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