Dost Mohammed Khan

DOST MOHAMMED KHAN (1793-1863), founder of the dynasty of the Barakzai in Afghanistan, was born in 1793. His elder brother, the chief of the Barakzai, Fateh Khan, took an im portant part in raising Mahmud to the sovereignty of Afghanistan in 1800 and in restoring him to the throne in 1809. But Mahmud secured his assassination in 1818, and thus incurred the enmity of his tribe. After a bloody conflict Mahmud was deprived of all his possessions but Herat, the rest of his dominions being divided among Fateh Khan's brothers. Of these Dost Mohammed received Ghazni, to which in 5826 he added Kabul; he at once found him self involved in disputes with Ranjit Singh, the Sikh ruler of the Punjab, who used the dethroned Saduzai prince, Shuja-ul-Mulk, as his instrument. In 1834 Shuja made a last attempt to recover his kingdom. He was defeated by Dost Mohammed under the walls of Kandahar. but Ranjit Singh seized the opportunity to annex Peshawar. The recovery of this fortress became the Af ghan amir's great concern. Rejecting overtures from Russia, he sought alliance with England, and welcomed Alexander Burnes to Kabul in 1837. But the governor general, Lord Auckland, did not respond to the amir's advances. Dost Mohammed was enjoined to abandon the attempt to recover Peshawar, and to place his for eign policy under British guidance. In return he was only prom ised protection from Ranjit Singh, of whom he had no fear. He replied by renewing his relations with Russia, and in March 1 839 a British force under Sir Willoughby Cotton advanced through the Bolan Pass, and on April 26, it reached Kandahar. Shah Shuja was proclaimed amir, and entered Kabul on Aug. 7, while Dost Mohammed sought refuge in the Hindu Kush. On Nov. 4, 1840, he surrendered. He remained in captivity during the British occupation, during the disastrous retreat of the army of occu pation in Jan. 1842, and until the recapture of Kabul in the au tumn of 1842. (See INDIA: History.) He was then freed.

On his return from India Dost Mohammed was received in tri umph at Kabul. From 1846 he renewed his policy of hostility to the British and allied himself with the Sikhs ; but after the defeat of his allies at Gujrat on Feb. 21, 1849 he led his troops back into Afghanistan. In 1850 he conquered Balkh, and in 1854 be acquired control over the southern Afghan tribes by the capture of Kanda har. On March 3o, 1855, Dost Mohammed concluded an offensive and defensive alliance with the British government. In 1857 he declared war on Persia in conjunction with the British, and in July a treaty was concluded by which the province of Herat was placed under a Barakzai prince. During the Indian Mutiny Dost Mo hammed punctiliously refrained from assisting the insurgents. His later years were disturbed by troubles at Herat and in Buk hara. These he composed for a time but in 1862 a Persian army, acting in concert with Ahmad Khan, advanced against Kandahar. The old amir called the British to his aid, and, putting himself at the head of his warriors, drove the enemy from his frontiers. On May 26, 1863, he captured Herat, but on June 9 he died suddenly in the midst of victory, after playing a great role in the history of Central Asia for forty years. He named as his successor his son, Shere Ali Khan.

DO S T O I E V$ K I, THEODORE (FYODOR)

KHAYLOVICH (1821-81), Russian writer, b. Moscow Oct. 3o (o.s.), 1821, his father of Ukrainian extraction, his mother of Moscow merchant stock. He was educated in Moscow, and at the School of Military Engineers in St. Petersburg (Leningrad). In 1841 he obtained a commission in the army, but three years later he left the service to devote himself to literature. In 1845 he completed his first novel, Poor Folk. Its publication, in the following year, was one of the great events which marked the coming of a new literary age in Russia. Dostoievski came to be regarded as the most promising of the young novelists. But his second novel, The Double, published before the end of the same year (1846) disappointed the critics, and his success began to wane. He continued, however, to work with great productivity for the next three years, producing a great number of novels and stories, among which the most important are Mr. Prokharchin, The Landlady and Netochka Nezvanova. These early works dis play the strong influence of Gogol, and to a less extent of Balzac. Unlike the later work they betray intense interest in problems of form, and a great variety and conscious originality of verbal expression. Passionate sympathy with the humiliated and the downtrodden, and intense interest in morbid psychology (The Double) are already very apparent. In Netochka Nezvanova (1849) appears for the first time that type of "proud girl" which was to play such a prominent part in the great novels of his maturity. Though Dostoievski had quarrelled with the liberal litterateurs owing to their failure to appreciate The Double and to their constant pinpricks, and his morbid self-consciousness suf fered from the systematic teasing of some of them (especially Turgenev), he continued to be intimate with another circle of advanced young men who, under the guidance of Petrashevski, met to study the French socialists and discuss social and political reform in Russia.

The reactionary wave that followed 1848 brought with it the arrest (April 23, 1849) and trial of the Petrashevski circle.

Dostoievski and the Other "conspirators" were condemned to deportation, but a bogus sentence of death was read to them and mock preparations for the execution were gone through, the real sentence being communicated to them only at the last moment before the expected volley (Dec: 21, 1849). These moments pro duced a fatal impression on Dostoievski and he alludes to them more than once in his later work. His epilepsy, the first traces of which go back to before the Sentence, was greatly aggra vated by it. For four years Dostoievski was a convict in the penal settlement of Omsk. These years profoundly changed his mind, and it was then that he evolved his new Christianity, which was essentially based on worshipping Christ because' he was wor shipped by the Russian people. Early in 1854 he was released from prison and transferred as a private to a unit stationed in Siberia. In 1855 he had his commission restored to him, and in 1859 he was finally amnestied and allowed to live in the capitals. In Siberia he fell in love and married Marie Isaeva, a sensual and crude woman, who brought him no happiness. From 1856 onwards he was able to resume his literary work. His first novel after these seven years of enforced silence was the Manor of Stepanchikovo (English version—The Family Friend) (1859), written in Siberia. Its central figure of Foma Opiskin is one of the greatest, and most repulsive, satirical character-creations in Russian literature. After his return to St. Petersburg he published The House of Death (1861), in which he embodied his prison impressions, and which remained till after his death the most generally popular of his works; and The Insulted and the Injured (1862), in which the influence of the more sentimental aspects of Dickens are plainly apparent.

At the same time he engaged in journalism, trying to steer an independent course between the conservatives and the freethink ing radicals. His programme was a democratic and Christian nationalism, equally hostile to reaction and to atheistic radical ism, and inspired by a faith in the Russian peasant people, as the depositary of supreme spiritual values. With his brother Michael and several other valuable allies, he started a review, Vremya (The Times) which, in spite of hostility from both right and left, succeeded in winning the public ear and was financially a success, In 1863 it was, however, suppressed by the Government on what soon proved a misunderstanding. The Dostoievskis were allowed to revive the review under a new name (Epokha), but the new publication failed to revive the success of its predecessor. Michael Dostoievski died (1864), and after a year and more of struggle against adverse circumstances Dostoievski succumbed, discon tinued the review and found himself burdened with debts he was unable to pay, besides the obligation of keeping his brother's family.

This crisis coincided with a profound crisis of his inner life. His first wife died. Before her death he had already become inti mate with Pauline Suslova, a young woman of sensual, proud and "demoniac" character. His brief intimacy with her appears to have been one of the crucial experiences of his life. In 1863 he travelled with Pauline abroad, strengthening his aversion from bourgeois civilization and contracting the gambling habit. In 1864 he published Letters from the Underworld which marks a turning-point in his work and from which we must date the final maturity of his genius. After the failure of The Epoch Dosto ievski became a victim to the callous exploitation of publishers, for whom he had to work by writing with superhuman speed such works as Crime and Punishment (1866) and The Gambler (1867) . While writing them he employed as secretary Anna Grigorievna Snitkina, whom in r 867 he married. This coincided with a com plete financial collapse. He went abroad to escape his creditors, and for four years lived there, passing much of his time at the gambling house of Baden-Baden. Only gradually, by dint of hard work at the series of novels that have since made his name famous in the world was he able once again to support himself.

In 1871 he returned to Russia, and soon obtained a situation as editor of a conservative weekly (1873-74). After /876 he pub lished and edited a journal of his own, An Author's Diary, in which he continued the line of national and democratic Christi anity started by the Vremya. He became influential as a journalist and his last years were spent in comparatively favourable circum stances. His contemporary fame reached its culminating point in 1880, after his address on the unveiling of the Pushkin memo rial, the most characteristic and impassioned of his non-imagi native work. He died on Jan. 28, i 88 i . His funeral was accom panied by an inspiring public demonstration.

The work that has made Dostoievski a world classic belongs to the last 17 years of his life. The series of his great novels is ushered in by Letters from the Underworld (1864) which may be considered as the central work of Dostoievski. It marks the crisis which changed him, from the humanitarian idealist and dreamer of his early years, into the tragic creator of his full maturity. As in his great novels, the main subject is the prob lem of human liberty and of the justification of God and the World Order. The great novels that followed were : Crime and Punishment (1866) ; The Idiot (1868-69) ; The Demons (18 71; Eng. version The Possessed) and The Brothers Karamazov (188o); to which must be added The Gambler (1867), The Eter nal Husband (t 8 70) ; A Raw Youth (18 75) and some shorter pieces included in An Author's Diary. These last, though much shorter, are sometimes of first-rate importance for the under standing of Dostoievski (especially Bobok and The Dream of a Queer Fellow) . In these works Dostoievski gave his full measure as one of the greatest novelists of all times, and as a personality of exceptionally deep significance. For psychological imagination, for power of dramatic construction, for the convincingness and reality of his characters he has no equals. As a thinker, we have to distinguish between the "Christian and national" element of his journalistic writings and of the less inspired parts of his novels (viz., the preachings of Father Zosima in The Brothers Kara mazov), and the profound Jobean and Promethean questioner of the main great novels, whose only peers in modern times are Pascal and Nietzsche. His influence on Russian literature was greatest between 1895 and 1915. His ideas always loomed larger than his imaginative creation. Europe began to show a passion ate interest in him from about 1905. His influence on French, German and English literature within the last 20 years has been considerable.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.-The Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky, trans. by Bibliography.-The Novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky, trans. by Constance Garnett, 12 vol. (1912-2o) . Separate works translated are The House of the Dead (1 g l i) ; Crime and Punishment (19 i i) ; Letters from the Underworld (1913) ; The Idiot (1914) ; Poor Folk and the Gambler (1915) ; Stavrogin's Confession, trans. S. S. Kotelian ski and Virginia Woolf (1922) ; The Brothers Karamazov (1927) ; Pages from the Journal of an Author trans. by S. S. Kotelianski and J. Middleton Murry (1916) ; there is a more complete French translation, Journal d'un icrivain, 3 vols. (1927). See also Dostoiev ski's Letters to his family and friends trans. by Ethel Colbourne Mayne (1914, end ed. 19t7) ; Letters and Reminiscences trans. by S. S. Kotelianski and J. Middleton Murry (1923) ; an important life, Dostoyevsky portrayed by his wife, trans. by S. S. Kotelianski (1926) ; Aimee Dostoievski, Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1921). For criti cism see D. S. Merezhkovski, Tolstoi as Man and Artist. With an Essay on Dostoievski (19oz) ; J. Middleton Murry, Fyodor Dostoev sky, a critical study (1916, 2nd ed. 1923) ; Janko Lavrin, Dostoevsky and his creation (1920) ; Andre Gicje, Dostoevsky (English trans. 1925) . (D. S. M.)