Fyodor Dostoevsky

Fyodor Dostoevsky, (PROSE: Gudok) or Dostoyevski, was a Russian writer (PROSE: The Least Important Man) who wrote Crime and Punishment. Turlough read his book on the train to St Petersburg in 1904. (PROSE: Gudok)

Dostoyevki was, as Gavin Scott described him, "that Russian who wasn't Tolstoy". According to Scott, Dostoyevski also once wrote something to the effect of:

"If you could design the perfect future for everybody, with peace and love and central heating and everything, and all you had to do to bring it about was torture to death one tiny, innocent creature, would you consent to be the architect under those conditions?" (PROSE: The Least Important Man)

In a parallel universe, the Unbound Doctor claimed to have met Dostoyevsky. According to a story the Doctor told, Dostoyevsky taught him a trick whereby one asked another not to think of a polar bear. As the Third Doctor of that universe later relayed to Guilana, his psychiatrist, such a task was impossible; the mind will always conjure up precisely the opposite of its intentions.

The Doctor admitted that, whenever he tried this out, he always ended up seeing Dostoyevski's beard, or sometimes a polar bear wearing Dostoyevsky's beard. However, Bernice Summerfield may have been the inspiration for this story. (AUDIO: Asking for a Friend)