In 2025, I chose not to make any New Year’s resolutions or set any goals, except one. I had been gifted a beautiful vintage 12-volume collection of Dostoevsky’s complete works in Russian, and committed to reading one volume each month throughout the year. By the end of 2025, I had read everything he wrote. It became one of the achievements I am most proud of.
Looking back, I realized I didn’t just read Dostoevsky, I learned from him. This is what he taught me.
Lesson on evolution
In the first two-three volumes, the early works, I noticed that Dostoevsky wrote with a certain hesitation and modesty. You could feel the insecurity, the experimentation, the attempt to find a voice. Compare those early works to his later masterpieces, and it’s difficult to believe they came from the same person.
He was not talented by nature. He was not born great. He did not have a clear identity. He became all of those gradually and much later, only by experience.
We, however, expect ourselves to produce brilliance from day one. When something we create doesn’t take off, we suffer and we consider giving up. Sometimes we do give up even before we give ourselves a chance. Dostoevsky taught me to allow myself to earn my voice through time and not expect too much too early, or at all really.
Lesson on imperfection
Dostoevsky wrote for a living. He did not have other sources of income. This made him work under pressure - contracts with publishers, deadlines, urgency. His novels were often published in journals by chapters. While the first chapters were already in print, he was still racing to write the next ones. There was no time to endlessly revise or polish. His manuscripts often contained irregular punctuation, abrupt sentence structures, and repetitions. He could change the direction mid-story. Timelines did not fully align. Plot threads that were introduced but not fully resolved.
His work was not perfect or sterile. It was raw and this is what made it beautifully authentic. We, in contrast, chase perfection. We rewrite, refine, overthink until exhaustion. Dostoevsky taught me to push the “publish” button before I feel ready and that trust that real will resonate more than flawless.
Lesson on crisis as opportunity
At the height of his early success, Dostoevsky was arrested and sentenced to death. He stood before the firing squad. The final rituals were completed: last meal, last rites, the blindfold, the lineup… and then, moments before execution his sentence was replaced with prison and exile.
This was a deeply transformational experience. In a letter to his brother Mikhail he wrote:
“Brother! I have not despaired and have not lost heart. Life is life everywhere - life is within us, not in what is external. Beside me there will be people, and to be a human among people and remain one forever, in whatever misfortunes, not to lose heart and not to fall, that is what life is, that is its task. I have understood this. This idea has entered into my flesh and blood.
Life is a gift, life is happiness, every minute could have been an eternity of happiness. If youth only knew! (...) Now, as my life changes, I am reborn in a new form. Brother! I swear to you that I will not lose hope and will keep my spirit and my heart pure. I will be reborn for the better. That is all my hope, all my consolation.”
In his works you can see a before and after. The “real” Dostoevsky has only started after his return to St. Petersburg, 10 years after the mock execution. Perhaps he only became who he is today because of that experience.
We struggle to accept hardship. We see crisis as interruption, as derailing from our path. Dostoevsky taught me that crisis often is something that puts us on our path.
Lesson on courage
Dostoevsky did not aim for clean, coherent characters. His protagonists are divided, contradictory, unstable, tormented by ambivalent feelings. They love and hate, believe and doubt, aspire and self-destruct, often within the same moment. He did not resolve these tensions. Now critics believe his characters were intentionally contradictory, reflecting real human complexity, however his contemporaries were very critical. They argued his characters were psychologically inconsistent, exaggerated and lacking realistic coherence. Nonetheless, Dostoevsky did not try to fit the norms and standards of his times.
We, however, tend to smooth ourselves out and shape what we create to fit expectations because deep down we fear criticism and crave acceptance. Dostoevsky taught me to have the courage to strive towards staying truthful rather than fitting the norms.
Lesson on complexity
Dostoevsky did not simplify his ideas to make them easier to consume. Reading him requires effort and feels like hard work. His texts are dense, intellectually demanding and philosophically layered. If anything, his works become more complex over time.
Dostoevsky did not only create literary masterpieces but was also engaged with major 19th-century debates on faith vs atheism, free will vs determinism, morality vs freedom. It looked like he didn’t seem to write for a broad, mass-market audience or aim for easy accessibility.
We often do the opposite. We tend to simplify our ideas, wanting them to make sense easily, quickly and to as many people as possible. This deprives them of depth and complexity and makes them indistinguishable from everyone else’s thinking. Everything starts to sound the same.
Dostoevsky taught me not to hesitate in writing for a narrower audience, to be bolder in thinking, to stay with complexity, and trust the reader’s ability to process complex texts that are not ideally readable. And also not to be afraid to segment my audience.
And lastly…
I also realized that Dostoevsky is not my favorite Russian writer but that is okay. I don’t have to admire someone unconditionally to learn from them. So the last lesson is this: we don’t have to be adored to make an impact. Sometimes, the most important lessons come not from those we love most, but from those who make us think.