The famous Russian writer Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky he was born into a relatively well-to-do family. His father was a doctor at the Moscow Poor Hospital and had managed to earn enough money to buy land and serfs. After his death, however, things changed quite a bit. Dostoyevsky studied military engineering and worked as a civil servant while secretly writing novels. The first two were published in 1846, the first of which met with considerable success, which was not the case with the second.
At the same time, Dostoyevsky became a member of a radical group of intellectuals, the so-called Petrasevsky Circle. The Circle consisted of intellectuals and writers who shared radical ideas about government and religion. Tsar Nicholas I was informed of the anti-monarchist spirit of the discussions within this group, with the result that in April 1849, the 27-year-old Dostoyefksy and other members were arrested by the Tsarist police. They were accused that the political views they were spreading – using their illegal printing press – were “dangerous” and that their propaganda was anti-monarchist, with the ultimate goal of overthrowing the tsar. In fact, their arrest captures the climate of uncertainty and fear that prevailed in Tsarist Russia, as an offshoot of the wave of European revolutions of 1848.
On November 16, 1849, Dostoyevsky was sentenced to death, along with 21 members of the Petrasevsky Circle and Spesniev’s secret society.
For eight months, Dostoyevsky remained imprisoned in bleak conditions in the Saint Peter and Paul Fortress in Saint Petersburg, and on November 16, 1849, he was sentenced to death, along with 21 members of the Petrashevsky Circle and Spesniev’s secret society. On December 22, the condemned were taken by carriage to Semyonov Square – now called Pionerskaya Ploschad – where they were forced to kneel and embrace the cross. However, it was a “virtual execution”. Unbeknownst to the men awaiting execution, the tsar had already pardoned them the day before. Nevertheless, preparations for the execution were allowed to continue for a rather twofold reason: the display of mercy on the part of the ruler and the awe and gratitude of his subjects. The condemned were informed when a messenger from the tsar arrived with a white flag, reading the pardon Nicholas had granted them.
Grace, however, did not mean freedom. Instead, it meant transportation to labor camps in Siberia. Dostoyevsky served four years of hard labor in a prison in Omsk, Siberia, during which his hands and feet were bound. He was released on February 14, 1854, but forced to complete compulsory military service. In March of the same year, he moved to Semipalatinsk, on the Mongolian front, where he served with the Siberian Army Corps of the Seventh Line Battalion.
He faced problems of a personal and financial nature.
He married and finally returned to Russia in 1859. Soon, however, his living conditions would become difficult again. He faced problems of a personal nature – in 1864 and 1865 his wife and brother died – but also of a financial nature as he faced a gambling addiction. Literarily, however, Dostoyevsky would know success. In 1866 he published “Crime and Punishment”, one of his most popular works. In 1869, “The Idiot” was published, where the experience of his “virtual” condemnation is captured, while in 1880 he published “The Brothers Karamazov”, which also met with immediate great success. He died the following year at the age of 60.
Column editor: Myrto Katsigera, Vassilis Minakakis, Antigoni-Despina Poimenidou, Athanasios Syroplakis
