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 Kopelev Germany on June 18, 1997 at the age of 85, and was buried in the New Donskoy Cemetery in Moscow. 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,