Prince Myshkin Prince Myshkin Prince Lev Nikolayevich Myshkin (pre-reform Russian: ; post-reform ) is the protagonist of Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel "The Idiot". Dostoevsky wanted to create a character that was "entirely positive... with an absolutely beautiful nature", someone who is truly 'Christian'. According to Joseph Frank, the character of Prince Myshkin approaches "the extremest incarnation of the Christian ideal of love that humanity can reach in its present form, but he is torn apart by the conflict between the contradictory imperatives of his apocalyptic aspirations and his earthly limitations." Prince Myshkin has been in Switzerland for the last four years, at a
Lev Kopelev Lev Kopelev Lev Zalmanovich (Zinovyevich) Kopelev (, German: Lew Sinowjewitsch Kopelew, 9 April 1912, Kiev – 18 June 1997, Cologne) was a Soviet author and dissident. Kopelev was born in Kiev, then Russian Empire, to a middle-class Jewish family. In 1926, his family moved to Kharkov. While a student at Kharkov State University's philosophy faculty, Kopelev began writing in Russian and Ukrainian languages; some of his articles were published in the "Komsomolskaya Pravda" newspaper. An idealist communist and active Bolshevik, he was first arrested in March 1929 for "consorting with the Bukharinist and Trotskyist opposition," and spent ten days in