St. Petersburg, Russia/stpet474
Previous | Home | Next"In this house from 1847 to 1849 lived Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky." This famous author lived 1821-1881. Dostoevsky was sleeping in his apartment here on April 23, 1849, when he was awakened by the police who had come to arrest him for participating in the liberal intellectual group, the Petrashvky Circle. Tsar Nicholas I was concerned after the Revolutions of 1848 in Europe, and he clamped down on any potential underground anarchist organization. In November of 1849 Dostoevsky was sentenced to death. After waiting in freezing weather to be executed by a firing squad on December 22, 1849, he was given reprieve and sentenced to four years of hard labor. As he was being shipped off to begin four years at a prison camp in Omsk, Siberia, Mendeleev was arriving in St.Petersburg to begin his initial studies in 1850 at the St. Petersburg State University.
