‘Insulted and humiliated’ is one of F. M. Dostoyevsky’s recurrent themes. It remains up-to-date in the last period of his creative work related to Staraya Russa. This town became the prototype of Skotoprigonievsk from The Brothers Karamazov and the small town Afimievsk from the novel The Adolescent. In Dostoyevsky’s letters, in his wife’s memoires, in the reports of the writer’s friends from Staraya Russa there crop up the recollections of the citizens, who can be considered the prototypes of the ‘insulted and humiliated’ in these novels.
