Dostoevsky: a Russian panacea for Europe

According to many European intellectuals the Great War affirmed the bankruptcy of European civilization. Disappointed with western rationalism and materialism, many of them found solace in the East. In the early 1920s Russian culture was considered a source for the regeneration of western culture. Even among a non-communist audience, the Russian Revolution of 1917 had generated broad interest in Russian art, literature and ‘pure’ orthodox Christianity. In particular, Russia’s most famous writer Fyodor Dostoevsky was embraced as a harbinger for renewal. Many West European left- and right-wing intellectuals worshipped Dostoevsky as a prophet and a creator of new values. Consequently, Dostoevsky cults arose in Great-Britain, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands. This chapter elaborates on the Dutch Dostoevsky cult and its main protagonists (the religious
socialists J. Jac. Thomson and Jan de Gruyter, and the literator Dirk Coster) and places the Dutch Dostoevsky mania in a transnational, European context.