Yekaterina Trubetskaya, first of the Decembrists' wives.
THEY WERE PUT IN irons, their heads were shaved, and they were sent to different stations. It was here in the locals prison that they met the “wives of the Decembrists.” The courageous example given by these women is notorious. Though belonging to the highest social circles, they had all forsaken the gay life to follow their husbands into exile. For twenty-five years they haunted the prison doors. On learning that their native country was sending out a new generation of the proscribed, these noble women came to visit them in the prisons. Themselves past-mistresses in suffering and courage, they began with innate motherly instinct to teach the young men – all under thirty years of age – what they were to expect and how to bear up against the disgrace. They did even more; they offered each one of them all they could give, all they possessed – a New Testament. Dostoyevsky accepted one, and during the four years in Siberia it remained under his pillow. He read it himself every night by the dormitory night light, and made others read it also. After the hard day’s work, whilst his comrades were recuperating their physical strength for the morrow’s toil by sleeping, he drew from this book the more needed nourishment for the thoughtful man, and the moral recuperation necessary to enable him to bear his trials nobly.
Let us try and imagine this man of lofty ideas, with delicate nerves, devouring pride, and naturally timid, with a quick imagination, subjected to course treatment. Imagine him among that crowd of vulgar scoundrels, doomed to a monotonous convict life, dragged every morning to hard labour, and, at the least negligence, or the least whim of the keeper, threatened to be put under the lash! He was admitted to the “second category,” reserved for the worst criminals and all political offenders. They were housed in the citadel under constant military supervision, and were daily employed in turning the millstones in the lime kilns and in breaking up the old barrack buildings. In winter they were taken down to the frozen river and put to hard and useless occupations. He has ably described the effects of the additional fatigue derived from working for mere work’s sake as a mere physical hardship. He also declares, and I quite believe it, that the heaviest part of the punishment was the absolute deprivation of privacy year after year – not a moment alone! But the greatest mental torture of all which this young penman in his prime, full of ideas and plans, had to undergo was the inability to put pen to paper, and in that way to alleviate the cravings for literary work. His talent was being stifled.
Nevertheless he survived, purified and fortified. We have no occasion to imagine his tale, for it is before us, though under an assumed name, in all its details written down after leaving jail, under the title of “Recollections” from the House of the Dead 
Oh, what a matter of chance, after all, is literary success, often so unjust!
