The exhibition presents the earliest edition of the New Testament in the Russian language issued by the Bible Society in Russia in 1823. Fyodor Dostoevsky owned a copy similar to this one.
When Dostoevsky was put to hard labor in exile with regard to the case of the PetrashEvsky Circle ‘for failing to report the dissemination of a maleficent letter about religion and government by writer BelInsky, ’ he stopped in TobOlsk on the way to the Omsk prison. This is where DecEmbrists' wives NatAlya FonvIzina and PraskOvya Annenkova managed to arrange (‘begged for’, according to Dostoevsky) a secret meeting with convicted members of the Petrashevsky Circle in the flat of the warden of the local prison. They presented Dostoevsky and DUrov copies of the Gospel, the only book allowed in prison. Each book had an amount of 10 rubles in banknotes inserted in the bookbinding. The money relieved the first days in prison for Dostoevsky and his fellow. Dostoevsky read his copy throughout his imprisonment and later kept it with him until his last breath. The writer would later remember ‘the courageous women who sacrificed everything to follow their husbands to Siberia.’ He said, ‘They blessed us who were about to start on a new journey; they crossed us and gave us copies of the New Testament -- the only book permitted in prison. It lay for four years under my pillow in penal servitude. Sometimes I read it to myself and -- sometimes to others. With it, I taught one convict to read’.
In the novel, Alexander Petrovitch Goriantchikoff learned a young Tartar named Aley to read and introduced him to the Sermon on the Mount.
Often, when making a difficult decision, Dostoevsky looked for an answer in the Gospel. He opened it on a random page and read it. Late January 1881, the writer’s lung disease worsened. January 28, he opened the book and asked his wife, Anna Grigorievna, to read it. She read, “John would have prevented him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” But Jesus answered him, “Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness.” “You see, “Let it be so…” It means I am going to die, ’ the writer answered. The relic book was handed by Dostoevsky to his son Fyodor two hours before his death. The writer died on the same day.
