Which journal serialized Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Idiot?

Fyodor Dostoevsky’s novel The Idiot was serialized in The Russian Messenger.

The novel appeared in the journal during 1868 and 1869, while Dostoevsky was living abroad for significant periods of the writing process. The Russian Messenger, also known as Russky Vestnik, was a major nineteenth-century Russian literary and political journal. It published works by several important authors, including Ivan Turgenev, Leo Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky.

The Idiot centers on Prince Lev Myshkin, an epileptic nobleman whose openness and compassion contrast with the ambition, jealousy, and possessiveness of the people around him. Dostoevsky intended Myshkin to represent a genuinely good person entering a morally damaged society.

The Russian Messenger is sometimes confused with Dostoevsky’s own journals, Vremya and Epoch. Those publications were edited by Dostoevsky and his brother Mikhail, whereas The Russian Messenger was an independent periodical that serialized several of his major novels.