9 June 1918
Passed away Anna Dostoevskaya — Dostoevsky's second wife, about whom Tolstoy said: "Many Russian writers would feel better if they had such wives."
I loved Fyodor Mikhailovich infinitely, but it was not physical love, not a passion that could exist in people of equal age <> It was admiration for a man so talented<> It was a soul-stirring pity for a man who had suffered so much, who had never seen joy
Anya Snitkina Born in 1846 to a minor official, she grew up intelligent and loved to read. She graduated from high school with honors. She trained as a stenographer. One day, she was recommended to Dostoevsky.
She was 20, the writer was 45. He always wrote by hand. But in the autumn of 1866, he was in debt, disarrayed, and had only a month to submit his novel "The Gambler" to the publisher—otherwise, he would lose the rights to his already published works for nine years.
The paired collaboration exceeded all expectations—Anna delivered a clean copy of the novel the day before the deadline.
How much more artistically would my husband's works have benefited if he had not taken on these debts and could have written novels at his leisure, reviewing and polishing them before sending them to print?
Dostoevsky fell in love. The couple married and left for Europe. Anna began keeping a diary.
I called him Fedichka, but he insisted that he was not Fedichka, but the highly respected Fyodor Mikhailovich, and I told him that here in Dresden no one “respects” him.
She accepted her husband's passion for gambling as inevitable. Winning and losing inspired him to be creative. Dostoevsky adored the birth of his children. In 1871, he gave up roulette.
Anna straightened out her husband's affairs, freeing him from debt, and publishing his books herself. The writer dedicated "The Brothers Karamazov" to her.
She became a widow at 35. She never remarried: "Who else could you marry after Dostoevsky, except Leo Tolstoy?"The manuscripts and personal belongings of her husband that she collected became the basis for the "Dostoevsky Memorial Museum" in Moscow.
She died of malaria in Yalta at the age of 71. Half a century later, her ashes were reburied in St. Petersburg, next to her husband.