ommuted to
exile in Siberia. The novelist's sentence was, four years in Siberia and
enforced military service in the ranks for life. On Christmas eve 1849
he commenced the long journey to Omsk, and remained in Siberia, "like a
man buried alive, nailed down in his coffin," for four terrible years.
His Siberian experiences are graphically narrated in a volume to which
he gave the name of _Recollections of a Dead-House_ (1858). It was known
in an English translation as _Buried Alive in Siberia_ (1881; another
version, 1888). His release only subjected him to fresh indignities as a
common soldier at Semipalatinsk; but in 1858, through the intercession
of an old schoolfellow, General Todleben, he was made an under-officer;
and in 1859, upon the accession of Alexander II., he was finally
recalled from exile. In 1858 he had married a widow, Madame Isaiev, but
she died at St Petersburg in 1867 after a somewhat stormy married life.

After herding for years with the worst criminals, Dostoievsky obtained
an exceptional insight into the dark and seamy side of Russian life. He
formed new conceptions of human life, of the balance of good and evil in
man, and of the Russian character. Psychological studies have seldom, if
ever, found a more intense form of expression than that embodied by
Dostoievsky in his novel called _Crime and Punishment_. The hero
Raskolnikov is a poor student, who is led on to commit a murder partly
by self-conceit, partly by the contemplation of the abject misery around
him. Unsurpassed in poignancy in the whole of modern literature is the
sensation of compassion evoked by the scene between the self-tormented
Raskolnikov and the humble street-walker, Sonia, whom he loves, and from
whom, having confessed his crime, he derives the idea of expiation.
Raskolnikov finally gives himself up to the police and is exiled to
Siberia, whither Sonia follows him. The book gave currency to a number
of ideas, not in any sense new, but specially characteristic of
Dostoievsky: the theory, for instance, that in every life, however
fallen and degraded, there are ecstatic moments of self-devotion; the
doctrine of purification by suffering, and by suffering alone; and the
ideal of a Russian people forming a social state at some future period
bound together by no obligation save mutual love and the magic of
kindness. In this visionary prospect, as well as in his objection to the
use of physical force, Dostoievsky anticipated in a rema