The Dostoyevsky-Romney connection

As Prince Myshkin settles in at Lebedov's dacha outside Petersburg during Part 2 of Dostoyevsky's "The Idiot," story takes a few twists: first, Myshkin, apparently pretty well recovered from his seizure and fall down the stairs (nobody says anything about a stab wound, so I guess his "encounter" with Rogozhin on the landing was part of his pre-seizure hallucinations?) hosts a very large gathering comprising the Epanchin clan, the Ivrogin (?) clan, some other visitors - way too many people, even for a Russian novel! This is one of those scenes that's unnecessarily daunting to an American reader - those names! It can't help but bring to mind the Woody Allen-Diane Keaton parody in his "Russian" movie - and the only way to get through it is to do what I did and dog-ear the helpful list of (main) characters at the front of the Pevear-Volokhonsky translation and refer back often. Once you get through the initial hours of this gathering, something really weird and interesting happens: a group of four has assembled outside and they demand to meet with Myshkin about some issue. Someone lets them inside, and they immediately assail Myshkin with the charge that he has appropriated his inheritance when in fact his benefactor left a son and heir who collected nothing - and they demand the M. turn (all of?) his fortune over to this bastard son. They get Kolya to read a very long polemic on this case, in which one of the four attacks the Russian nobility, the entire class system, etc. This shows Dostoyevsky at his most politically conservative and vitriolic - he absolutely despised radicals and nihilists, for their ideas and for their ruthless tactics. His portrayal of these four is savage, and the polemic that is read aloud is actually quite "spot on" in capturing the tone and tactics of many progressive publications, then and now. The group will no doubt remind many of the recent Occupy movement - ascetic, disheveled, strident, not very clear about any particular goal or issue - an all too easy target, and it's obvious that D. has no sympathy radical movements of any kind. This issue becomes considerably more apparent and dramatic in his most overtly political novel, The Devils or Demons. Here, after the group presents its demands, the Prince's ally Ganya gives a strong rebuttal: he's proven that the young man could not be the son of the Prince's benefactor. In fact, the young man is somewhat like the Prince earlier in the novel: socially awkward, not very articulate. There's even some joking that he is "the idiot." Clearly, the Prince will take on his double as some sort of cause - he will provide him with benefaction even though he owes him nothing - part of D's vision of a benevolent nobility taking care of the needs of society through its own generosity and charity. Would that it were so - similar to the Republican-Bush-Romney solutions for American social issues and inequities. Tolstoy got this right; Dostoyevsky is in a dream world.