Izdrastveti. Hi everyone, I’m Matt. Thank you for watching. Brothers Karamazov is considered one of the greatest and most profound Russian novels of all time. But what’s is story? Why is it important? What are the three main philosophies discussed? What was Dostoevsky’s purpose in writing it? And why Vladimir Putin calls it his favourite novel? And what are some of its weaknesses? And finally what’s it really about? This is a summary and analysis of the Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Often called his magnum opus, Brothers Karamazov was Dostoevsky’s last novel—published one year before his death in 1881, but it’s also his longest novel, almost twice the length of his other famous novel Crime and Punishment, which I have already summarised here. First, I will give a full summary and then

give a few points of analysis, mainly the three major philosophies that run through the novel. At the end, I will tell you Dostoevsky’s main purpose in writing this novel, which might surprise you. Summary. First, let me tell you that the plot of The Brothers Karamazov is a murder, in which the father is killed, but we don't know which son has killed him. But that’s the surface-level story; it goes much deeper into religion, philosophy, and psychology. These are staples of Dostoevsky’s themes. Before I go any further, let’s meet the Karamazov family, perhaps the most dysfunctional family in Russia. The father is Fyodor Karamazov, who has three kids from two marriages. He’s also got an illegitimate fourth son who also plays a major role in the plot. Fyodor Karamazov is not the best father in

Russia. He prefers to enjoy life instead of taking 
care of his kids. His philosophy is that life is   short, you might as well enjoy it. As a result of 
this hands-off approach to raising kids, he has   three very different sons with very contrasting 
worldviews and personalities. The eldest is   Dmitri, who is most similar to his father. He loves 
alcohol and women, so when he grows up, he demands   his father for his share of the family’s wealth 
so he can get married. This father-son conflict   starts off the whole drama of this novel. His 
second son, Ivan, is an intellectual who questions   why there is so much suffering in this world. 
So, he concludes that the almighty doesn't exist,   otherwise he wouldn't allow so much suffering 
or this god is not good and compassionate, that   allows innocent children dying. Ivan is perhaps 
the young Dostoevsky himself who was drawn to   atheism and western ideas at the time. His third 
son and the youngest, Alyosha, is the protagonist.

of the novel. He is a good-hearted religious boy 
who spends a lot of time in the church with an old priest, called Father Zosima. Fyodor Karamazov, 
the father, also has a fourth son, out of wedlock Pavel Smerdyakov who is employed as a servant 
in the family. He’s not considered very bright so gets easily influenced by the atheist Ivan. So 
the father and his four sons are the main family in the novel. I wonder why Dostoevsky didn't 
give Karamazov a daughter? Perhaps with a female presence they might have been less dysfunctional, 
therefore less interesting as a story. There are so many characters in the novel but 
the father and his three legitimate sons and one bastard son are the main characters in the story. 
Father Zosima is a priest who counter-balances Ivan’s atheism and also a mentor to Alyosha, the 
youngest Karamazov. The two main female characters

are two young women, Grusha, and Katya, who are romantically involved with Dmitri, the eldest Karamazov. At the end of the novel, both women turn somewhat religious thanks to the works by Alyosha. The main plot of the novel revolves around money. Specifically, family inheritance. The eldest son Dmitri demands his share of the family money so he can get married to his fiancé, but his father, Fyodor, refuses. Why? It turns out the father and his son Dmitri love the same woman, Grusha. Grusha, on her part, plays the two men against each other and enjoys watching them tear each other apart. It turns out Grusha was hurt by some other men so this is her revenge on men. But she also gets jealous as Dmitri gets engaged to Katya, another prominent female character in the novel. Then we have a few very long detours in the novel in which Dostoevsky tells us separate

stories. In fact, Dostoevsky wrote these stories 
in different periods in his life and then patched   them together here. Why? Because he knew it would 
be his final novel before his death a year later. The first of this sub-plot stories is about 
a little boy, Ilyusha—not to be confused   with the main character Alyosha. Ilyusha 
is bullied by his peers and later dies of   humiliation caused by Dmitri Karamzov 
attacking the little boy’s father.   I will tell you later why childhood was 
perhaps the important theme in the novel. Another major subplot is the story of the Grand 
Inquisitor who is visited by Jesus to tell him to   curb his brutality against non-Christians. As you 
know, in the 15th century during the inquisition   in Europe, thousands of Jews and Muslims were 
forced to convert to Christianity and those who   refused were burnt alive or killed in horrific 
ways. So Dostoevsky tries to answer whether force

is justified in putting people in line. So here 
Jesus returns to tell the Grand Inquisitor that his actions are not justified. You cannot kill 
or torture people to make them Christian. But the Grand Inquisitor turns the table and imprisons 
Jesus to teach him that Jesus is too idealistic and has no understanding of human nature. He tells 
Jesus that force is needed to turn humans into good humans. If left to their own device as in 
free will, humans turn nasty. I guess this might be due to Dostoevsky reading Darwin that humans 
are basically beasts and it was society, mainly religion, that civilised them. Without force 
they cannot find the right path, so free will is not the answer, but social force is necessary 
to make people become good. Here it’s a good time for me to tell you that the Brothers Karamazov 
is Vladimir Lenin’s, oops, I mean Vladimir

Putin’s favourite novel. You might ask why? First, 
Dostoevsky disliked the west for corrupting the Russian soul. So does Putin. Second, Dostoevsky 
leaves the question of authority and free will somewhat ambivalent. So sometimes to safeguard 
a society, free will must be crushed. Putin as an authoritarian ruler himself believes in force 
to discipline bad behaviour. Just like the Grand Inquisitor, Putin believes in strongman’s 
rule. He doesn't care about free will or freedom of speech. Okay, back to the story. This 
story is told to Alyosha but it is meant to teach Ivan the atheist that rationality cannot 
beat love. Jesus represents love and Grand Inquisitor is the symbol of rational thinking. 
Love triumphs over science and reason so to speak. A third sub-plot is the story of Father Zosima who 
was a young rebel but was saved by his Christian

faith. Later in the novel when he dies, his 
followers expect his body not to decay due to his religious piety, but soon the smell is so terrible 
that shakes everyone’s faith in his holiness, but also religious faith as a whole. Nobody 
is more devastated than his protégé, Alyosha, the young Karamazov. But then he meets Grusha, 
Dmtri’s romantic interest who restores his faith. A little female touch, I suppose, helps Alyosha 
to continue in spreading his message of love. Nothing sexual, but more a religious connection. 
This is the same in Crime and Punishment when Raskolnikov meets Sonia, he feels unburdened 
and ultimately agrees to confess his crime. I think Dostoevsky believed that women, in general, 
healed troubled men. So now we know that Karamazov family was dysfunctional precisely because 
there was no female presence in the family.

Now let’s return to the main plot. Dmitri is tired 
of dealing with his father and decides to run away with his lover Grusha. But she has disappeared. 
Here Dmitri panics, thinking that she might have chosen his father as a lover instead. Why? The 
father has all the money while Dmitri is broke. Dmitri goes to his father’s house with a pestle 
as a weapon to attack his father. Dostoevsky here plays a trick where the story is suddenly stopped. 
So the next time we see Dmitri, he attacks a servant who tries to stop him from fleeing the 
house. The servant also accuses him of killing his father, Fyodor Karamzov. Soon the police arrest 
Dmitri and charges him for the murder of his own father. What’s the evidence? A witness seeing him 
flee the house and a pestle as a weapon. But the

damning evidence is that a lot of money is missing, 
and Dmitri suddenly has a huge stack of cash with him. He tries to explain that this money belongs 
to his fiancé, but the police are not convinced. Meanwhile, Alyosha, the youngest Karamzov, 
continues to spread his goodness and love. He meets Kolya, a young boy who is westernised 
and radicalised without really understanding these western philosophies like 
atheism, socialism, and nihilism. On the other hand, we have the atheist Ivan, who 
is depicted as having a negative influence on those around him, one person in 
particular, Pavel Smerdyakov, his bastard brother who confesses to Ivan that he 
actually killed his father and stole the money. So Dmitri is innocent. Ivan asks 
Smerdyakov why kill his father? He says because earlier Ivan had told him that 
in the absence of god, anything was permissible.

So in a sense, Ivan is also implicated in the 
murder of his own father. Here we see Ivan turning into Raskolnikov, terrorised by his own 
demons, delirium, and insanity because deep down he knows he is responsible for the murder too by 
influencing Smerdyakov that there was no god and any act was permissible. Later, Ivan learns that 
Pavel has committed suicide, which relieves him that now he cannot be implicated in the murder. 
Dmitri is tried and found guilty in court. The whole trial exposes the nastiness and resentment 
of those involved. Dostoevsky shows how irrational human beings really are when it comes to the justice 
system. It’s not about justice but revenge. The justice system is also corrupt because it 
sends Dmitri, an innocent man to prison. Dmitri is sentenced to 20 years of hard labour 
in… you guessed it, Siberia. Siberia is a place

where bad people are corrected in Russia. Good people stay in the city, and bad people are sent to the cold. If you do something bad in Russia, just be prepared to live in the cold of Siberia for a few years. Dmitri has a plan to escape to America and then years later return to Russia under a different name. But we don't know if he manages to do that or not. Alyosha still continues to spread his religious love, mostly among young boys. Ivan, the atheist, goes mad and is taken to hospital. So to conclude the Brothers Karamazov, the father, Fyodor Karamazov, the rich pleasure-seeker is murdered. His eldest son Dmitri, also a pleasure seeker, is found guilty despite the fact that he is innocent. Here Dostoevsky shows that we suffer no matter whether we are guilty or not because life is suffering. Poor people around the world live in terrible conditions, not of their own fault.

His second son, Ivan, the rational atheist, 
goes insane. Irony there. His bastard son, Pavel, the real murderer, commits suicide. For 
Dostoevsky, the guilty brother is Ivan, the atheist, as it was he who influenced Pavel that anything 
is permissible, including murder. His youngest son, the protagonist of the novel, Alyosha, continues 
to spread his religious message of love. Dostoevsky wanted to show him as his ideal reader, 
as he is young and somewhat innocent and naïve, as he watches different ideologies and outlooks 
collide so he can learn how to live his life, which is to love everyone, no matter if 
you’re guilty or innocent, poor or rich, bad or good. At the end of the novel, 
the young kids who bullied a child attend the funeral of the young victim to show 
remorse. This shows that no matter how small an action of bullying or even insulting words 
can have huge consequences in someone’s life.

One must take responsibility for their actions, no matter how trivial it may seem. Analysis: The writing is very fluent, conversational and improvised. But also messy, perhaps telling us that Dostoevsky had a cluttered mind, with many philosophies and ideas in some titanic battle inside his head. You don't want to be in Dostoevsky’s head. Dostoevsky shows his love for the ordinary people here. Dmitri despite chasing women, money, and alcohol has an honesty that Dostoevsky admires. He finds the intellectual Ivan secretive, dishonest, and coward. Today we see those negative traits in bankers, politicians, clever people who play the system so well that they never get caught, and usually the ordinary people who pay the price for the actions of those smart but selfish people. Dmitri gets sent to jail, not Ivan who masterminded the whole thing. So usually the innocent pays the price.

I think for Dostoevsky, reason and rational thinking don't make your life easier. Psychologically speaking, of course. Materially speaking, rationality makes life easier by inventing tools and techniques for an easier life. But when it comes to psychological happiness, Dostoevsky prefers less rationality but more naivety. Why? Guilt only comes when you knowingly do something. Intelligence makes your life more complicated, and smart people are less happy than those who are naive. It's simplistic to say that Dostoevsky agrees that ignorance is bliss. But he definitely thinks knowing too much makes your life harder. This runs in his other novels too, most clearly in The Idiot. Dostoevsky famously said that consciousness was a disease. So according to Dostoevsky, we should curb our intelligence, curb our knowledge, and have faith and trust in people and the world around us.

Don't question everything. The only thing 
you should question is… western ideologies. 150 years later, now it’s the west that questions 
Russia. Putin on the other hand doesn't ask too   many question. He simply does. No matter 
what. He even wrestles a bear. Or a tiger.   Life’s tough in the cold of Russia, so you 
need a strong leader to lead you in a perilous   world. A survivor’s mentality is that you need 
food and shelter. Free speech is meaningless.   Stomach first, before freedom. Philosophies:
Three main philosophies are present in the novel. First, on the left we have Ivan who is an atheist 
and represent western Enlightenment philosophy of   rationalism. He believes that everything should be 
scientifically proven before he can trust it. His   main question is why there is so much suffering 
in the world, especially innocent children dying.   Either god doesn't exist or if he does exist he is 
not a good god to allow so much pain. Dostoevsky,

by depicting Ivan going insane at the end of the novel, believes rationalism ultimately leads to nihilism. Around the same time Nietzsche the German philosopher had the same conclusion, but Nietzsche offers art as an answer to the problem of nihilism. Dostoevsky has love as an antidote. The second philosophy is hedonism, which is a middle ground for Dostoevsky. We have Fyodor the father and Dmitri represent a more hedonistic philosophy of life where the focus is more on pleasures of life, that life is short, you have got to enjoy it. But this also brings violence in the mix as you are less careful and less responsible. Romanticism in Europe grew in response to industrial revolution and the Enlightenment philosophy of rationalism. They focused on the emotions and passions which is creative but also can be volatile and even violently destructive.

And finally, the third philosophy is religious faith on the right, as we have Alyosha and Father Zosima who believe in religious faith. A bit dogmatic but also they believe in love as the only way to treat others. Dostoevsky leans towards religion here. He was on his deathbed so it was perhaps his way of redeeming himself. Somewhat similar to George Orwell, who also turned religious at the end of his life, which I discussed in my video 10 lessons from Orwell. Having said that, Dostoevsky also questions religious absolutism, so there are many scenes where religious faith as dogma is robustly questioned. The most famous scene is Father Zosima’s body putrefying, much to the dismay of his followers. So Dostoevsky didn't believe in saints, nor in pure evil. He thought every human being was capable of both, and one has to constantly battle to keep the balance.

Both on the left and right, human idealism is the main theme. Atheism and religious faith are human idealised views, thus less practical. In the middle, you have a more animalistic pleasure-seeking people who don't fight their carnal desires. For Dostoevsky, idealism is not the answer but being responsible towards fellow human beings matters the most. The responsibility to act well. In a way, Dostoevsky promotes naivety or innocence and love for everyone. Weaknesses: My biggest criticism is that The Brothers Karamazov is not focused enough. There are too many subplots so this can make the reading a bit tough for today’s readers. If you condense the main story, you would probably get about 500 pages, not the current 1000 pages. As I said, several of the stories were written years earlier and he patched them together here as he knew it would be his last novel. He died a year

after its publication. In the same way, 2666 by Roberto Bolano puts five novels into one. Another thing that most people miss is that Dostoevsky wrote this as a childhood novel, which is not clearly elaborated until the very end so this can make those early children’s sections a bit tedious to read. Another weakness might be its religious tone for those who are not religious. If you’re a Christian reader, you might enjoy but readers who are not religious, may find the Grand Inquisitor section a bit tedious. Having said that, the novel is very deep and nuanced and the plot very intriguing. Another big pain in the butt is Russian names. This is not only in Brothers Karamazov but in all old Russian novels. Each character has like 4-8 different names depending who is calling them. For example Alyosha whose name is Alexei is called

Alyoshka, Alyoshenka, Alyoshechka, Alexeichik, Lyosha, and Lyoshenka. Also the more names a character has, the more important they are in the novel. Alyosha has 8, Dmitri 5, and Ivan 4. Final words: The ultimate message of Brothers Karamazov is this. It’s better to be naïve or even stupid but good than smart, successful but bad. In a way, Dostoevsky didn't like how capitalism’s focus on ruthlessness and material success was ruining the innocence that permeated the simple lives of Russian peasants. Now, as promised at the beginning of this video, I will answer what the Brothers Karamazov is really about. In this final novel, Dostoevsky was looking back at his own childhood, the innocence of 1820s, 200 years ago, away from the messy world of adulthood, western ideas, and

Siberian experience, gambling, and tons of other 
shitty things that grown-ups get involved in. Dostoevsky knew he was dying soon so he wanted 
to tell other Russians that life is too short to do stupid revolutionary ideas to tear each other 
apart for money. A simple life is all you need. He wanted to take Russians to those good old days of 
simplicity and naivety. So the Brothers Karamazov is a novel of childhood. And Dostoevsky wrote it 
to preserve the childhood innocence that we lose when we grow up and learn the sinister world of 
adulthood, and we spend the rest of our lives to restore that childhood naivety but never manage. 
In other words, once you see it, you cannot unsee it. That’s it. So Dostoevsky tells us not to see 
everything. Not to question everyone. Blind trust can cause suffering, but it’s good in the long 
term. In a way, it is similar to Proust’s novel.

In Search of Lost Time, in which Proust went back 
to his magical world of his childhood wonders, 
to recapture the lost time. The magic of not 
knowing the cynicism of this world. The magic 
of simplicity. So the Brothers Karamazov 
is a novel about the magic of childhood. Next, watch my summary of Crime and Punishment 
is here. 8 Lessons from Dostoevsky here.

Brothers Karamazov-Dostoevsky's Ultimate Message to the World

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