The Idiot also been well received. 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."
Lev Lebedinsky testimony is questioned by some because of his previously-held positions - as an agent for the Bolshevik secret police, Felix Dzerzhinsky’s notorious Cheka, and as a major leader of the RAPM (Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians) which officially opposed Shostakovich and other Soviet composers in the 1920s. Lev Lebedinsky Lev Lebedinsky (1904–1992) was a Russian musicologist. He is perhaps most well known today as a friend and oft-quoted confidant of composer Dmitry Shostakovich. His part in the debate over Shostakovich's memoirs and musical intentions created a certain amount of conflict with the late composer's family after his death in 1975.