Letter to Dostoevsky

an assignment from my summer theology grad school course on faith after deconstruction

Hello readers. I’ve decided to share my summer theology grad school assignment, for a course called Out of the Embers: Faith After the Great Deconstruction, based on a book by the same name written by Bradley Jersak. The Out of the Embers book presented Seven Philosophical Sleepers of Deconstruction in a discussion of deconstructing faith — Moses, Plato, Nietzsche, Weil, Voltaire, Kierkegaard, Dostoevsky.

The final assignment required us write a letter to one of the Seven Sleepers, (one of our choosing), discussing our experience of deconstruction in the context of the book. In referencing the work of the chosen Sleeper students could strengthen their reflection of the text and how it resonated with their personal deconstruction journey. The assignment intended for students to demonstrate their understand of the concepts and themes covered in the Out of the Embers book. Word limit: 875. I chose to write my letter to Dostoevsky, and I received a grade of A+ for my paper.

You’ll find my Letter to Dostoevsky below the graphic. I’ve included my references at the end.

Image credit: Gadarene swine throwing themselves off a cliff into water, representing the British Liberal Party. Colour lithograph by Tom Merry, 5 April 1884 via Welcome Collection.

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My dearest Fyodor,

The storm blinds, chaos has obliterated the roads. The Devil beckons us to follow. Demons sing a siren song. G-d has gone. The world feels dark and cold. We’ve lost our way. What should we do? Where has G-d gone? Where can I find Him? Fyodor, do you think G-d lurks in the hanging of Matryoshka? Why does G-d love us unceasingly, when we have killed Him so many times in our bid to live?

In the epigraph of your book, Demons, you have presented so deftly the two opposing forces that press upon the human condition — the terminal despair of nihilistic destruction and the eternal hope of redemptive deconstruction. Fyodor, did you know that you have received the distinct honour as the greatest novelist? The complexity of your characters and the fusing of affliction, demoniac chaos, nihilism, and redemption have proved inspiring and instructive for many students of the human condition, not least among them Sigmund Freud himself, the father of psychoanalysis. Perhaps Derrida may cringe when I say that, in my day and age, deconstruction and psychoanalysis cannot exist without one another.

I want to tell you that you have taken the simple Gospel story of the Gaderene Demonaic and breathed life into it, such that it shines a glaring and even tentatively hopeful light on a society crumbling under the weight of its own cultural deconstruction. Similarly, you’ve breathed life into an obscure (to a Westerner) Pushkin poem, such that it sounds a warning bell to a society suffering the chaos of its cultural deconstruction. Which path do we choose for ourselves, Fyodor? As individuals? As a collective?

I often find myself filled with dread that I may choose the Jesus way, whilst the society to which I belong will choose the Devil way. If I shake the dust off my feet, go into exile and leave the camp, unraveling and unbinding myself from the demonic chaos thrashing through my social environment, I have left Plato’s Cave, haven’t I? But, Fyodor, redemptive love demands that I return to the cave, that I end my self exile from the dark and dying world, and join the camp. I can only find the Tent of Meeting inside the camp! Choosing the Jesus way means I sit at the feet of Jesus, cleaving to Him with fierce faithfulness, as I resist joining the herd of swine diving off the cliff to their death.

In an 1873 article you wrote, “most innocent of people can be drawn into committing … a monstrous offense. And therein lies the real horror: that … one can commit the foulest and most villainous acts without in the least being a villain,” (Vinokur 2020). In that same article you confess that you yourself could have succumbed to the Nechaevist ideological infection. What’s the difference between deconstruction and ideological plague, Fyodor, and how would I know for my own society? This thought frightens me quite a lot, when I think of the horrific Russian revolution you prophesied in your novels. Can we stop the Snowpiercer? What if we cannot?

Fyodor, over the past three decades I have lost my religion with religion¹. I did not see G-d in those institutions or faith collectives. I tried, only to feel foolish and small when I began to see the vanity of my efforts. The brutal massacre that took place October 7, 2023 shook me to my core. So much so that I left the religion I thought so beautiful and full of mystical potential. As I watched mobs of humans of one peoples cheering the brutal slaughter of humans of another peoples, both sharing a piece of land 72 miles wide at its widest point, I marveled at the fragility of the human condition — how easy we can get swept into the foulest acts! Your work cautions me that these people I saw celebrating a pogrom could indeed have much goodness in them that takes them far from any villainy I want to attribute to them. Fyodor, that feels difficult to wrap my heart around. Alas, I live in a world at the edge of revolutionary transformation. Redemption demands my compassion. This necessitates an involuntary ongoing deconstruction.

In the small societal pocket in which I work, I see collapsed authority, imploding institutions, intellectual and moral anarchy. I watch helplessly as the bourgeoisie join forces with nihilistic idealogues to unleash destructive elements neither group can control. Life has lost its meaning, and suddenly a horrific outcome has become the envisioned final solution of a radical social experiment called harm reduction. In my work², I document the explosion of affliction of the vulnerable and marginalised—ranging from abject poverty and homelessness, to ravaging addiction that rots living bodies and devours living brains, to massive death tolls of young people. What began as liberation devolved into a despotic bondage. What if destigmatisation always only meant an abysmal indifference between good and evil?

Yours,

Roxanne Sukhan

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References

Adam Moody. 2021. “Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky.” https://tothehappynone.substack.com/p/demons-by-fyodor-dostoevsky?r=3hejw&utm_medium=ios&triedRedirect=true.

Anton Krutikov. 2024. “Dostoevsky’s Novels as a Deconstruction of Russian Reality.” https://antonkrutikov.medium.com/dostoevskys-novels-as-a-deconstruction-of-russian-reality-d740a80e62c2.

Bradley Jersak. 2022. Out of the Embers: Faith After the Great Deconstruction. New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House.

CodeX Cantina, dir. 2023a. Before You Read Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky - Book Summary, Analysis, Review | Devils, Possessed. Demons In-Depth Playlist.

CodeX Cantina, dir. 2023b. Demons - Part 1 by Fyodor Dostoevsky - Book Summary, Analysis, Review (Devils or The Possessed. Demons In-Depth Playlist.

CodeX Cantina, dir. 2023c. Demons - Part 2 by Fyodor Dostoevsky || In-Depth Book Summary, Analysis (Devils or The Possessed. Demons In-Depth.

CodeX Cantina, dir. 2023d. Demons - Part 3 by Fyodor Dostoevsky || In-Depth Book Summary, Analysis (Devils or The Possessed. Demons In-Depth.

CodeX Cantina, dir. 2023e. On “At Tikhon’s” Chapter | Demons by Fyodor Dostoevsky - Summary, Analysis (Devils or The Possessed). Demons In-Depth.

Constance Garnett, tran. 1916. THE POSSESSED or, The Devils A Novel In Three Parts. London: William Heinemann.

Demons – Alexander Pushkin. 1830. https://rvb.ru/pushkin/01text/01versus/0423_36/1830/0535.htm.

Ethel Colburn Mayne, tran. 1917. Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky to His Family and Friends. second. London: Chatto and Windus.

How Dostoevsky predicted Trump’s America. 2016. The Conversation, August 22.

Jacob Howland. 2021. “‘Demons’ at 150.” The Criterion, March.

Jeremy Smith. 1987. “Stavrogin’s Confession” and Religious Existentialism.” University of Dayton Review 18(3). https://ecommons.udayton.edu/udr/vol18/iss3/5.

Murr. 2010. “‘Demons’ Dostoevsky.” http://thelectern.blogspot.com/2010/06/v2.html?m=1.

R. Major. 2000. “‘Desistential’ Psychoanalysis.” European Journal of Psychoanalysis (10–11). https://www.journal-psychoanalysis.eu/articles/desistential-psychoanalysis/.

Simian_DustinP. 2021. “Can Someone Please Explain This Poem by Pushkin given at the Beginning of Demons by Dostoevsky.” https://www.reddit.com/r/RussianLiterature/comments/qlndkv/comment/hj46gmr/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button.

Val Vinokur. 2020. “Dostoevsky’s Demonologies of Terror.” Tablet, October 29.

1. In the southern USA losing my religion is a colloquialism meaning to be at the end of your rope, to be angry, or to lose control.

2. See my writing in the New Westminster Times, a local independent news outlet based in the lower mainland of BC.