#OTD in 1849.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky and fellow members of the literary Petrashevsky Circle in Russia are arrested for expressing their progressive views. Sentenced to death on November 16 and facing a firing squad on December 23, he and some others are reprieved at the last moment and exiled to the katorga prison camps in Siberia. While differing in political views, most of members of the Petrashevsky Circle were opponents of the tsarist autocracy and Russian serfdom.