Nikolay Speshnev chapter of "Demons" when, in the midst of confessing to a terrible crime, he formulates the guiding idea of his life: "that I neither know nor feel good and evil and that I have not only lost any sense of it, but that there is neither good nor evil (which pleased me), and that it is just a prejudice." It is speculated that Dostoevsky also refers to Speshnev on one occasion in "The Idiot". The central character, Prince Myshkin, recounts a long conversation with "a certain S—", an erudite and well-bred man, on the subject of atheism. Nikolay Speshnev Nikolay
The Gambler (novel) The Gambler (novel) The Gambler (, "Igrok"; modern spelling Игрок) is a short novel by Fyodor Dostoevsky about a young tutor in the employment of a formerly wealthy Russian general. The novella reflects Dostoevsky's own addiction to roulette, which was in more ways than one the inspiration for the book: Dostoevsky completed the novella under a strict deadline to pay off gambling debts. "The Gambler" treated a subject Fyodor Dostoevsky himself was familiar with—gambling. Fyodor Dostoevsky gambled for the first time at the tables at Wiesbaden in 1863. From that time till 1871, when his passion for gambling subsided, he