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 Shcherba was the teacher of the lexicographer Sergei Ozhegov, author of the most widely used Russian dictionary. Shcherba is the author of the "glokaya kuzdra" sentence, which consists of words whose roots do not exist in Russian, but has correct construction in terms of Russian morphology and syntax. He invented this sentence to illustrate the distinction between grammar and vocabulary. Lev Shcherba Lev Shcherba (commonly Scherba) (Russian: Лев Влади́мирович Ще́рба, Belarusian: Леў Уладзіміравіч Шчэрба) ( – December 26, 1944) was a Russian linguist and lexicographer specializing in phonetics and phonology. Born in Igumen (Minsk Governorate, Russian Empire, now Chervyen, Belarus) to