The Idiot The Idiot The Idiot (pre-reform Russian: ; post-reform ) is a novel by the 19th-century Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky. It was first published serially in the journal "The Russian Messenger" in 1868–9. The title is an ironic reference to the central character of the novel, Prince (Knyaz) Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin, a young man whose goodness, open-hearted simplicity and guilelessness lead many of the more worldly characters he encounters to mistakenly assume that he lacks intelligence and insight. In the character of Prince Myshkin, Dostoevsky set himself the task of depicting "the positively good and beautiful man." The novel examines the
Lev Navrozov Lev Navrozov Lev Navrozov (; 26 November 1928 – 22 January 2017) was a Russian author, historian and polemicist, born in Moscow and father of poet Andrei Navrozov. A leading translator of Russian texts into English under the Soviet regime, Navrozov emigrated to the United States in 1972, where he published a best-selling memoir, "The Education of Lev Navrozov", and became a prominent Russian dissident. Navrozov was born to playwright Andrei Navrozov (after whom his son was named), a founding member of the Soviet Writers' Union, who volunteered in World War II and was killed in action in 1941. After