Poor People

A work that brought Dostoevsky fame. The story of correspondence between a poor clerk and a young girl, through whose letters themes of social injustice, loneliness, and human dignity are revealed.

The petty officer Makary Devushkin helps his orphaned distant relative Varenka arrange her life in St. Petersburg. He is clumsy, absurd, and often ridiculous. She is young, naive, and barely staying afloat. In opposition to the indifferent huge world, the two lonely people have only one salvation - to write piercing letters to each other.

Dostoevsky gathered prototypes for his first work literally around him: since childhood, he saw the sorrows and joys of poor people with his own eyes, the patients of his father, who worked as a doctor at Mariinsky Hospital; and Dostoevsky's sister, Varvara, inspired him to create the character Varenka with her childhood memories.