The Atlantic

European Politicians Are Suddenly Quoting Dostoyevsky

The writer offered an expansive vision of Europe and “the Russian soul” that appeals to leaders seeking rapprochement.
by Rachel Donadio Jun 5, 2018 3 minutes
Source: Alexander Aksakov / Getty

LONDON—Is Europe having a Dostoyevsky moment? Or is it a Pushkin moment? French President Emmanuel Macron cited Dostoyevsky’s speech about Pushkin—in which the writer makes a dramatic appeal for Russian universalism—in a press conference with Vladimir Putin in Saint Petersburg on May 24. Then, on Tuesday, the prime minister of Italy’s new populist government, Giuseppe Conte, paraphrased—or perhaps mis-paraphrased—the same Dostoyevsky speech in his first address before the Italian Senate.

Dostoyevsky delivered his rousing speech in 1880 at the dedication of a statue of Pushkin, to fit his own vision of the world, finding its heroine, Tatiana, the apotheosis of Russian womanhood and offering an ecstatic vision of the Russian soul as a truth-bearing instrument. He concluded with a similarly expansive vision of Russia’s relationship to Europe, a vision that wowed both Slavophiles and Westernizers, two Russian schools of thought that still resonate today.

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