Breaking the Bank: Gambling Casinos, Finance Capitalism, and German Unification

Abstract

In April 1867, Fyodor Dostoevsky left Russia for central Europe, in part to celebrate his marriage to Anna Gregorovich Snitkina, the young stenographer who had helped him compose The Gambler the previous fall. While that book freed him from the clutches of the publisher Stellovsky, who had advanced him money in exchange for a lien on his future works, it did not remove the larger financial destitution that threatened the new family, and fear of the debtor's prison clouded Dostoevsky's subsequent four-year sojourn in Europe. Residing first in Berlin and Dresden, he began to entertain thoughts of escaping his financial difficulties through gambling. In May, he traveled briefly to Bad Homburg; later, both he and Anna proceeded to Baden-Baden. Contrary to his hopes, life imitated art, and Dostoevsky was soon as hopelessly beset by the gambling demons as his fictional anti-hero, Alexei, and with as little success. By the end of the summer, he had pawned many of his and Anna's belongings and systematically lost the gifts sent from Russia by friends to bail them out. Finally on August 23, he managed to tear himself away from the tables. Over the next four years, he would gamble sporadically, but never with the same fervor he brought to Baden-Baden that summer. After returning to Russia in 1871, he gave up gambling entirely.