Because Dostoevsky's works have had a lasting and far-reaching impact on the novel creation in the 20th century, realistic writers can draw beneficial nutrition from his works, so modernist writers regard his works as classics and call Dostoevsky their pioneer and mentor.

Dostoevsky influenced many writers in the 20th century, including Faulkner, Camus, Kafka and Kurosawa, a famous Japanese director of crime and punishment, but some people disdained him, such as Nabokov, Henry James and D·H· Lawrence. He, Tolstoy and Turgenev are also called the "Big Three" of Russian literature. Jiezhi Wang, a professor at Nanjing Normal University, said: "Turgenev looks at life with poetic eyes and shows beauty with poetic style. Tolstoy has the spirituality of a thinker and can see the whole picture of society. Dostoevsky, on the other hand, pays attention to the exploration of human nature and stares at its dark side.