More on Sonya Kowalewski

[Richard Romeo]

Reading A Convergence of Lives by Ann Hibner Koblitz, c. 1983:

As a child Sonja was reported to have vivid nightmares and was deathly 
afraid of dolls and cats, a trait she shared with her older sister, Anuita, 
who lead a volatile life of her own--she wrote two stories in one of 
Doestoevski's failed attempts at publishing a literary magazine called Epoch 
in the 1860s--based on that Anuita beacme good friends with Fyodor, and 
speculation became rampant that she was his mistress.  Rumor has it that she 
was the real-life counterpart to the fictional Agalia Epanchina in the 
Idiot. She later joined the Paris Commune.

Sonya is often referred to being a child of the 60's, the 1860s in Russia 
being the time of progressive movements propigated by the intelligentsia who 
believed Russia needed to change politically, socially, culturally after its 
experiences in the Crimean War. The 1860s also saw the abolition of the 
serfs and the growth of "nihilism", which reflected the wish for change and 
not as it is understood today as a political theory or world outlook.  Blame 
it on Turgenev's Fathers and Sons.  But it was a decade of generational 
rifts.

More to come if you guys want

Rich
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