The article examines how the center of the «Russian space» by Thomas Mann shifts from L.N. Tolstoy towards F.M. Dostoevsky in the mid-1940s while he was working on Doctor Faustus (1947) and the preface for the American edition of selected works of Dostoevsky (1945) – in the historical context of a turning point during the Second World War. It also gives a brief overview of domestic research on intertextual relations be-tween Doctor Faustus and some works of F.M. Dostoevsky, and notes sig-nificant parallelism between dynamics of Adrian Leverkühn’s «falling away from God» in chapters XIV–XXV of the novel, Thomas Mann’s ad-dressing to some Dostoevsky’s works and development of the Soviet army's counteroffensive to the West in 1944–1945 (as presented by Thomas Mann in «The story of a novel: the genesis of “Doctor Faustus”», 1949).
Russian-German literary relations; the German reception of 19th century Russian literature; Thomas Mann; Dostoevsky; «Doctor Faustus»; Solomon Apt.