Located in a small park adjacent to Tallinn's Old Town, this bust of Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky epicts him as a man perhaps in his fifties, with a long beard, sunken cheeks and a serious appearance. The work appears to be bronze and a little larger than life-sized. It is set on a marble pedestal which is about 7 feet tall. The sculptor is Valeri Jevdokimov and is dated as having been unveiled 5/31/2002.
The pedestal has an enggraving in Russian and Estonian. The Estonian portion reads:
"MOSKVA LINNAVALITSUSE
KINGITUS
TALLINNA LINNALE
AUSAMMAS ON PUSTITATUD
SLAAVI KULTUURIUHINGU INITSIATIIVIL
AUSAMBA POSTAMENT JA ALUS
ON RAJATUD EESTI VABARIIGI
VENE FODERATSIOONI
JT RIIKIDI KODANIKE ANNETUSTEGA"
which Google translates as:
"MOSCOW CITY
GIFT
The city of Tallinn
Monument was erected
SLAVIC KULTUURIUHINGU of Initiatives
Statue pedestal AND GROUNDS
Is founded REPUBLIC OF ESTONIA
the Russian Federation
People from donations and other countries"
Wikipedia (
visit link) informs us:
"Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky...was a Russian writer of novels, short stories and essays. Dostoyevsky's literary works explore human psychology in the troubled political, social and spiritual context of 19th-century Russia. Although Dostoyevsky began writing books in the mid-1850s, his most remembered work is from his last years, including Crime and Punishment, The Idiot and The Brothers Karamazov. He wrote eleven novels, three novellas, seventeen short novels and three essays, and is often acknowledged by critics as one of the greatest and most prominent psychologists in world literature.
Dostoyevsky was born and raised on the grounds of the Mariinsky hospital in Moscow, Russia. At an early age he was introduced to English, French, German and Russian literature, as well as to fairy tales and legends. His mother's sudden death devastated him and, around the same time, he left private school for a military academy. After his graduation he worked as an engineer and briefly enjoyed a liberal lifestyle. He soon began translating books to earn extra money. Around the mid-1840s he wrote his first novel, Poor Folk, through which he entered into the literary mainstream. In 1849 he was arrested for his involvement with the Petrashevsky Circle, a progressive discussion group. He and other members were condemned to death for their participation in this group, but the penalty proved to be a mock execution at the last moment, and Dostoyevsky's sentence was commuted to four years of imprisonment in Siberia. After his release, he was forced to serve as a soldier but was discharged from the military due to ill health and allowed to continue with his writing.
In the following years Dostoyevsky worked as a journalist. He published and edited several magazines of his own and later a serial, A Writer's Diary. Beginning with his travels to Europe he struggled with money issues because of his gambling addiction, resulting in the humiliation of begging for money. He suffered from epilepsy throughout his adult life. But through the sheer energy and volume of his work he eventually became one of the most widely read and renowned writers in Russia. His books have been translated into more than 170 languages and have sold around 15 million copies. Dostoyevsky left a lasting legacy that has influenced many other writers, ranging from James Joyce to Ernest Hemingway."