Fydor Doestoevsky is on the greatest novelists of all time. He describes an
experience when he was 27 as a turning point in his life. Doestoevsky came from
the privileged class of 19th century Russia, but was committed to the liberation
of the oppressed working class, the serfs. He joined a revolutionary liberation
group, and as a result was arrested in April 1849. Placed in a maximum
security prison, conditions were terrible. Doestoevsky slept on a
hard straw bed in a small, damp room without much light. For eight months
Doestoevsky and his fellow prisoners were questioned and kept in jail.
In October, the prisoners were removed from their cells and led to waiting
carriages. They were not sure of their fate, but assumed the sentence would be
light. When the carriages stopped, the prisoners were led onto a square and
lined up on a gallows. The men were sentenced to be shot; they were given a
cross to kiss, the chance to confess to a priest, and then were dressed in
peasant shirts and hoods for the execution. The first three men in line were led
to some stakes and tied; the soldiers took aim, and held their positions. Then
from nowhere a drum roll was heard and a messenger from the Tsar rode in on a
horse, with a pardon for Doestoevsky and his fellow prisoners. They were taken
back to prison, with the intention they be sent to prison in Siberia.
In a letter to his brother Mikhail, Doestoevsky describes his
new outlook towards life. "When I look back on my past and think how much
time I wasted on nothing, how much time has been lost in futilities, errors,
laziness, incapacity to live; how little I appreciated it, how many times I
sinned against my heart and soul - then my heart bleeds. Life is a gift, life is
happiness, every minute can be an eternity of happiness."
In a novel he later wrote, The Idiot, Doestoevsky describes an execution
scene similar to the one he experienced. he describes the thoughts of the 27
year old victim as he awaited death, certainly his reflections on his own near
execution. "What if I didn't have to die!...I would turn every minute into
an age, nothing would be wasted, every minute would be accounted for...(Part I,
chapter 5)
Applications: life, stewardship, making life count, meaning, purpose
Source: Scott Higgins. Information from "Doestoevsky
and Autobigraphy - Prison" by Jennifer Jay at www.middlebury.edu/~beyer/courses/previous/ru351/studentpapers/Autobiography.shtml.