A.M. GORKY INSTITUTE OF WORLD LITERATURE
Issues
Georgy Chulkov and the Commission for the Study of Dostoevsky in the GAKhN
- DOI:
- EDN:
- УДК / UDK: 821.161.1.0
- Publication Type: Research Article and Publication of Archival Documents
- Received: 01.08.2025
- Approved after reviewing: 22.09.2025
- Date of publication: 25.12.2025
- Issue:
no. 4 (38), 2025
- Abstract:
The article considers a little-known stage in the history of Fyodor Dostoevsky studies, particularly the activities of the special Commission at the State Academy of Art Sciences (GAKhN) under the leadership of Georgy Chulkov from 1924 to 1930. Chulkov was a symbolist writer in the 1900s and 1910s, and a philologist and literary critic in the 1920s, who combined two epochs of mastering Dostoevsky’s legacy: religious-philosophical, which clarified the writer’s worldview, and scientific-philological, which dealt with his poetics, textual criticism, and editorship. The article shows that Chulkov, as an “artist in science” (with a deep understanding of creative psychology, artistry, and elegance of style), created another manner of Dostoevsky studies within the framework of the GAKhN compared to both the official Marxist-sociological approach and the authoritative formal school in the 1920s, attracting numerous followers to it. Another methodological basis of Dostoevsky studies was the organic poetics common to the entire GAKhN as a desire for a holistic analysis of the work born of the author’s soul. After the liquidation of the GAKhN in 1930–1931, the ideal of an “artist in science” and organic poetics had disappeared from Soviet Dostoevsky studies for decades. The article relies on archival documents. The appendix contains for the first time published Chulkov’s speech “Dostoevsky and Pushkin” (1924).
- Keywords: G.I. Chulkov, F.M. Dostoevsky, Dostoevsky studies, 1920s, GAKhN, “organic poetics,” “artist in science,” archival materials, speech “Dostoevsky and Pushkin.”
- For citation:
Bogdanova Olga A. “Georgy Chulkov and the Commission for the Study of Dostoevsky in the GAKhN.” Literaturnyi fakt, no. 4 (38), 2025, pp. 471–496. (In Russ.) https://doi.org/10.22455/2541-8297-2025-38-471-496
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