Sir, - In his article "Andrea Corr and the Dostoevsky question: the facts" (Opinion, January 5th), Vincent Browne wrote about my own reported conversation with Andrea Corr about Dostoevsky concerning a "claim" which Browne claims to have been made by me: "But the claim that Dostoevsky was Pobedonostsev's `most trusted adviser on the implementation of anti-Jewish policy' following the assassination of Alexander II is codswallop. It is codswallop for the following reason: Dostoevsky was dead."
Unfortunately for Vincent Browne's contention, I never wrote that Dostoevsky was Pobedonostsev's adviser "following the assassination of Alexander II". The words in quotes there are Mr Browne's characteristic little gloss. What I actually wrote was: "After the assassination in 1881 of Tsar Alexander II, who had relieved some of the Jewish disabilities in the Russian Empire, the persecution of the Jews was resumed under Alexander III. The chief organiser of the persecution on behalf of the Tsar was Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev. In relation to the implementation of anti-Jewish policy, Pobedonostsev's most trusted adviser was Dostoevsky."
It is true that Dostoevsky died shortly before the assassination of Alexander II gave Pobedonostsev the opportunity of implementing the programme which he had been preparing with Dostoevsky's aid before the assassination. But no one could doubt that the programme on which the two men had worked together would have had the enthusiastic support of Dostoevsky, as soon as the opportunity offered.
I stand over the substance of what I wrote as against Vincent Browne's version of what I wrote. - Yours, etc.,
Conor Cruise O'Brien, Howth, Co Dublin.