Dostoevsky+doin'+time

Byron Butler Greg Raupp Cara Corder

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Fyodor Dostoevsky had Revolutionary ideas when he was a young man. He believed the social order in Russia had to be changed for the better of the people. His beliefs would soon earn him a death sentence. This death sentence was not carried out however, but he still spent four years of his life in a dank, horrific prison.

As a young man Dostoevsky believed in bettering all of society in mind and spirit. This Revolution of the people would provide **[|Freedom of the Press]**, a new era of art, not politics, and fully utilize the power of language. Language in Dostoevsky’s view could be used to inspire a utopian type community. Dostoevsky became involved with a man named Speshnev, who also believed language would pave Russia’s future. Together, they established an underground press, which would ultimately lead Dostoevsky to prison. Dostoevsky also strongly believed in the abolition of serfdom.

Soon, Dostoevsky was involved with Speshnev’s plot to overthrow the Czar, and completely change the political map. He did not know how to get himself out of the predicament though. Czar Nicholas I, unbeknown to Speshnev and his men, had been spying on the men for fourteen months, and had developed a list of revolutionaries who he believed to be part of the bigger revolutionary plot.

On April 22nd, 1849, Fyodor Dostoevsky was arrested and taken to Peter and Paul Fortress. The conditions were not good, with dark and damp cells that were isolated from human contact. He looked inside of himself and was said to have a calm come over him. With the help of religion in the prison, he coped with the time much easier. However it was not necessarily theological beliefs so much as analysis thereof that aided him at this juncture.

Dostoevsky was accused of [|four] different charges:

1) As a former army office, he had listened to a story criticizing the army without objection; 2) He had read a letter to the circle, from Belinsky to the famous writer Gogol, which criticized the church and government; 3) He was in possession of an illegal printing press; 4) He was part of a plot to murder the tsar.

After being sentence to death by firing squad, on the 22nd of December, 1849, Fyodor was to face his death sentence. Although he was ready to meet his maker, Czar Nicholas I had some leniency, and sentenced the living to exile in Siberia. Some of the remaining prisoners were very upset, for Siberia was no cakewalk, but Dostoevsky felt he had received a second life, and did not plan on wasting it.

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//Life is a gift, life is happiness, every minute will be an eternity of happiness! Si jeunesse savait! [If youth only knew!]...My brother, I do not feel despondent and have not lost heart. Life is life everywhere. Life is in ourselves and not outside us. There will be men beside me [in prison], and the important thing is to be a man among men and to remain a man always, whatever the misfortunes, not to despair and not to fall - that is the aim of life, that is its purpose. I realize this now. The idea has entered into my flesh and my blood. Yes, that is the truth! ...I have still got my heart and the same flesh and blood which can love and suffer and pity and remember, and that is also life. Never before have I felt such abundant and healthy reserves of spiritual life in me as now... //====== Nobody can completely understand how much Dostoevsky's punishments (including the daunting thought of imminent death) truly shaped his writing. What is known is that he did a good deal of [|reading] while awaiting his death sentence. He also dabbled in a bit of writing. The experiences of Fyodor Dostoevsky inside of his gloomy cell most certainly had a massive impact on his career as an author, and it is fair to say that without it there would most likely be no discussion of //The Brothers Karamazov// thousands of miles away in a suburb of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

[|The House of the Dead] **click link or picture to read about __The House of the Dead__, a fictionalized book writen by Dostoyevsky where he describes conditions in the prison of Omsk**

media type="youtube" key="n9yodl-1TS0" height="344" width="425" "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've seen" performed by Louis Armstrong. My dad being a retired DEA detective would tell me that when he would bring in someone to jail that he heard prisoners singing this song. -Cara