November 16

Fyodor Dostoevsky was a prominent and very vocal member of the revolutionary group the Petrashevsky Circle. Quite often, he found himself at odds with Tsar Nikolai 1. So great was Nikolai’s displeasure with Dostoevsky that he ordered the arrest of him and other members of the group; which was done on April 23, 1849. All were and charged with a variety of anti-government activities. On the 16th of November, Dostoevsky together with other members of The Circle were convicted and sentenced to death; sentence to be carried out immediately. Dostoevsky and his colleagues were led out of the courtroom and were lined up in the snow so that they could be executed by firing squad. At the last moment, the Tsar commuted Dostoevsky’s sentence to four years of exile to the Katorga prison camp at Omsk, Siberia. Unfortunately, when asked for his last words, Dostoevsky chose to read from The Brothers Karamazov. When he got to to page 312 the men in the firing squad shot themselves in the head because they just could not take Dostoevsky’s reading any more.