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Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Quiz
Contributed by: Guy
  • 1. In which city was Fyodor Dostoyevsky born?
A) Minsk
B) Kiev
C) St. Petersburg
D) Moscow
  • 2. Which novel is considered one of Dostoyevsky's masterpieces?
A) Crime and Punishment
B) Pride and Prejudice
C) War and Peace
D) Anna Karenina
  • 3. Which literary movement is Dostoyevsky often associated with?
A) Russian Realism
B) Romanticism
C) Naturalism
D) Symbolism
  • 4. What philosophical ideology did Dostoyevsky criticize in his novel 'Demons'?
A) Hedonism
B) Utilitarianism
C) Nihilism
D) Existentialism
  • 5. Which publication marks the beginning of Dostoyevsky's career as a writer?
A) Madame Bovary
B) War and Peace
C) Crime and Punishment
D) Poor Folk
  • 6. In what year did Dostoyevsky pass away?
A) 1870
B) 1895
C) 1881
D) 1903
  • 7. Which character from Dostoyevsky's novels commits a murder to test his theory of extraordinary individuals?
A) Stavrogin
B) Raskolnikov
C) Alyosha Karamazov
D) Rodion Romanovich
  • 8. What was the title of Dostoyevsky's last novel?
A) The Brothers Karamazov
B) Crime and Punishment
C) Anna Karenina
D) The Idiot
  • 9. In which year was Fyodor Dostoevsky born?
A) 1821
B) 1801
C) 1831
D) 1841
  • 10. What is the name of the Russian military institute that Dostoevsky attended after leaving school?
A) Saint Petersburg Naval Academy
B) Nikolayev Military Engineering Institute
C) Imperial Moscow University
D) Russian State Pedagogical University
  • 11. Which of Dostoevsky's novels is considered one of the first works of existentialist literature?
A) Notes from Underground
B) Demons
C) The Idiot
D) Crime and Punishment
  • 12. What was Dostoevsky's sentence for his involvement with the Petrashevsky Circle?
A) Death, commuted to four years in a Siberian hard labour camp
B) Life imprisonment without parole
C) Exile to Siberia without labor
D) Execution
  • 13. Which novel was inspired by Dostoevsky's time in the Siberian hard labour camp?
A) Demons
B) The Idiot
C) The House of the Dead
D) Crime and Punishment
  • 14. Which philosopher referred to Dostoevsky as 'the only psychologist from whom I had something to learn'?
A) Albert Camus
B) Friedrich Nietzsche
C) Sigmund Freud
D) Jean-Paul Sartre
  • 15. In which year was Dostoevsky's novel 'The Brothers Karamazov' published?
A) 1872
B) 1866
C) 1880
D) 1875
  • 16. What addiction did Dostoevsky develop that led to financial hardship?
A) Alcoholism
B) Drug abuse
C) Gambling
D) Smoking
  • 17. How many novels did Fyodor Dostoevsky write?
A) Thirteen
B) Eighteen
C) Ten
D) Fifteen
  • 18. Which of the following authors was influenced by Dostoevsky's work?
A) Ivan Turgenev
B) Anton Chekhov
C) Leo Tolstoy
D) Mikhail Bulgakov
  • 19. What was the original religion of Dostoevsky's paternal ancestor Aslan Chelebi-Murza before converting to Christianity?
A) Judaism
B) Orthodox Christianity
C) Buddhism
D) Islam
  • 20. In which year did Dostoevsky's ancestor Danilo Irtishch receive lands in the Pinsk region?
A) 1809
B) 1828
C) 1389
D) 1509
  • 21. What was the profession of Dostoevsky's immediate ancestors on his mother's side?
A) Priests
B) Military doctors
C) Merchants
D) Nobles
  • 22. Which institution did Mikhail Dostoevsky enroll in 1809?
A) Moscow's Imperial Medical-Surgical Academy
B) Moscow University
C) Imperial Russian Army Academy
D) St. Petersburg Conservatory
  • 23. In what year was Mikhail Dostoevsky appointed a senior physician?
A) 1828
B) 1819
C) 1818
D) 1809
  • 24. How far was the family's summer estate, Darovoye, from Moscow?
A) 50 km (30 miles)
B) About 150 km (100 miles)
C) 500 km (310 miles)
D) 300 km (190 miles)
  • 25. Who among Dostoevsky's siblings wrote memoirs about the family history?
A) Vera
B) Andrei
C) Nikolai
D) Varvara
  • 26. What was a notable struggle in Nikolai Dostoevsky's life?
A) He struggled with alcoholism.
B) He dealt with health problems.
C) He faced legal issues.
D) He had financial difficulties.
  • 27. Which sibling of Dostoevsky married a doctor?
A) Lyubov
B) Aleksandra
C) Yelizaveta
D) Vera
  • 28. Who introduced Dostoevsky to literature at an early age?
A) A French tutor
B) His father Mikhail
C) His mother Maria
D) His nanny, Alena Frolovna
  • 29. Which Russian writer influenced Dostoevsky significantly?
A) Gavrila Derzhavin
B) Mikhail Lermontov
C) Alexander Pushkin
D) Nikolai Gogol
  • 30. Which boarding school did Dostoevsky attend after his father sent him to a French school?
A) Tula Governorate School
B) Moscow State University
C) St. Petersburg Academy
D) Chermak boarding school
  • 31. Which work reflects Dostoevsky's experience at the Moscow school?
A) Notes from Underground
B) Crime and Punishment
C) The Brothers Karamazov
D) The Adolescent
  • 32. What was Dostoevsky's mother's cause of death?
A) tuberculosis
B) murder
C) heart attack
D) apoplectic stroke
  • 33. What nickname did Dostoevsky earn due to his reclusiveness and interest in religion?
A) Monk Photius
B) The Recluse
C) Brother of the Church
D) Saint Fyodor
  • 34. What was the official cause of Dostoevsky's father's death?
A) apoplectic stroke
B) murder
C) heart attack
D) tuberculosis
  • 35. Who accused the serfs of murdering Dostoevsky's father?
A) Dr. Rizenkampf
B) Mikhail Dostoevsky
C) Adolph Totleben
D) Pavel Khotiaintsev
  • 36. What rank did Dostoevsky obtain after passing his exams?
A) lieutenant engineer
B) captain
C) engineer cadet
D) general
  • 37. Who characterized Dostoevsky as good-natured but sometimes abusively moody?
A) Konstantin Trutovsky
B) Adolph Totleben
C) Mikhail Dostoevsky
D) Dr. Rizenkampf
  • 38. Which novel did Dostoevsky translate that was published in 1843?
A) Eugénie Grandet by Honoré de Balzac
B) Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
C) The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
D) Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
  • 39. Who introduced Dostoevsky's first novel to Vissarion Belinsky?
A) Dmitry Grigorovich
B) Mikhail Petrashevsky
C) Nikolay Nekrasov
D) Aleksey Pleshcheyev
  • 40. Which novel did Dostoevsky plan since 1846 but never complete?
A) The Double
B) Poor Folk
C) Netochka Nezvanova
D) Notes of the Fatherland
  • 41. In which work did the psychological theme of dreaming first appear?
A) "The Brothers Karamazov"
B) "Notes from Underground"
C) "White Nights"
D) "Crime and Punishment"
  • 42. Who said that reading Dostoevsky is like a 'glimpse into the havoc'?
A) Albert Einstein
B) Knut Hamsun
C) Sigmund Freud
D) Hermann Hesse
  • 43. What was notable about one of Dostoevsky's eyes?
A) It had a green tint from illness
B) It was smaller than the other eye
C) The pupil was so big that you could not see its color
D) It was always closed due to an injury
  • 44. In which magazine was A Writer's Diary published beginning on 1 January 1873?
A) The Citizen
B) Russian Messenger
C) A Writer's Diary
D) Notes of the Fatherland
  • 45. In what year was an olive-green postage stamp dedicated to Dostoevsky released in the Soviet Union?
A) 1997
B) 1971
C) 1981
D) 1956
  • 46. Who commuted the death sentence of Dostoevsky and his fellow prisoners?
A) Tsar Nicholas I
B) Prince Pavel Gagarin
C) Count Alexey Fyodorovich Orlov
D) Ivan Nabokov
  • 47. Which literary movement does Dostoevsky influence, known for its focus on individual existence and freedom?
A) Realism
B) Existentialism
C) Naturalism
D) Romanticism
  • 48. What did Dostoevsky claim he would choose over truth, according to a letter from January 1854?
A) Russian literature
B) Orthodox Christianity
C) Christ
D) The New Testament
  • 49. What was Anna's sister's name who died on 1 May 1872?
A) Terty Filipov
B) Anna Dostoevsky
C) Maria Svatkovskaya
D) Vsevolod Solovyov
  • 50. Which city did Dostoevsky and his wife visit where he sought inspiration for writing?
A) Frankfurt
B) Berlin
C) Dresden, at the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister
D) Karlsruhe
  • 51. What illness was Dostoevsky diagnosed with in Bad Ems?
A) Tuberculosis
B) Malaria
C) Typhus
D) Acute catarrh
  • 52. Which movement did Dostoevsky discover in the 1860s that aimed to establish an open state modeled on Peter the Great's Russia?
A) Pochvennichestvo
B) Westernization
C) Nihilism
D) Slavophilism
  • 53. What parable did Dostoevsky request to be read to his children before he died?
A) The Prodigal Son
B) The Sower
C) The Good Samaritan
D) The Lost Sheep
  • 54. Which ideology did Dostoevsky support that was influenced by the Ottoman occupations of Eastern Europe?
A) Catholicism
B) Pro-Western
C) Pan-Slavic
D) Atheistic socialism
  • 55. What was the name of Dostoevsky's son born on 16 July?
A) Arkady
B) Vladimir
C) Fyodor
D) Alexey
  • 56. Where did Dostoevsky make a final visit to a gambling hall?
A) Berlin
B) Wiesbaden
C) Florence
D) Geneva
  • 57. What was the name of the publishing company established by Dostoevsky?
A) Notes of the Fatherland
B) Dostoevsky Publishing Company
C) Citizen Press
D) Russian Messenger Publishing
  • 58. Where did Dostoevsky and Isaeva first get married?
A) Barnaul
B) Kuznetsk
C) Saint Petersburg
D) Semipalatinsk
  • 59. Who was the admirer of Dostoevsky's books that he met around November 1854?
A) Nikolay Strakhov
B) General Eduard Totleben
C) Baron Alexander Egorovich Wrangel
D) Lieutenant-Colonel Belikhov
  • 60. When did Dostoevsky and Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva get married?
A) 7 February 1857
B) 15 March 1858
C) 14 February 1854
D) 1 January 1856
  • 61. When did Fyodor Dostoevsky return to Russia?
A) September 1874
B) July 1871
C) January 1872
D) March 1873
  • 62. Which archbishop's works strengthened Dostoevsky's beliefs?
A) Herzen
B) Dmitri Rostovsky
C) Johannes Hübner
D) Grigoriev
  • 63. Who denounced the members of the Petrashevsky Circle to the Ministry of Internal Affairs?
A) Count Alexey Fyodorovich Orlov
B) Ivan Liprandi
C) Mikhail Bakunin
D) Nikolay Speshnev
  • 64. Which literary form did Dostoevsky NOT write in?
A) Novels
B) Short stories
C) Essays
D) Plays
  • 65. What position was Dostoevsky elected to within the Slavic Benevolent Society?
A) President
B) Vice-president
C) Treasurer
D) Secretary
  • 66. What did Dostoevsky revive his faith by looking at frequently in Semipalatinsk?
A) The stars
B) Catholic relics
C) The Bible
D) Orthodox icons
  • 67. In which journal was 'The House of the Dead' first published?
A) Russky Mir
B) Epoch
C) Vremya
D) Sovremennik
  • 68. In which city did Dostoevsky first meet Alexander Herzen?
A) Paris
B) London
C) Berlin
D) Cologne
  • 69. Which novel did Dostoevsky finish on 26 November 1872?
A) Notes from Underground
B) The Adolescent
C) Demons
D) Crime and Punishment
  • 70. In which city did Dostoevsky complete The Idiot?
A) Vienna
B) Dresden
C) Geneva
D) Florence
  • 71. Which author stated in A Moveable Feast that Dostoevsky's work contained things so true they changed the reader?
A) Virginia Woolf
B) Franz Kafka
C) James Joyce
D) Ernest Hemingway
  • 72. What was the name of Dostoevsky's son who died after a severe epileptic seizure?
A) Paul
B) Alyosha
C) Ivan
D) Sergey
  • 73. What mineral spa town did the Dostoevsky family spend time in early 1872?
A) Moscow
B) Saint Petersburg
C) Bad Ems
D) Staraya Russa
  • 74. Which of Dostoevsky's pre-marriage romantic interests was described as a 'femme fatale'?
A) Anna Korvin-Krukovskaya
B) Aleksandra Ivanovna Schubert
C) Polina Suslova
D) Avdotya Panaeva
  • 75. What was Dostoevsky diagnosed with during his fourth visit to Ems?
A) Early-stage pulmonary emphysema
B) Epilepsy
C) Lung cancer
D) Heart disease
  • 76. Which author called Dostoevsky his 'blood-relative'?
A) James Joyce
B) Ernest Hemingway
C) Virginia Woolf
D) Franz Kafka
  • 77. Who did Dostoevsky ask to help him financially after his release?
A) Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva
B) Mikhail
C) Pyotr Semyonov
D) Alexander Egorovich Wrangel
  • 78. What is the title of Dostoevsky's book compiled from pieces of his periodical work?
A) Dostoevsky's Essays and Stories
B) Society, Religion, Politics, and Ethics
C) A Writer's Diary
D) The Diary of a Writer
  • 79. On what date was Fyodor Dostoevsky released from prison?
A) 7 June 1862
B) 1 January 1855
C) 14 February 1854
D) 15 March 1856
  • 80. Which theme is NOT prominently explored in Dostoevsky's works?
A) Poverty
B) Suicide
C) Morality
D) Space exploration
  • 81. Where did Dostoevsky move to serve in the Siberian Army Corps?
A) Barnaul
B) Tver
C) Semipalatinsk
D) Kuznetsk
  • 82. Which author praised Dostoevsky's prose for shattering the Victorian novel with its lack of imagination and violence?
A) Ernest Hemingway
B) Franz Kafka
C) James Joyce
D) Virginia Woolf
  • 83. Which society elected Dostoevsky to its honorary committee, alongside Victor Hugo and Leo Tolstoy?
A) Russian Academy of Sciences
B) Saint Petersburg Literary Circle
C) Association Littéraire et Artistique Internationale
D) Slavic Benevolent Society
  • 84. What book did Dostoevsky read that emphasized a sentimental version of Christianity?
A) Die Stunden der Andacht
B) The Book of Job
C) The Bible
D) One Hundred and Four Sacred Stories from the Old and New Testaments
  • 85. How long did it take Dostoevsky to complete The Gambler?
A) 26 days
B) 15 days
C) 45 days
D) 30 days
  • 86. Where did Dostoevsky lose much money at the roulette table?
A) Milan
B) Vevey
C) Baden-Baden
D) Geneva
  • 87. Which Norwegian novelist wrote about Dostoevsky's overwhelming psychological sense?
A) Knut Hamsun
B) Jo Nesbø
C) Henrik Ibsen
D) Sigrid Undset
  • 88. Who called Dostoevsky a 'great religious writer'?
A) Friedrich Nietzsche
B) Albert Einstein
C) Sigmund Freud
D) Leo Tolstoy
  • 89. In which year did Dostoevsky's wife Maria die?
A) 1857
B) 1865
C) 1864
D) 1863
  • 90. Who influenced Dostoevsky's political progression to conservatism?
A) Terty Filipov
B) Konstantin Pobedonostsev
C) Vladimir Solovyov
D) Maykov
  • 91. When was Dostoevsky's son Alexey born?
A) 16 July 1871
B) 1 May 1872
C) 10 August 1875
D) 26 November 1872
  • 92. What was the title of Dostoevsky's only work completed in prison?
A) The Village of Stepanchikovo
B) Notes from Underground
C) A Little Hero
D) Uncle's Dream
  • 93. What was the name of Dostoevsky's stepson?
A) Mikhail
B) Nikolay
C) Alexander
D) Pasha
  • 94. Which autobiographical element is frequently used in Dostoevsky's works?
A) Purely imaginative fantasy worlds
B) Fictionalized accounts of other authors' lives
C) Autobiographical or semi-autobiographical details
D) Detailed historical events unrelated to his life
  • 95. Who was Dostoevsky's second love that he met in Paris?
A) Polina Suslova
B) Anna Snitkina
C) Apollinaria Prokofievna Suslova
D) Maria Dmitrievna Isaeva
  • 96. What illness caused the death of Dostoevsky's first child?
A) Typhoid fever
B) Diphtheria
C) Pneumonia
D) Cholera
  • 97. Which famous writer did Dostoevsky meet in several salons in Saint Petersburg?
A) Anton Chekhov
B) Ivan Turgenev
C) Leo Tolstoy
D) Fyodor Tyutchev
  • 98. Who is the illegitimate child of Versilov featured in The Adolescent?
A) Arkady Dolgoruky
B) Alexey Karamazov
C) Raskolnikov
D) Fyodor Dostoevsky
  • 99. Where did Dostoevsky and Snitkina marry?
A) Frankfurt
B) Dresden
C) Berlin
D) Trinity Cathedral, Saint Petersburg
  • 100. Who wrote the novel Oru Sankeerthanam Pole, which deals with Dostoevsky's life and his love affair with Anna?
A) Knut Hamsun
B) J. M. Coetzee
C) Perumbadavam Sreedharan
D) Fyodor Dostoevsky
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