F.M. Square Dostoevsky

On October 29, 2010, a monument to the famous writer F.M. Dostoevsky. The author is sculptor M.V. Pe Reyaslavets, full member of the Russian Academy of Arts, People’s Artist of the Russian Federation, Professor of the Department of Sculpture at the Surikov Moscow State Academic Institute.

Dostoevsky Fyodor Mikhailovich, 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 January 9 to 20).

A bronze sculpture of Fyodor Mikhailovich, sitting on a bench next to the opened Gospel, is installed not far from the building of the transit prison.

According to biographers, it was here in Tobolsk that an unforgettable event took place, which played an important, perhaps even decisive role in the spiritual biography of Dostoevsky. The wives of the Decembrists J.A. Muravyova, P.E. Annenkov and N. D. Fonvizin achieved (“begged”, according to Dostoevsky) a secret meeting with the Petrashevites at the apartment of the caretaker of the transit prison. In his Diary of a Writer for 1873, Dostoevsky recalled: “We saw these great martyrs who voluntarily followed their husbands to Siberia. <...> They blessed us in a new way, baptized us and endowed each with the Gospel – the only book allowed in prison. For four years she lay under my pillow in hard labor. I read it sometimes and read it to others. I learned to read a convict from it “, and even earlier in the” Notes from the House of the Dead “Dostoevsky wrote about this Gospel: for decades and who have long been accustomed to seeing a brother in every unfortunate person. “

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, reread and interpreted every day, became his penitential guide to salvation, and therefore the main testament on his deathbed was passed on to his son Fedya.