Fyodor Stellovsky, Publisher of Fyodor Dostoevsky: Character and Destiny

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the publisher Fyodor Stellovsky, whom his contemporaries called a speculator who profited from people of art. Starting as a music publisher and music seller, Stellovsky took up the “Complete Works of Russian Authors” (L.N. Tolstoy, F.M. Dostoevsky, A.F. Pisemsky, V.V. Krestovsky, etc.). He conducted several litigations (with the sister of the composer M.I. Glinka L.I. Shestakova, with A.S. Dargomyzhsky, with publishers A.S. Hieroglyphov, M.O. Wolf, N.M. Bernard, and finally with the writer F.M. Dostoevsky). Dostoevsky’s correspondence with Stellovsky has not been preserved: there is information about one letter from Dostoevsky to his publisher. The history of the relationship between Dostoevsky and Stellovsky is considered on the basis of the writer’s correspondence with others in the period from 1865 to 1875 (the year of the publisher’s death). Since 1869, Dostoevsky was in the process of pre-trial and later trial with Stellovsky, who in 1870 published Crime and Punishment as the 4th volume of the writer’s collected works, but did not want to pay the money owed to him. Dostoevsky began a litigation that dragged on for almost five years, because of the obstacles that the bailiffs and guardians of the publisher put up. Stellovsky himself had gone bankrupt in the book trade, went crazy and could no longer answer the claim. Using the example of the trials against Stellovsky, the article shows that the understanding of copyright in the Russian Empire differed from the modern one and, due to its lack of elaboration, was interpreted differently in judicial practice, which led to delays and contributed to the activities of scammers such as Stellovsky.

Keywords

• dostoevsky
• stellovsky
• epistolary legacy
• publisher
• crime and punishment
• the gambler
• litigation
• copyright