Fyodor Dostoevsky’s father was named Mikhail Dostoevsky.
Mikhail was a physician who worked at Moscow’s Mariinsky Hospital for the Poor. Fyodor was born in 1821 as the second son of Mikhail and Maria Dostoevskaya. The family lived in an apartment connected with the hospital, giving the young writer early exposure to poverty, illness, and the social divisions of imperial Russia.
Mikhail later moved the family to a small estate outside Moscow. His strict temperament and the family’s religious upbringing have often been discussed in biographies, although claims about the exact circumstances of his death remain disputed. The father should not be confused with Fyodor’s younger brother Mikhail, who later became his collaborator in literary publishing.
Dostoevsky’s medical-family background is also sometimes confused with his own education: he studied engineering at the Main Military Engineering School in Saint Petersburg, not medicine.