cRiMe and PuniShment

Dostoyevsky wrote his first great novel in 1866. Its central character is the former law student Raskolnikov, who becomes intoxicated by his sense of superiority, which leads him to take the administration of justice into his own hands and murder two people. Alongside philosophical-religions discourses, the pitiless contradiction in social themes is central to the novel.

In 2020, Ene-Liis Semper and Tiit Ojasoo use the same novel to study the phenomenon of crime in an individual context. This becomes a springboard for them on topics such as: where is the conscience of globalised society? Who are the authors of the rules and laws in a world where different religions, cultures and political systems collide? Is there such a thing as morals nowadays? And what kind of role does individual power actually play in connection with legislation that is in effect?

‘Crime? What crime? That I killed a vile, noxious insect, an old pawnbroker woman, of use to no one! Killing her was atonement for forty sins. She was sucking the life out of poor people. Was that a crime?’

That is the kind of bravado with which one of the best-known characters of world literature, the impoverished student Raskolnikov, boasts, yet in A. H. Tammsaare’s translation, this story written over 150 years ago sounds as if it has just been written today, for us.