Dostoevsky Day: how the classic’s work resonates at the National Centre RUSSIA
On the first Saturday of July, Dostoevsky Day is celebrated.
It is a festival that originated in Saint Petersburg but has long ceased to be
merely a local tradition. Interest in Fyodor Mikhailovich today is truly
nationwide. According to book market data, Dostoevsky remains one of the
best-selling classic authors in Russia: he is read, re-read, and discussed in
book clubs and educational programmes. The National Centre RUSSIA has
repeatedly served as a venue where Dostoevsky's work is explored in a variety
of contexts — from conversations about family reading to discussions on the
future of science and the development of Russian culture.
For example, at a meeting of the Literary Club "What to Read?!"
featuring writer and organiser of the "Russian Rome" festival
Vladimir Torin, participants discussed the role of Russian classics in family
libraries and in cultivating reading taste. Among the authors indispensable to
any "home canon", Dostoevsky was mentioned alongside Tolstoy and
Chekhov — as a writer whose books continue to engage with eternal questions
about humanity, choice and responsibility.
Dostoevsky was also remembered on Russian Science Day held at the National Centre RUSSIA. As part of the educational programme, speakers shared their personal reading journeys — the fiction and non-fiction that had shaped their worldview. Deputy Minister of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation Olga Petrova named Dostoevsky and Tolstoy among her key influences, emphasising that it is difficult to imagine any serious discussion of the world order and the place of a person in society without these authors – including for today's readers and scholars.
A special place in the programme of the Nationale Centre RUSSIA was occupied by a Literary Club meeting dedicated to a kind of "duel" between two classics — "Battle of Talents: Dostoevsky versus Bulgakov". The format of an intellectual debate allowed both writers to be viewed as figures of equal stature, offering different answers to the question of Russia's destiny and the fate of humanity in times of upheaval.
The experts were Doctor of Philology, Professor at Moscow State Pedagogical University, writer and literary scholar Yevgeny Zharinov, and philologist, cultural studies scholar and writer Nikolai Zharinov. The intrigue was heightened by the fact that father and son found themselves on opposite sides of the "literary barricades": one championing Dostoevsky, the other Bulgakov. The meeting was moderated by Alexei Chesnakov, head of the Scientific Council of the Centre for Political Conjuncture and Professor at HSE University.
The meeting concluded with a vote by the audience. Although the arguments in favour of Bulgakov were no less compelling, the majority of guests cast their votes for Dostoevsky. For many, the deciding factor was the uncompromising way his prose addresses freedom, faith, guilt and the search for meaning — themes that remain as relevant as ever in the 21st century.
Furthermore, in the summer of 2026, the National Centre RUSSIA announced the launch of the International Ethnographic Trienniale (IET) in Zaraysk — a city
directly linked to the writer's biography. It was here, on the Darovoye estate
near Zaraysk, that Fyodor Mikhailovich spent his childhood years; the
impressions of these places he would later describe as among the most profound
of his life. How the writer's biography is woven into the fabric of the region
was discussed by Albina Bessonova, Candidate of Philological Sciences and lead
researcher at the F.M. Dostoevsky Museum-Estate "Darovoye". She
reminded the audience that without his childhood years on Zaraysk land,
Dostoevsky, according to scholars, would have been a different person and a
different author: it was here that his sense of living folk culture, the memory
of place and the value of the human soul took shape.
The 9th meeting of the Russia-India Working Group on Priority Investment Projects took place at the National Centre RUSSIA in Moscow.
On 3 July, the National Centre RUSSIA hosted the awards ceremony for Season VI of the All-Russian competition of sports projects "You're in the Game".
A new episode of the educational video project named "8 Steps Across the Map of Russia" is now available on the website of the National Centre RUSSIA.
