ABSTRACT
Dostoevsky’s novel, The House of the Dead is based upon his experiences in a labour camp after having a death sentenced imposed upon him for sedition commuted to hard labour. Dostoevsky who had been a young lieutenant in the Russian Army was tried by a military tribunal who found
the defendant Dostoevsky guilty of reading aloud a copy of the criminal letter of the litterateur Belinsky…at gatherings first at the defendant Durov’s, then at the defendant’ Petrashevsky’s…Dostoevsky was at the defendant Speshnev’s during the reading of the seditious work of Lieutenant Grigoryev entitled “A Soldier’s Conversation” … for failure to report the dissemination of the litterateur Belinsky’s letter … Lieutenant Engineer Dostoevsky … is to be stripped of his rank and all rights attendant upon his estate and to be executed by firing squad.
(Dostoevsky 1982: xiv)