Russian Writers and Charles Dickens: A Dialogue Across Borders and Eras Abstract: This article explores the phenomenon of the profound and multifaceted influence of Charles Dickens on Russian literature in the second half of the 19th century. It analyzes not only issues of direct borrowing but also the unique process of creative reworking, polemics, and the "mastery" of Dickensian motifs in the context of specific Russian socio-philosophical quests. “Dickens, Whom We Have Found”: The Scale of Influence In the mid-19th century, Charles Dickens became perhaps the most read and revered foreign author in Russia. His novels were published in magazines almost immediately after their English editions, causing a sensation. The phenomenon lay not simply in popularity, but in the sense among Russian writers and critics of Dickens’s remarkable affinity with the "Russian soul." Vissarion Belinsky saw him as a "poet of the poor," while Dostoevsky, in his famous speech about Pushkin, placed the English novelist alongside Shakespeare and Cervantes as writers who expressed the "universal human." Interesting fact: The first translator of Dickens into Russian was V. G. Belinsky himself. In 1838, he published a translation of the Christmas story "The Battle of Life," sparking a mass fascination with the writer. Deep Parallels and Creative Polemics The Russian classics embraced not only Dickens’s social pathos but also aesthetic principles that were creatively reinterpreted. F. M. Dostoevsky: From “The Insulted and Humiliated” to “The Underground Man.” The Dickensian world of London slums, "little people," and social contrasts found a direct echo in Dostoevsky’s early works ("Poor Folk"). However, the Russian writer went further in psychological analysis. While in Dickens evil is often personified (the villainous oligarch, the cruel guardian), Dostoevsky is interested in the metaphysics of evil in the human soul. The images of suffering children (Nellie in "The Insulted and ... Read more