Suicide as a Cultural Institution in Dostoevsky's Russia

In the popular and scientific imagination, suicide has always been an enigmatic act that defies, and yet demands, explanation. Throughout the centuries, philosophers and writers, journalists and scientists have attempted to endow this act with meaning. In the nineteenth century, and especially in Russia, suicide became the focus for discussion of such issues as the immortality of the soul, free will and determinism, the physical and the spiritual, the individual and the social. Analyzing a variety of sources -- medical reports, social treatises, legal codes, newspaper articles, fiction, private documents left by suicides -- Irina Paperno describes the search for the meaning of suicide.Paperno focuses on Russia of the 1860s-1880s, when suicide was at the center of public attention. Because Russian thought was influenced by Western European models, she examines how Western European science in the nineteenth century discussed suicide and human action in general. Throughout her book, Paperno offers glimpses of the men behind the interpretations, from Fyodor DostoevsKy and the German pathologist Rudolf Virchow to the anonymous journalists who reported suicides in Russian newspapers and magazines.