Nicholas I
THE EMPEROR NICHOLAS WAS a sensible and humane man. He did violence to himself when he had to refrain from being merciful. He was fully persuaded on religious grounds that God had chosen him for the sole purpose of saving a crumbling world. As sovereign, he was already contemplating the emancipation of the serfs, and it was a strange irony that through misunderstanding it was to be his fate to have to punish severely the men, of whom some had only committed the crime of wishing the same beneficent thing he himself had in view. History can only be just by looking into every conscience to verify the motives, and to test the springs, that actuate them.
But the time when these struggles just mentioned took place was not propitious for making explanations, or for arriving at a calm judgment.
On the 23rd of April, 1849, at five in the morning, thirty-four suspects were arrested. The two brothers Dostoyevsky were among them. The prisoners were taken to the Citadel at St. Petersburg and secreted in the casemates of the Ravelin Alexis, a lugubrious place, haunted by sad memories. They remained there eight months, without any other distraction than that afforded by the interrogations of members of the Court of Inquiry. Only towards the end were they allowed some religious books. Later Feodor Dostoyevsky wrote to his brother, who had been promptly released at the time, for want of sufficient incriminating evidence: “For five months I have lived on my own substance, that is to say on my own brain, and on nothing else…. Perpetually thinking, and thinking only, and that without a single impression from the outside to renew or sustain the thoughts – it was hard to bear…. I felt like being under an exhauster where all the air is pumped out.” This vivid simile applies with equal justice to places beyond the glacis of the Russian citadel! Hyppolyte Debout, one of the prisoners, recorded the only consolation they experienced. A young soldier of the garrison, on duty in the passage, had been much affected by the lonely isolation of the prisoners. From time to time he slipped the cover of the peephole to be found in every casemate door, and whispered, saying: “Do you find it very trying? Suffer in patience: Christ also suffered.” It was perhaps when listening to the words of this soldier that Dostoyevsky conceived some of his characters, which so well represent the pious resignation of the Russian people.
On the 22nd of December the prisoners were brought out without being informed of the sentence passed on them by the Court-martial in their absence. Their number was now reduced to twenty-one – some having been released. They were conducted into the open space of Semenovsky, where a scaffold had been erected. During the short time they stood together on the platform after having recognized each other and fraternized, Dostoyevsky communicated to one of them – Monbelli by name, who afterwards mentioned the fact – the outline of a novel at which he had worked while in prison. With the thermometer at 16 degrees Fahr., the State criminals were made to undress, and in their shirt sleeves had to listen to the reading of the judgments, which lasted half an hour. After the clerk of the court had begun to read, Feodor Dostoyevsky said to Duroff, standing beside him, “Is it possible we are going to be executed?” It was evidently the first time such a thought had entered his mind. Duroff only answered with a gesture, pointing to a cart filled with things hidden under a tarpaulin, which looked like coffins. The proclamation ended with the words:
The mock execution, Petrashevsky on the right.
“…are condemned to death and sentenced to be shot.” The clerk descended and a priest mounted the scaffold, crucifix in hand, and exhorted the doomed to make their confession. Only one, a man belonging to the shopkeeper class, accepted the invitation. All the others, however, kissed the cross. Petrashevsky and two of the leading conspirators were then tied to the posts. The officer ordered the company facing them to load, and gave the preliminary words of command.
As the soldiers raised their muskets, as white flag was hoisted in front of them. Then only did the twenty-one prisoners learn that the Emperor had revised the sentence of the Military Court, and had commuted the punishment. Country carts were at hand near the scaffold to take them to Siberia. The leaders were unroped, but one of them, Grigorieff, went mad and never recovered.
