Dostoevsky (39 page)

Regarding the
Letter
itself, Dostoevsky explains: “I [was] firmly convinced that it could not lead anyone into temptation, although it is not lacking in some sort of literary value. . . . I do not agree exactly with a single one of the exaggerations that it contains.”
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This rather feeble disclaimer is as far as Dostoevsky could go in concealing his fundamental agreement with Belinsky’s powerful assault. Dostoevsky at this point makes his one and only concession to the perils of the situation and expresses regret at his lack of caution: “I have only now understood that I made a mistake and that I should not have read that work aloud.”
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To conclude his “Explanation,” Dostoevsky returns to the question of his relations with Petrashevsky (“I know absolutely nothing of the secrets of Petrashevsky”),
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and he proceeds to discuss Fourierism in general for the benefit of the commission. “Fourierism, and along with it every Western system, is so unsuited to our soil, so unrelated to our conditions, so alien to the character of our nation—while, on the other hand, it is so much a product of the situation of things there in the West, where the proletarian question is being solved at any cost—that Fourierism, with its relentless necessity, at the present time, among us who have no proletariat, would be killingly funny.”
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What he writes corresponds, as we have seen, exactly with utterances that he had made freely in the Palm-Durov Circle. And Dostoevsky had already found the
tone
in which he would later depict the Utopian Socialists: he would never portray them except in a satirical and parodistic manner.

By June, the commission had learned a good deal about what had gone on in the Petrashevsky Circle, discovered the existence of the Palm-Durov group, and got wind of the plan discussed there to lithograph prohibited texts for illegal circulation. Called in four more times for interrogation and presented with a further list of questions, Dostoevsky had to pick his way carefully among dangerous pitfalls, and we can watch him trying not to be trapped in an outright lie, or seeming to hold back information, while guarding against any utterance that
might prove injurious to himself or to others. He denied that his youthful friend Golovinsky had advocated a revolution in order to obtain the liberation of the serfs or had envisaged “a revolutionary dictatorship” during the period of turmoil and transition to a new government. His replies to all such questions were evasive or consisted of elaborate circumlocutions intended to confuse the issue entirely. No wonder General Rostovtsev commented that, as a witness, Dostoevsky had been “clever, independent, cunning, stubborn.”
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The final examination of all the defendants took place before the mixed military-civil court appointed to pass sentence on the accused. Each was summoned into its presence in mid-October, told he was to be judged according to military law (much more severe than the civil code), and asked to submit in writing anything further he wished to add to his testimony. Some of the Petrashevtsy took this opportunity to throw themselves on the mercy of the authorities in a humiliating fashion. To cite one instance, Akhsharumov wrote: “I repent everything and ask for pardon, and I write this not because I wish to be spared the punishment I deserve, but out of remorse, with a pure heart; feeling myself gravely guilty toward thee, as my Sovereign, I consider it my duty as a Christian and a subject to plead for pardon. Forgive me, Sire, if it is possible, because of my remorse and in memory of the service of my father.”
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Dostoevsky, however, maintained his reserve and dignity to the end, and replied in quite another style. “I can add nothing new to my defense,” he says, “except perhaps this—that I never acted with an evil and premeditated intention against the government—what I did was done thoughtlessly and much almost accidentally, as for example my reading of Belinsky’s letter.”
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It was not the government of Nicholas I that he abhorred but the horrifying institution of serfdom, which he detested with an implacable hatred.

The Commission of Inquiry completed its work on September 17, 1849. The decision of the mixed military-civil court, handed down on November 16, condemned fifteen of the accused, including Dostoevsky, to execution by firing squad; others were given lesser sentences to hard labor and exile. This judgment was then sent for review to the highest military court, the General-Auditoriat, which declared that a judicial error had been committed and ruled more harshly than the military-civil court. It pointed out that, under the law used for field courts-martial, all the prisoners should have been equally condemned to death by execution. Dostoevsky’s dossier was also revised by the higher court. Originally, he had been sentenced for having read aloud and circulated Belinsky’s
Letter
, and also for having failed to denounce Grigoryev’s “A Soldier’s Conversation” to the authorities. A third charge was now added: he had “taken part in
deliberations about printing and distributing works against the government by means of a home lithograph.”
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Once having asserted the full rigor of the law, the General-Auditoriat asked the tsar to show mercy. Instead of death, a list of lesser sentences was appended and submitted for the tsar’s scrutiny, and he accepted the plea for mercy. It was known that Nicholas enjoyed playing the role of all-powerful but clement ruler, and Senator Lebedev confided to his journal that the General-Auditoriat had probably increased the severity of the recommended sentences in order to allow Nicholas more amply to exhibit his forbearance.
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No mercy, however, was shown to Petrashevsky, whose sentence—exile and hard labor in the mines for life—was simply confirmed. For most of the others (though not all), Nicholas shortened the length of the sentences.

Dostoevsky, initially condemned to eight years of hard labor instead of outright execution, enjoyed a reduction in his period of penal servitude to four years, after which he was ordered to serve in the Russian Army for an indeterminate time. Dostoevsky regarded this latter provision as a special dispensation personally granted in his favor by the tsar (the same sentence was given to Durov). A convict sentenced to hard labor lost all his civil rights and did not regain them even after having completed his sentence, but Dostoevsky’s civil rights would automatically be restored by military service. He believed this to have been the first time that a convict had been allowed to regain his civil rights, and that it “occurred according to the will of the Emperor Nicholas I, taking pity on his youth and talent.”
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Whether justified or not, this conviction nonetheless helps to explain some of Dostoevsky’s later favorable utterances about Nicholas.

Final disposition of the case was made on December 21. The law called for a mock execution to be staged when a sentence of death had been commuted by an act of imperial grace, but this ceremony was usually just a ritual formality. In this case, however, explicit instructions came from the tsar that only after all the preparations had been completed for putting them to death were the prisoners to be told that their lives had been spared. Nicholas carefully orchestrated events to produce the maximum impact on the unsuspecting victims of his regal solicitude. And Dostoevsky thus underwent the extraordinary emotional adventure of believing himself to have been only a few moments away from certain death, and then of being miraculously resurrected from the grave.

Once their interrogation had been completed in October, the prisoners learned nothing more about the deliberations concerning their case. The dreary days
rolled by with deadening monotony. “My incarceration had already gone on for eight months,” writes Akhsharumov in his memoirs, “I had ceased talking to myself, moved about the room somewhat mechanically, or lay on my cot in apathy.”
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On the morning of December 22, though, the prisoners became aware of an unusual animation in the corridors of the fortress, whose deathly stillness had been broken only by the peal of the church bells. Looking out of the window of his cell, Akhsharumov noticed a number of carriages lining up in the courtyard—so many of them, indeed, that it seemed the line would never end. Suddenly, he saw them being surrounded by squadrons of mounted police. Only then did it occur to him that the bustle and stir might have something to do with the Petrashevsky case, and that he had lived to see the day when the tedium of his imprisonment was finally to be relieved.

Meanwhile, he could also hear within the prison the sound of guards noisily opening the cells. His turn came at last, and he was handed the clothing in which he had been seized—light spring clothing—as well as some warm, thick socks. He was told to dress, but he received only an evasive answer to his excited questions and was ordered to hurry. Escorted out of the cell and along the corridor to an outside porch, he was placed in the two-seater closed carriage that quickly drew up, and a soldier clambered in as escort. Unable to see through the frost-covered window, he scratched at the pane with his fingernail to clear a view as the carriage began to move, but could catch only dim glimpses of the awakening city as the carriage rolled through the early morning streets.

There is no account of Dostoevsky’s feelings during this seemingly interminable journey, but they must have been similar to those recorded by others. The excitement of the departure, and all it might portend, produced an invigorating and exhilarating effect. The evidence indicates that not a single one of the Petrashevtsy imagined they could possibly be condemned to death; even the cynical Speshnev, who had recommended the use of terror as a revolutionary weapon, told Orest Miller that the idea of being driven to meet a firing squad never crossed his mind.
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Akhsharumov calculated that the trip lasted about thirty minutes before the carriage stopped and he was told to step outside. “Looking around, I saw . . . the Semenovsky Square. It was covered with newly fallen snow and surrounded by troops formed into a square. On the edges far away stood a crowd of people looking at us; everything was silent; it was the morning of a clear wintry day, and the sun, just having risen, shone like a bright, beautiful globe on the horizon through the haze of the thick clouds.”
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The sight of the sun, which he had not seen for eight months, overwhelmed Akhsharumov with a sense of well-being,
and for a moment he forgot where he was. But he came to himself when, roughly seized by the elbow, he was shoved forward and told in which direction to move. Only then did he become aware that he was standing in a foot of deep snow and that, dressed in his light clothing, he was bitterly cold.

It was only then, too, that he became aware of a construction, slightly to his left, that had been built in the middle of the square—a four-sided scaffolding, twenty to thirty feet high, hung round with black crêpe, and with a staircase leading up from the ground. But he was more interested in the sight of a group of his old comrades crowding together in the snow and exchanging excited greetings after their long separation. What struck him, as he came closer, was the terrible change that had taken place in the features of those he knew best: “Their faces were emaciated, exhausted, pale, drawn, several had untrimmed beards and uncut hair. I was especially struck by the face of Speshnev; he had always stood out from the others because of his notable handsomeness, vigor, and flourishing good health. His face, once circular, had become longer; it was sickly, pale yellow, with gaunt cheeks, eyes as if sunken and with great blue rings underneath, framed by long hair and a large overgrown beard.”
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The joyous moment of reunion was quickly interrupted by the loud voice of a general, who rode up and ordered them to remain silent. A Civil Service official then had the prisoners lined up according to the order in which he called their names, Petrashevsky and Speshnev being first on the list. A priest carrying a cross succeeded the official and declared to the assembled prisoners: “Today you will bear the just decision of your case—follow me.”
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And he led the procession to the scaffolding, but only after passing in front of the entire array of troops. Several of the Petrashevtsy had been officers in the Petersburg regiments lining the square, and the purpose of the maneuver was to display to the soldiers the degradation of their disloyal superiors. Conversation resumed again as the prisoners stumbled through the snow, and their attention was attracted by some gray stakes rising from the ground on one side of the scaffold. What were they for? Would they be tied to them and shot? Surely not, though it was impossible to tell what might happen—probably they would all be sent to penal servitude. So ran the snatches of talk that Akhsharumov heard while the group was led to the staircase.
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