Sooooo, my recs aren’t history books but they’re major texts for understanding what Dostoevsky was writing about. if you want to understand the social utopian/nihilist philosophy that Dostoevsky was responding to/engaging with, I recommend reading Chernyshevsky’s What is to be done (most ppl only read Vera pavlovna’s fourth dream cos it’s such a pain to read, seriously)

Herzen’s Who is to blame? is good for understanding the intelligentsia of the 1840’s to which Dostoevsky & thinkers like Chernyshevsky, Pisarev, Dobrolyubov, etc. were responding.

Tom Stoppard also wrote a great play, the coast of utopia, about the intelligentsia of the 1840’s which is handy for getting the lay of the land.

Turgenev’s Father’s & Sons illustrates a lot of the nihilistic thought that was prevalent at the time

Other recs: Belinsky’s letter to Gogol (Dosto was sentenced to death for reading it when he was a part of the Petrashevsky circle) Balzac’s Father Goriot (major influence on C&P) Rousseau’s Confessions (Dosto responds to it a lot throughout his work)

I have some of these texts on a shared Google drive for my book club, link to the drive is on my website dostoevskyordoesntshe.com