The Legend of Rothschild as the “Napoleon of Finance” in Dostoevsky’s Works

Information about the author:

Nikolay N. Podosokorsky, PhD in Philology, Adviser for the Rector, Novgorod National University Yaroslav Mudryi, Bolshaya Sankt-Peterburgskaya st. 41, 173021 Veliky Novgorod, Russia; Senior Researcher, A.M. Gorky Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Povarskaya 25 a, 121069 Moscow, Russia.

ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6310-1579

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Abstract:

The paper analyses the legend of the mighty financial dynasty of Rothschilds who exerted great influence on business life, politics, and culture in 19th-century Europe. Dostoevsky considered the motif of the power of money and Mammon’s greatness as one of the severest problems of his time, “a cruel time, a time of business and money, a calculating time, full of tables, numbers, and zeros of all kinds and types”. From his earliest works, Dostoevsky relates the Napoleonic idea with the idea of monetary enrichment (“Mr. Prokharchin”, “Uncle’s dream”, Crime and Punishment, and others). However, in his early works, the names of Rothschild  and Napoleon evolved in parallel, and finally merged only in his novels The Idiot and The Adolescent.