The address is indicated in Dostoevsky's letter to his brother Mikhail dated September 30, 1844: “My address: at the Vladimir Church in the house of Pryanishnikov, in Grafsky Lane.” Also, with slight variations, this address is mentioned by several memoirists, including those who lived here with Dostoevsky — his brother Andrey (“in Grafsky Lane, near the Vladimir Church, in the house of Pryanishnikov”), D.V. Grigorovich (“at the corner of Vladimirsky and Grafsky Lane”).

Based on these testimonies, the specific historical address can be restored using directories of the era. It is important to emphasize that until 1858, Vladimirsky Prospect did not yet appear on maps and plans of Petersburg: from Nevsky to the beginning of Zagorodny Prospect and Shcherbakov Lane, it was a continuation of Liteyny Prospect. Pryanishnikov’s house on Liteyny had the number 70. Several descriptions of Dostoevsky’s apartment have been preserved. Brother Andrey Mikhailovich wrote: “This apartment was very bright and cheerful; it consisted of three rooms, an anteroom, and a kitchen; the first room was common, like a reception room, on one side was my brother’s room, and on the other — a very small but completely separate little room for me”: “His apartment was on the second floor and consisted of four rooms: a spacious hallway, a small hall, and two more rooms; one of them was occupied by Fyodor Mikhailovich, and the others were completely unfurnished. In the narrow room where Fyodor Mikhailovich lived, worked, and slept, there was a writing desk, a sofa that served as his bed, and several chairs.” Dmitry Grigorovich and Konstantin Trutovsky visited him here. Trutovsky recalled: “On the table, on the chairs, and on the floor lay books and sheets of paper covered with writing.” According to D.V. Grigorovich, the apartment’s windows faced Grafsky Lane.

In the autumn of 1842, Andrey Dostoevsky moved out of the apartment, and soon Dostoevsky’s neighbor became his friend, a budding medic, Alexey Rizenkampf. Patients came to Rizenkampf — mostly poor people. Dostoevsky talked with them a lot, and here the very Petersburg with its basements, attics, tenement houses began to reveal itself to him, which we will constantly see later in the writer’s prose. Here he understood what he would write about. Many years later, in one of his articles, he called all this “A Vision on the Neva.”

“And then another story appeared to me — in some corners, some titular heart, honest, pure... and along with it some girl, insulted and sad, and their whole story deeply tore my heart apart.” This is Makar Devushkin and Varenka Dobroselova. Here Dostoevsky wrote the novel “Poor Folk”...

Dostoevsky lived in Pryanishnikov’s house from February–March 1842 until the end of 1845 or even the beginning of 1846. In 1971, a memorial plaque was installed on the house with the following text: “In this house from 1842 to 1845 lived Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky. Here he wrote the novel ‘Poor Folk.’”

A serious difficulty arises from the memoir testimony of Rizenkampf (known from Miller’s record): Dostoevsky “rented an apartment on Vladimirskaya in the house of the post director Pryanishnikov; Fyodor Mikhailovich liked the landlord very much — a well-known art lover, gentle, courteous, who never disturbed him about payment.” Rizenkampf himself lived with Dostoevsky from September 1843 to March 1844 in the house at the corner of Grafsky Lane, which adds additional weight to his testimony. But according to directories of the 1840s, the owner of the said house was Collegiate Councillor Konstantin Yakovlevich Pryanishnikov, while the Petersburg post director and simultaneously director of the postal department was Privy Councillor Fyodor Ivanovich Pryanishnikov (who lived in the Main Post Office building), indeed known as a bibliophile and collector of works of art.

Not knowing this contradiction, local historians and biographers of the writer often “combine” the landlord of Dostoevsky and the mythical post director K.Ya. Pryanishnikov. It is unknown whether there were any family relations between Privy Councillor Fyodor Ivanovich and Collegiate Councillor Konstantin Yakovlevich Pryanishnikov. Did the house somehow pass in the second half of the 1840s from the former to the latter? (Such an assumption would resolve the problem.) Did K.Ya. Pryanishnikov manage the house by proxy for his high-ranking namesake? Alas! The state of sources today does not allow us to offer even a hypothetical satisfactory resolution to this problem.

From May 19 to June 6, Dostoevsky took annual exams in differential and integral calculus, statics, physics, descriptive geometry, tactics, construction art, fortification, and drawing. The writer spent July 1842 in the village of Koltushi for practical training. The examiners noted that the work report journal “was hastily composed, it is clear that little effort was put into its preparation,” nevertheless, on August 11, 1842, Dostoevsky was awarded the rank of second lieutenant before the start of the next year of study.

Andrey failed to enter the Main Engineering School; on November 27 he was admitted to the School of Civil Engineers and moved out from Fyodor. During 1842, Dostoevsky worked on the drama “Boris Godunov,” the autograph of which “often lay on his desk,” so Andrey, living with him, “secretly read this work with youthful enthusiasm.” The work has not been preserved.

In the second half of 1842, Dostoevsky continued his studies in the higher officer class. From December 10 to 21, he successfully passed mid-year exams in jurisprudence, fortification, construction art, mineralogy, chemistry, theoretical mechanics, applied mechanics, and the law of God. On January 2, 1843, a review of drawings was held at the school. Dostoevsky’s letters from early 1843 show a continuing shortage of money. However, Alexander Rizenkampf in his memoirs noted an improvement in the writer’s financial situation: “In the spring of 1843, Fyodor Mikhailovich’s health began to improve. Apparently, his financial means also improved.”

In the spring of 1843, Dostoevsky read Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, “Le poète mourant” by Alphonse de Lamartine, French novelists: “Confession générale” by Frédéric Soulié, “Deux contes bruns” by Honoré de Balzac, “Japhet à la recherche d’un père” by Frédéric Marryat, and others. “When he had money, he took from the confectionery the latest issues of ‘Otechestvennye Zapiski,’ ‘Biblioteka dlya Chteniya,’ or another magazine, often subscribed to some library for Russian and French books that interested him. His favorite poems were: ‘Es kamen nach Frankreich zwei Grenadier’ by Heine and ‘Janko, der ungarische Rossshirt’ by K. Beck. During times of poverty (which was more often), he composed himself, and his writing desk was always covered with small but neatly written whole or torn sheets of paper.”

From May 20 to June 20, final exams were held at the Engineering School. On June 8, Dostoevsky requested a “twenty-eight-day leave to Revel to use the baths there,” recommended to him by the school doctor due to complaints of “chest pains and prolonged aches.” Having received leave from June 21 for 28 days, on July 1 he went to Mikhail in Revel, where he stayed until July 19. On August 6, he was commissioned into active service in the Engineering Corps. In August 1843, he completed the full course of studies in the higher officer class. He was enrolled in the engineering corps at the St. Petersburg engineering team.

Sources:

M. Basina: “The Life of Dostoevsky. Through the Twilight of the White Nights”

Boris Nikolaevich Tikhomirov: DOSTOEVSKY’S ADDRESSES IN PETERSBURG: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF SOURCES AND EXPERTISE OF LOCAL HISTORY PUBLICATIONS

http://family-history.ru/material/biography/mesto/dostoyevsky/vladimirskaya11/