Dostoevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich

Dostoevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich (1821-1881), a classic of Russian literature and one of the best novelists of world importance, visited Tobolsk in 1850 on his way to hard labor in Omsk. The author of the novel Poor People (1845), convicted in the Petrashevtsy case, spent 12 days in the Tobolsk transit prison (from 9 to 20 January).

According to biographers, it was here in Tobolsk that an unforgettable event took place that played an important, perhaps even decisive, role in the spiritual biography of Dostoevsky. The wives of the Decembrists Zh.A. Muravyova, P.E. Annenkov and N. D. Fonvizin obtained a secret meeting with the Petrashevites at the apartment of the caretaker of the transit prison and handed over to everyone the Gospel – the only book allowed in prison.
The Tobolsk Gospel passed with Dostoevsky to hard labor and soldiers’ barracks, it was nearby when Fyodor Mikhailovich returned to big literature, it is a witness and judge of his creative ups and downs. It, re-read and interpreted every day, became his penitential guide to salvation, and therefore the main will on his deathbed was passed on to his son Fedya.

Currently, this copy of the Gospel with the writer’s notes is kept in the Russian State Library in Moscow.