The North American Dostoevsky Society stands with all the people of Ukraine, Russia, and the rest of the world who condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine. See our statement here.
The North American Dostoevsky Society is delighted to announce that the 2025 Deborah A. Martinsen Conference Travel Award goes to Nikolay Smirnov.
Originally from Moscow, Russia, Nikolay moved to the United States to pursue his Bachelor’s degree from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. After completing his studies at Emory, Nikolay pursued a PhD in Slavic Studies at Brown University, where he is currently a PhD candidate. In his research, Nikolay focuses on the role of ideas and ideals for the development of selfhood in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s oeuvre, as well as late Soviet modernism and early postmodernism, particularly its propensity for intertextuality in the works of Venedikt Erofeev and Abram Terz.
At the 2025 ASEEES Convention in Washington, DC, Nikolay will present a paper entitled “The Child in Krysztof Kieszlowski’s ‘Dekalog 1’ and Fyodor Dostoevsky’s: ‘Brothers Karamazov’: A Terrible Fate for the Gifted and Kind-Hearted?”
Abstract: Krsyztof Kieszlowski’s Dekalog 1 and the chapter “The Boys” in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov both present a boy as their main protagonist. Paweł in Dekalog 1 and Ilyusha Snegirev in “The Boys” are children who hold a steadfast love for and a strong relationship with their fathers; Paweł’s mother is, in fact, wholly absent from the picture. Paweł and Ilyusha strike us as gifted in their mental capacities, drawing the viewer and the reader to perceive them as adults in children’s bodies. In both pieces, the love for their fathers motivates the boys to take action – Ilusha to avenge his father’s unfair treatment by Dmitry Karamazov and Paweł to trust his father’s judgement that the ice on the pond will not break. These actions directly or indirectly lead to the children’s deaths, provoking us to ponder on the relationship between father and son and the experience of childhood as a whole in the Eastern European context. A century divides Kieszlowski’s Dekalog 1 and Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, yet their portraits of the gifted child hint at uncanny similarities. This paper aims to analyze these two representations of childhood in the respective works and answer questions about the uniqueness of the childhood experience in the Eastern European context. Why do these children appear aged beyond their years and receive tragic fates? What is it about the nature of Polish film and Russian literature that leads to the portrayal of such distinctly memorable children?
The paper is scheduled for 8am on the Friday on the panel “Representations of Childhood in Russian and Polish Films.”
Congratulations to Nikolay Smirnov!