7 Secrets of The Idiot

1. The Secret of the Donkey

In the home of the Yepanchins, Prince Myshkin recounts that after an exacerbation of his epilepsy, he was sent to Switzerland. He describes a moment of clarity:

“I remember: the melancholy in me was unbearable; I even wanted to cry; I was always surprised and worried: the fact that everything was alien had a terrible effect on me; I understood that. The alien was killing me. I completely woke up from this gloom, I remember, in the evening, in Basel, upon entering Switzerland, and I was woken up by the cry of a donkey in the city market. The donkey struck me terribly and for some reason, I liked it unusually, and with it, everything in my head suddenly seemed to clear up.”

The Yepanchin sisters laugh at this. For residents of Central Russia in the 19th century, a donkey was an exotic animal. However, the reading public knew that a donkey (osel) was a fool and a symbol of stupidity. Before 1867, the word “osel” was used almost exclusively as an insult. Therefore, a confusion arises in Myshkin’s conversation with the young ladies. The Prince sincerely describes an important event, while the ladies are mocking him, practically calling him a fool to his face. Myshkin does not take offense, enduring a direct, undeserved insult for the first time in the novel.

2. The Secret of the Death Penalty

While waiting to be received by the Yepanchins, Prince Myshkin starts a conversation with their footman about the death penalty:

“— And before, I knew nothing here, but now, it is said, there is so much new, that they say, even those who knew it are relearning anew. They talk a lot about the courts here now. — Hmm!… The courts. The courts are true, the courts are. But tell me, is it fairer there, in court, or not? — I don’t know. I’ve heard many good things about ours. For one thing, we don’t have the death penalty. — And they execute people there? — Yes. I saw it in France, in Lyon.”

Myshkin’s statement that there is no death penalty in Russia is factually incorrect. According to the Code of Criminal and Correctional Punishments of 1866, capital punishment was mandated for crimes such as rebellion against the supreme power, high treason, and assassination attempts on the Emperor. In 1866, Dmitry Karakozov was executed for attempting to kill Alexander II.

Myshkin’s account of the execution and his fantasy about the condemned man’s last moments is Dostoevsky’s own story, as he was sentenced to death in 1849 (a sentence later commuted to hard labor). Dostoevsky deliberately distorts reality to share his personal experience while simultaneously avoiding censorship problems. Publishing a vivid description of an execution in Russia and the condemned man’s last moments would have likely been suppressed, or led to repercussions, as Dostoevsky had experienced with the closure of his journal Vremya in the early 1860s.

3. The Secret of Doctor B-n

Eighteen-year-old Ippolit Terentyev is ill with consumption. Upon his first meeting with Myshkin in Pavlovsk, he tells everyone he is dying:

“…In two weeks, as I know, I will die… B-n himself told me last week…”

Later, he confesses that he lied: “…B-n told me nothing and has never seen me.”

B-n is Sergey Petrovich Botkin, one of the most famous St. Petersburg therapists of the time. Botkin had a reputation as a doctor who never made a mistake, a reputation that Ippolit attempts to exploit. By mentioning Botkin, Ippolit tries to convince his interlocutors that he will indeed die soon and thus attract their attention to himself. The public knowledge of Botkin’s reputation for accurate, often dire, diagnoses makes Ippolit’s lie dramatically effective.

4. The Secret of Indépendance Belge Newspaper

The main media source in The Idiot is the Belgian newspaper Indépendance Belge. Its name is mentioned several times, and General Ivolgin and Nastasya Filippovna are avid readers. A small conflict scene revolves around a newspaper note: the General recounts an exaggerated story from his past, and Nastasya Filippovna reveals that she read the exact same story in the newspaper a few days ago.

Indépendance Belge was a very popular European publication with a leftist political stance. Dostoevsky chose this newspaper because he read and loved it himself. He became familiar with it while serving in Semipalatinsk in the 1850s, after his hard labor sentence, and it became his primary source of information about European events. He continued to read it while working on The Idiot abroad. By including a popular international newspaper in the novel, Dostoevsky sought to make the novel topical and believable to a broad readership familiar with foreign press.

5. The Secret of the Skoptsy

We know a little about the Rogozhin family: they are wealthy St. Petersburg merchants. Their house, “large, gloomy, three-storied, without any architecture, of a dirty-green color,” is located on Gorokhovaya Street. The family’s wealth and prestige are indicated by the plaque “House of Hereditary Honorary Citizen Rogozhin.”

In the time of Parfen Rogozhin’s grandfather, Skoptsy (a radical religious sect that practiced castration to enforce asceticism and celibacy) rented rooms in the house. The sect survived thanks to the patronage of prominent merchant families who valued the business acumen of the Skoptsy. The sectarians ran money-changing shops and engaged in a wide range of banking operations, including the storage of money, often using unregulated financial schemes. Their abstinence from all worldly passions and harmful habits made them trusted financial partners.

The connection to the Skoptsy may indicate that the Rogozhins’ fortune was partly accumulated through illicit schemes. It also suggests why Parfen’s father was so angered when his son spent money on jewelry for Nastasya Filippovna: it was not just a loss of wealth, but an act in the name of carnal passion, which was fundamentally opposed to the Skoptsy‘s asceticism.

6. The Secret of the Gold Tassels

Rogozhin, recounting the events after his father’s death, curses his brother and threatens him with criminal prosecution:

“— <…> From the brocade shroud on the coffin of our parent, at night, my brother cut off the cast, golden tassels: ‘They are worth such and such money,’ he said. But he could go to Siberia for that alone, if I wished, because it is sacrilege. Hey, you scarecrow! — he addressed the official. — What does the law say: sacrilege? — Sacrilege! Sacrilege! — the official immediately agreed. — For that, to Siberia? — To Siberia, to Siberia! Immediately to Siberia!”

Under the 19th-century criminal code, sacrilege (svyatotatstvo), which included the theft of church property, was a crime punishable by exile to Siberia. The question of whether the brother’s act was sacrilege depended on where the crime occurred (the Rogozhin coffin was in the house) and when—before or after the funeral service. If it was after the service, the shroud became a consecrated object used in a church rite, and cutting the tassels would indeed constitute a grave offense, likely resulting in hard labor. If it was before, a good lawyer could likely dismiss the accusation.

7. The Secret of Nastasya Filippovna’s Murder

“I covered her with oilcloth, good, American oilcloth, and over the oilcloth, a sheet, and I placed four uncorked bottles of Zhdanov’s fluid there, and they are still there,” Rogozhin tells Prince Myshkin.

Dostoevsky took the details of this murder from real life. While working on The Idiot abroad, he diligently read Russian newspapers to make his novel contemporary and credible, paying special attention to crime reports.

The central newspaper borrowing for The Idiot was the murder of the jeweler Kalmykov in Moscow in 1867 by the merchant Mazurin. Like Rogozhin, Mazurin was the heir to a huge merchant fortune and a large house where he committed his crime. Not knowing what to do with the corpse, he first went and bought American oilcloth (used for upholstery) and Zhdanov’s fluid (a special disinfectant solution used to combat strong unpleasant odors). The specific mention of “American” oilcloth and “Zhdanov’s fluid” served as a direct and obvious reference for contemporary readers familiar with the Mazurin case, making the scene immediately recognizable and grounded in current events.

Sources

Dostoevsky F. M. Complete Collected Works in 30 vols. Vol. 8. Leningrad, 1873.

Dostoevsky F. M. Complete Collected Works in 30 vols. Vol. 9. Leningrad, 1874.

Neklyudov N. A. A Guide to the Special Part of Russian Criminal Law. Vol. 2. St. Petersburg, 1876.

Panchenko A. A. Khristovshchina and Skopchestvo: Folklore and Traditional Culture of Russian Mystical Sects. Moscow, 2002.

Sundurov F. R., Tarkhanov I. A. Criminal Law of Russia. General Part. Moscow, 2009.

Medicine. Culture. Charity (in Photographs and Documents of the Late XIX — Early XX Century). St. Petersburg, 2002.

F. M. Dostoevsky’s Novel “The Idiot”: Current State of Study. Collection of works by Russian and foreign scholars edited by T. A. Kasatkina. Moscow, 2001.

Proceedings of the Imperial Free Economic Society. Vol. 1. 1861.

Code on Criminal and Correctional Punishments edited by N. S. Tagantsev. St. Petersburg, 1866.