Devaluation of Money and Rank That Drives Insanity: The 1840s Financial and Bureaucratic Reforms in Dostoevsky's 'The Double'

• In Event: Dostoevsky and Modernity: Economy, Society, Reading Public, Psychology

Abstract

The 1845 reform of the Russian bureaucracy made it much more difficult to obtain privileges through bureaucratic service. Written in 1845-1846, The Double is arguably Dostoevsky’s most significant work where both monetary and bureaucratic reforms play a key role. The financial status and desire for bureaucratic promotion of the protagonist, the titular councilor Yakov Golyadkin, largely determine The Double’s plot.
By placing Dostoevsky’s The Double in its sociohistorical context, I examine how these reforms affected the protagonist's financial and bureaucratic status—two crucial factors driving the narrative and determining the dramatic nature of plot. In so doing, I contribute to the scholarly discussion about the relationship between the social, financial, and bureaucratic transformations in mid-19th century Russian Empire and the way they affected Dostoevsky’s early works

Author

• Sergei Motov, U of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign