Fyodor Dostoevsky stands shivering in the middle of Semenovsky Plaza in St. Petersburg, Russia, the next in line to die. It is December 22, 1849, and it looks like he will not see Christmas.
After eight months in solitary confinement the twenty prisoners, all members of an intellectual circle suspected of disloyalty to the government, have been marched into this square and are commanded to remove their clothes in the -20 degree (Celsius) weather. The first three are shrouded in white smocks for execution. They are allowed to kiss the cross, hoods are placed over their heads so that they will not see the rifles trained on their hearts, and then they are shackled to three posts.
Dostoevsky waits in the freezing cold, dressed only in his underwear, and counts out the last minutes of his life. He estimates that there are about five minutes remaining to him, and with his remarkable sense of detail, he divides them in the following manner: two minutes to think of his beloved brother Mikhail and others in his family, two to look around him one last time, and one last moment to think of God.
It is at this last moment, when he has exchanged last words with his two fellow prisoners and offered his last prayer to God, that the rifles are suddenly lowered and a new sentence is read. The Czar has extended clemency — prison in Siberia and enforced service in the army for a total of eight years. Dostoevsky is a man reborn.
A few hours later he writes to his brother: "As I look back upon the past and think how much time was spent to no avail; how much of it was lost in delusions, in mistakes, in idleness, in not knowing how to live; what little store I set upon it, how many times I sinned against my heart and spirit — for this my heart bleeds. Life is a gift. Life is happiness. Every moment could have been an age of happiness."
