e works of
Stein, Haxthausen, Louis Blanc, Fourier, Proudhon, and other similar
writers. Gradually assemblies of this sort were formed outside of the
University. Petrashevsky, an employee of the Department of Foreign
Affairs, who had graduated from the Lyceum and the University, and who
was ambitious of winning power and a reputation for eccentricity,
learned of these little clubs and encouraged their growth. He did not
however encourage their close association among themselves, but
rather, entire dependence on himself, as the centre of authority, the
guide; and urged them to inaugurate a sort of propaganda. Dostoevsky
himself declared, about thirty years later, that "the socialists
sprang from the followers of Petrashevsky; they sowed much seed." He
has dealt with them and their methods in his novel 'Demons'; though
perhaps not with exact accuracy. But they helped him to an elucidation
of the contemporary situation, which Turgenieff had treated in 'Virgin
Soil.' The chief subject of their political discussions was the
emancipation of the serfs, and many of Petrashevsky's followers
reckoned upon a rising of the serfs themselves, though it was proved
that Dostoevsky maintained the propriety and necessity of the reform
proceeding from the government. This was no new topic; the Emperor
Nicholas I. had already begun to plan the Emancipation, and it is
probable that it would have taken place long before it did, had it not
been for this very conspiracy. From the point of view of the
government, the movement was naturally dangerous, especially in view
of what was taking place in Europe at that epoch. Dostoevsky bore
himself critically toward the socialistic writings and doctrines,
maintaining that in their own Russian system of workingmen's guilds
with reciprocal bonds there existed surer and more normal foundations
than in all the dreams of Saint-Simon and all his school. He did not
even visit very frequently the circle to which he particularly
belonged, and was rarely at the house of Petrashevsky, whom many
personally disliked.

But on one occasion, as he was a good reader, he was asked to read
aloud Byelinsky's famous letter to Gogol, which was regarded as a
victorious manifest of "Western" (_i. e._, of socialistic) views.
This, technically, was propagating revolution, and was the chief
charge against him when the catastrophe happened, and he, together
with over thirty other "Petrashevtzi," was arrested on April 23d (May