Did The GOAT love animals too?

Tolstoy was a vegetarian. But what about Dostoevsky?

You might know Leo Tolstoy as the verbose novelist whose outrageously long opus – “War and Peace” – was assigned to you by a sadistic English teacher.

But you should have warm, fuzzy thoughts about Tolstoy. He was one of the world’s most prominent proponents of vegetarianism in his day. He advocated for a meat-free diet for ethical reasons.

Believe it or not, when I first learned this, I winced. I just happen to be a huge fan of Tolstoy’s peer at the pinnacle of Russian literature, the formidable Fyodor Dostoevsky.

In my humble opinion, Dostoevsky, in the history of world literature, is The GOAT. (How wonderful is it that a beloved animal has become the acronym for Greatest of All Time?)

But if The GOAT did not match, or at least approach, Tolstoy’s love of animals, I might have had to rethink my writer rankings and tear down the Dostoevsky posters from my bedroom wall. 

Fortunately, upon further reading of The GOAT's work, I discovered I had nothing to fear. Dostoevsky loved animals, too!

You could probably do a Ph.D dissertation on the subject of Dostoevsky and animals. Perhaps someone has. 

But, for the sake of brevity, I’ll cite vivid examples from three of his works, including his two most celebrated novels. 

In his short story “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man,” the slumbering narrator encounters an ideal form of humanity in a dream. These ideal humans live in peace with animals. But at the end of the dream, the narrator corrupts these angelic beings. Morally defiled, these formerly-ideal people “began torturing animals, and the animals withdrew from them into the forests and became hostile to them.”

Dostoevsky, who was intimately familiar with the Bible, seems to have based this story on the Book of Genesis. Humans, in the Genesis story, started as vegans and as companions to the animals. But after humans became defiled, the animals began to fear and dread them. 

This much we can say for sure: Dostoevsky’s paints an ideal of living in peace with animals. 

Now let’s turn to “Crime and Punishment,” his most famous novel. 

The main character is Raskolnikov, an embittered law-school dropout who murders a pawnbroker. (That’s the crime.)

Interestingly, the novel never explicitly explains what made Raskolnikov such a misanthrope in the first place. However, in the narrative, right before the murder, Raskolnikov has a dream that suggests a reason. The dream is a flashback to a traumatic incident that the murderer experienced as a child. 

In the incident, Raskolnikov and his father encounter a pack of drunks emerging from a tavern. One of the drunks begins savagely beating his horse; other drunks cheer him on. As the horse lays dying, the young Raskolnikov, with tears in his eyes, walks up to the horse and kisses him on his muzzle.

Needless to say, this is a highly disturbing but moving scene. In my reading of “Crime and Punishment,” Dostoevsky presented this dream to show that cruelty to animals kindled Raskolnikov’s contempt for humanity. 

The new Penguin Classics edition of “Crime and Punishment” vividly draws this connection through its choices for cover art. The front cover features an illustration of Raskolnikov as he appeared seconds after the murder. On the back cover, we see an illustration of the horse incident.

Last but not least, let’s take a look at Dostoevsky’s crowning achievement, the magnificent “The Brothers Karamazov.”

The story about the horse makes another appearance, albeit in a different context. But Dostoevsky goes much further, essentially riffing on the vision he presented in “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man.”

Right after the iconic “Grand Inquisitor” scene in the novel, we find Father Zosimov, the spiritual mentor of Alyosha Karamazov, on his deathbed, recalling his life story and describing his theological ideals.

“Love the animals,” Father Zosimov tells the monks who have gathered in his bedroom to pay their final respects.

“God gave animals the beginning of thought, and serene joy,” he said. “Do not disturb it, do not torment them, do not take away their joy, do not oppose God’s purpose.

“Man, do not feel superior to the animals; they are sinless, while you, with your pride, defile the Earth with your presence and leave filthy traces everywhere – alas, almost every one of us.”

I wanted to stand and cheer when I read Father Zosimov’s “sermon.” 

This means, of course, that Dostoevsky’s position as The GOAT is solidified. The posters stay.