block of text. Dostoevsky complained in a letter (August 7, 1879).
Tolstoy’s Shadow
Anna Karenina had finished serializing in the same journal just two years earlier (1877). Same editor, Katkov. Key differences:
- Dostoevsky treated each installment as a polished unit. Tolstoy treated the serial as a draft for the book edition
- Katkov had refused to publish Part Eight of Anna Karenina over Tolstoy’s pacifist stance on the Russo-Turkish War. Tolstoy published it separately at his own expense. When Dostoevsky started in the same journal, everyone remembered the editor would censor its own star writer
Tchaikovsky’s Reaction
From Paris, after reading the first installment (January 1879), Tchaikovsky wrote to his brother:
“Rush out and get the Russian Herald for January… When I read the part where she describes the death of her last child… I burst into tears and wept as I’ve never before wept over a book.”
His nephews had measles at the time — fiction and life overlapped. He later called the rest of the novel “awfully bad.” A wild take.
The Name Alyosha
Dostoevsky’s three-year-old son Alexei (Alyosha) died from an epileptic seizure on May 16, 1878 — months before he started writing. The protagonist carries the dead child’s name. The boy inherited epilepsy from his father. The scene where Zosima consoles the grieving mother echoes words spoken to Dostoevsky by the real elder Ambrose at Optina Pustyn — Anna arranged the visit after their son’s death.
The Pushkin Speech (June 8, 1880)
Moscow unveiled a bronze statue of Pushkin — dead 43 years, funded by public subscription, delayed twice (damaged pedestal, then the Empress died). The entire Russian intellectual elite gathered at the Noble Assembly Hall. The event was organized by the Society of Lovers of Russian Literature.
Turgenev spoke the night before (June 7) — expected to be the star. Gave a scholarly, respectful talk. It fell flat. The audience wanted fire.
Dostoevsky’s argument: Used Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin as a vehicle. Onegin = the Westernized Russian intellectual, uprooted, wandering, spiritually empty. Tatyana = the Russian soul, rooted in the countryside, instinctively knowing the truth. His climax: “Humble yourself, proud man, and above all, break your pride. Truth is not outside of you, but in yourself; find yourself in yourself, subdue yourself, master yourself, and you will see the truth.” Claimed Russia’s destiny was “pan-human unity, brotherly love” — the Russian soul could reconcile all of Europe.
The audience reaction:
Dostoevsky wrote to Anna that night: “When I finished, there was — I won’t call it a roar — it was a howl of elation.”
- People who had never met wept and threw their arms around each other, promising to become better
- A young man fainted from the excitement
- The crowd spontaneously chanted “Prophet! Prophet!” — the same word Dostoevsky had used to describe Pushkin. They came to crown Pushkin and crowned him
- A group of young women rushed the stage and placed a laurel wreath on his head
- Dostoevsky himself nearly collapsed
Ivan Aksakov (Slavophile editor) declared from the podium that Dostoevsky’s speech “constitutes an event” — if Westernizers and Slavophiles accepted its conclusions, they’d have nothing to argue about.
Turgenev’s private reaction (June 11): “a very clever, brilliant, and cunningly skillful speech, while full of passion, its foundation was entirely false.” The word “cunningly” reveals how rattled he was.
The backlash: Euphoria lasted ~48 hours. Professor Gradovsky argued Dostoevsky championed personal morality but offered no social ideals. The concept of “pan-human” unity was ridiculed by critics across the spectrum. Dostoevsky published the speech with a lengthy defense in a special issue of The Diary of a Writer (August 1880).
Connection to Karamazov: No chapters appeared in May or June 1880 — the exact months of the festival. The speech’s themes (spiritual humility, Russian mission, rationalism vs. faith, truth within) are the novel’s philosophical program delivered as oratory. Twin expressions of the same final vision.
Full text: The Dream of a Queer Fellow and the Pushkin Speech — Internet Archive
The Funeral (January 31, 1881)
Dostoevsky died January 28, 1881. His funeral procession: 30,000 people, nearly a mile long, fifteen choirs. A contemporary critic: “there had never before been such a funeral in Russia.”
Sources
- William Mills Todd III, “The Brothers Karamazov and the Poetics of Serialization” — Dostoevsky Studies
- William Mills Todd III, “Tolstoy and Dostoevsky: The Professionalization of Literature” — Dostoevsky Studies, Vol. XV (2011)
- Julian W. Connolly, Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov — Bloomsbury, 2013
- Robert L. Belknap, The Genesis of The Brothers Karamazov — Northwestern UP, 1990
- Karl Ove Knausgaard, “The Light of The Brothers Karamazov” — The New Yorker, October 2025
- J.M. Coetzee, “The Artist at High Tide” — NY Review of Books, March 1995
- The Tchaikovsky Papers: Unlocking the Family Archive
- Dostoevsky, Complete Letters, Vol. 5
- Marcus C. Levitt, Russian Literary Politics and the Pushkin Celebration of 1880 — Cornell UP
- Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: The Mantle of the Prophet, 1871–1881 — Princeton UP
- Cambridge UP, Russia in the Age of Alexander II, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky — Ch. 32