December 22: On
this day in 1849 twenty-eight-year-old Fyodor Dostoevsky was, at the last
moment, granted pardon from a mock-execution orchestrated by Czar Nicholas I.
Dostoevsky had been arrested eight months earlier for belonging to an
underground group of political revolutionaries—"champions of communism and
new ideas," as the authorities put it. Imprisoned in the Peter-Paul
Fortress (run by a General Nabokov, relative of Vladimir), most in the group
expected to receive a few months exile or some such wrist-slap for their
idealistic talk. Instead they fell victim to a macabre drama staged personally
by the Czar as a way of instilling loyalty, gratitude, and fear in his wayward
subjects.
The group was awakened without notice and transported to the
execution site in fetters and shrouds. A priest in burial vestments met them,
an officer read the charges and death sentences, a cross and confession were
offered, a drum-roll began to play as the first three condemned were hooded and
tied to their posts, each one with a cart and coffin behind. Being in the
second group of three, Dostoevsky watched, hoping for the miracle of a
reprieve, and then wanting only for the end to come quickly. And then, with
rifles already raised and sighted, the charade did end: someone rushed in
waving a white cloth, a carriage rolled into the courtyard, a letter from the
Czar announced mercy. The prisoners were then led away to their real
sentences—four years in Siberia and indefinite military service in Dostoevsky's
case.
The experience profoundly affected Dostoevsky. A letter
written later the same day to his brother talks of being "reborn for the
better," of pledging himself "to be a man among men, to be a man
always, not to allow oneself to be broken, to fall." His life was affected
in more tangible ways also. In Dostoevsky:
Reminiscences, Anna Dostoevsky tells the story of being hired by the author
in 1866—she a twenty-two-year-old stenographer on her first job, he forty-eight
and already famous for Crime and
Punishment. On the first day she found him so stern and sour that she was
tempted to quit; on day two, over tea and pears, he told the tale of his
mock-execution in such a way that "I could feel the gooseflesh crawling
along my skin"; a month later she accepted his proposal of marriage.
Daybook is contributed by Steve King, who teaches in the English Department of Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland. His literary daybook began as a radio series syndicated nationally in Canada. He can be found online at todayinliterature.com.
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