Fyodor Dostoyevsky lived only 60 years, but his was a full life. He experienced fame but also poverty, sickness and great sufferings and love too. The great love…

Love brought Dostoyevsky both exquisite torture and exquisite happiness. His first wife died slowly, of consumption. After her death and the death of an elder brother he loved dearly, the writer felt completely alone. The women he wanted to be with would have none of him. It was only at the age of 46 that he met a girl of 20 who had just buried her father, a petty clerk, and had just finished secondary school.

When the two met in 1866, Dostoyevsky was working on two novels: “Crime and Punishment” and “The Gambler”. To speed up work on the second novel he had invited a stenographer to his home. That was how Anna Snitkina put in her appearance. Later she would recall her first impression of the writer in there words: “Nothing can convey the pitiful appearance of Fyodor Mikhailovich, when I met him for the first time. He seemed confused, anxious, helpless, lonely, irritable, almost ill”.

To check the girl’s knowledge of Russian grammar, Dostoyevsky dictated a letter rather quickly. Finding several mistakes and feeling he could establish no rapport with the girl, he asked her to come again that evening. This time the writer was in a lighter mood and noticed that she was quite likable. Gradually the feelings on both sides became wormer, and the writer grew more talkative, describing events in his life. Anna liked his simplicity and sincerity but she felt terribly sorry for him. Without realizing it at first she fell in love.

Dostoyevsky and his stenographer worked together for several hours every day. He would write “The Gambler” by hand at night and then dictate to her what he had written. Anna would take her stenographic notes home, write them out in long hand, and the next day Dostoyevsky would correct them. During breaks in their work they would pour out their hearts to one another and soon grew so attracted to one another during the four weeks of joint work that they were both upset when the novel was finished. Dostoyevsky was determined not to lose touch with the woman who had at first attracted him for her kindness and who in the course of the four weeks had become and assistant and friend in his creative work, something so very much important to him. Could he find a better companion? He felt he could not.

Once the writer expanded to Anna on an idea for a new novel in which an elderly and sick artist falls in love with a girl by the name Anna. Did she think, he asked, that it was possible for a young girl to fall in love with such a person? Anna said she did because the main thing in a person was his heart, not his appearance. Dostoyevsky said nothing and then, after a short hesitation, he said: “Put yourself in her place. Imagine that this artist, that is I, confessed that he loved you and asked you to be his wife. What would you say?”

This was unexpected and rather embarrassing for Anna. But she finally replied: “I would say that I loved you and would love you to the end of my days”.

Anna became Dostoyevsky’s wife, the mother of his children and the source of such great happiness as is rarely met with. Certainly no other Russian writer ever experienced that.

Anna worshiped her husband. Later she would write in her letter or memoirs: “I would wake up in the morning and kiss his feet… He was the sunshine of my life”, “He was my idol, I worshiped him”. Many years after his death, she explained the secret of her happy marriage, saying that friendship often rests not on a similarity of characters but on a difference. Anna and Dostoyevsky were entirely different in mental and emotional make-up. But she never interfered in his internal life, never tried to influence him or change him in any way. Her attitude gave the writer a sense of freedom and at the same time a feeling of confidence in his companion. This double foundation underpinned their family happiness.