Dostoyevsky was born in 1821 in Moscow. His childhood was very unhappy. His father, a doctor, was bad-tempered and violent. He believed in very strict discipline for little children. Fyodor’s mother was a sweet and gentle woman. She was the only person who could control his father. When she died in 1837, Fyodor’s father became even worse. He lost control and was angry all the time.

When he was 21，Fyodor joined the army. But he hated the army and left after only two years. He wanted to be a writer. He wrote a novel and sent it to some publishers. But the publishers wanted him to make big changes, he refused. So he borrowed money and published the novel himself in 1846. The novel was called Poor Folk. It was a great success, and suddenly Dostoyevsky was famous. Everyone wanted to meet this talented writer.

Dostoyevsky wanted new friends, so he joined a secret political group. The people in the group disagreed with some laws of the government. They believed in freedom of speech. They also wanted the serfs to be free. As a boy, Dostoyevsky had spent the summer at his family’s home in the country and he had become friends with the serfs. He believed very strongly that they should have rights. Dostoyevsky almost died for these beliefs.

In April 1849，the police arrested Dostoyevsky and other members of the political group. All of them were sentenced to death. Later the leader of Russia had changed his mind, the prisoners were now sentenced to four years of hard labor in a prison camp in Siberia. For the next four years, Dostoyevsky worked as a prisoner in Siberia. In 1857 he married a widow with a nine-year-old son. He joined the army again and began to write The House of the Dead, a novel about his horrible experience in the prison camp.

Two years later, Dostoyevsky was allowed to Saint Petersburg. He finished writing his book and it was eventually published. In 1864，Dostoyevsky’ wife and his brother died. He was terribly depressed and now he had more financial problems.

Dostoyevsky moved to western Europe during the 1860s. A publisher there offered him a lot of money to write another novel, but he had to do it quickly to get the money. So he hired an assistant, Anna Snitkina, to help him. About six months later, he married her. Anna was 25 years younger than Dostoyevsky. They had four children and a good Life together. Anna took care of all of Dostoyevsky’s business. She worked with the publishers and with the people he owed money. She helped him to have a happier and easier life.

During the last 20 years of his life, Dostoyevsky wrote his four most important novels: Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, the Possessed, and The Brothers Karamazov. All of them were great masterpieces.

Dostoyevsky was never a healthy man. He had very bad eyesight, which made it hard for him to work. He also had a serious disease called epilepsy. Another illness caused him to lose consciousness and remain very still for a long time, as if he were died. Because of this, Dostoyevsky had a terrible fear of being buried alive. Dostoyevsky died at the age of 59 after years of illness. Thirty thousand people watched his coffin pass through the streets of Saint Petersburg. It was the largest funeral procession in Russian history. When he died, he was Russia’s greatest writer. Now he is believed one of the greatest writers in the world.