[The following takes place in December 1849 in Imperial Russia. Here, the later-famed Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky and a group of his friends were sentenced to be executed by the Russian Tsar, Nicholas I, for freely expressing their thoughts on myriad intellectual subjects, including the deplorable conditions of the Russian serf class.]
On the appointed day, the condemned were taken to the place of execution at Semenovsky Square, where the tree stakes had been erected for the occasion. “The horrible, immeasurably horrible minutes of awaiting death began,” Dostoevsky wrote. “It was cold, so terribly cold. They removed not only our coats, but our jackets. And it was minus twenty degrees.”
As Dostoevsky and the others stood shivering upon a black-draped scaffold awaiting their fate, the condemned men of the first group were tied to the stakes and hoods placed over their heads. “We were taken in threes,” the writer recalled. “I was in the second group. I had no more than a minute left to live.” Yet just as the firing squad raised their rifles and took aim, a sudden reprieve came from the Emperor. Rather than a lethal lesson in the perils of independent thought, it was a cruel charade with the same message, orchestrated by Nicholas himself.
”I received the news of the termination of the execution dully,” Dostoevsky remembered. “There was no joy at returning to the living. People around me were shouting and making noise. But I didn’t care. I had already lived through the worst. Yes, the very worst. Wretched Grigoryev went mad… How did the others survive? I don’t know. We didn’t even catch cold.”
It was only after being returned to his prison cell that Dostoevsky came to fully embrace the joy of having his life restored – even though he now faced four years of hard labor in Siberia, followed by a forced induction into the army. He was alive. And Russian literature would be far richer for it.
Source:
Farquhar, Michael. “Chapter 10 – Nicholas I (1825-1855): “A Condescending Jupter”.” Secret Lives of the Tsars: Three Centuries of Autocracy, Debauchery, Betrayal, Murder, and Madness from Romanov Russia. Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2014. 181-82. Print.
Further Reading:
Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky (Russian: Фёдор Михайлович Достоевский)
Nicholas I (Russian: Николай I Павлович, tr. Nikolay I Pavlovich)
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