FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky was born in 1821 at a Moscow hospital where his father was employed as a doctor. The family was poor, but their descent from 17th-century nobility entitled them to own land and serfs. Dostoyevsky’s mother, Maria, was loving and religious; his father, Mikhail, tended toward alcoholism and violence, and his…