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| Fyodor Dostoyevsky |
In his
novel The devils (or The possessed, for there are two
versions of the title), published in 1872, Dostoyevsky appears as a political
prophet who displays a surprising knowledge of Communism and communists. In
this book, 45 years before the fact, he predicted correctly that Russia would
be the first country where Communism would win, an idea disregarded by Marx and
Engels due to the lack of an industrial proletariat in that country. Let us
listen to one of the characters in the novel:
We know that a mysterious finger is pointing
to our delightful country as the land most fitted to accomplish the great task.
The
communists in the book, the possessed, or the devils,
have the same aims as their counterparts who triumphed in the Soviet Union,
such as the elimination of religion. To reach their objectives, they propose
two different procedures. Let us look at the words that Dostoyevsky puts in
their mouths:
