Just by reading my name you can tell which position I'm going to take on this issue, but, with that being said, I think you should not overlook Dostoevsky's greatness as an author.
I'm going to use Svidrigaylov from Crime and Punishment to make my point.
Svidrigaylov is a character quite unlike any other in literature. He is a despicable scoundrel and is mentioned a few times in the novel as possibly "ruining a poor girl's life." The girl, whom he possibly molested, which caused her to commit suicide. Moving on, in the Act V, Svidrigaylov has his series of dreams, one of which is where he approaches a young girl (I believe she was described as being around 8 years old), who is presumably trying to seduce him, and starts to "have desires" for her (this is obviously not a quote from the book, but for a lack of better diction to describe this scene). He recoils in his dream and wakes up in a sweat. He then proceeds to exit the room and in the early morning, finds "Achilles" and proceeds to "go to America" (I don't want to ruin the novel for anyone who hasn't read it, but if you HAVE read it, you'll understand exactly what I'm saying).
My point: Svidrigaylov is not only a horrible person, but a child molester (these are especially horrible people, I'm not willing to argue about this, but to put it in short: I think most people would rather hang out with a murderer than a pedophile...). With that being said, the final scene in which he "goes to America" is an incredible scene in literature because it is here, that Svidrigaylov, the character who has been described as being a horrible, remorseless person, finally regains the thing that is unique to us humans, a conscience, and realizes his wrongs. Here he is finally "redeemed" through "suffering" as Raskolnikov soon does, but in an incredibly different fashion.
Anyway, the point of that whole spiel is that Dostoevsky tackles issues like child molestation in such a way that is very mature and well-done. He is WAY ahead of his contemporary authors, and, I'd argue better than Tolstoy for this.
And for a brief point: Dostoevsky wrote most of his work in the 1840's and 1860's-1870's. His novel Notes From Underground displays an understanding of the human subconscious in a way that is unprecedented in literature. Keep in mind that Sigmund Freud didn't receive his M.D. until Dostoevsky had already died (1881). Friedrich Nietzsche was extremely impressed by the novel, claiming that "Dostoevsky is one of the few psychologists from whom I have learned something," and that Notes from Underground "cried truth from the blood".
So, in short: Stop ripping on Dostoevsky. He's the man.
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Originally Posted by DostoevskyFTW
