The Russian realist novel reaches new heights…

The Russian realist novel reaches new heights with The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s final novel.

Serialized in The Russian Messenger on February 1, 1880, the last parts are published in November.

At nearly eight hundred pages, The Brothers Karamazov is Dostoyevsky's largest literary work and his largest contribution to literature; it is often cited as his greatest work, his magnum opus.

Apart from being successful with the critics, the book is popular generally.

Dostoyevsky is chosen as the vice president of the Slavic Benevolent Society on February 3, 1880, and invited to speak at the unveiling of the Pushkin memorial in Moscow.

Initially scheduled for May 26, the date of the unveiling is rescheduled to June 6 because of the death of Empress Maria Alexandrovna.

Dostoyevsky delivers his speech from memory two days later, inside a large room, giving such an impressive and hypnotizing performance that many people cry or are in other ways emotionally overwhelmed.

His speech is met with thunderous applause, and even his longtime rival Ivan Turgenev embraces him.

Dostoyevsky's delivery is, however, later attacked by several people, among them the liberal political scientist Alexander Gradovsky and conservative thinker Konstantin Leontiev; Gradovsky thought that he would have idolized the people in his speech, while Leontiev compares his delivery with French Utopian socialism rather than Christianity in his essay "On Universal Love".

However, the latter praises his last work, stating that it features no "rosy Christianity".

These attacks lead to a further deterioration in Dostoyevsky's health.