Dostoevsky's mock execution took place in St Petersburg on 22 December 1849, a date in the Russian calendar of the time. He and his fellow prisoners heard a death sentence read, were called up in threes to be shot, and then heard that their lives had been granted. Before the day was out, he wrote to his brother Mikhail.
The letter was written in the fortress in St Petersburg where he was being held.
"To-day, the 22nd of December, we were all taken to Semjonovsky Square."
What happened there comes in a few plain sentences. "There the death-sentence was read to us, we were given the Cross to kiss, the dagger was broken over our heads", and they were dressed in white shirts. The first three were then made to stand at the palisades.
The prisoners were "called up by groups of three". He was "sixth in the row", which put him in the second group. In his words, he "had not more than a minute to live".
Then the retreat signal sounded, the men at the palisades were released, "and it was read to us that His Imperial Majesty granted us our lives". After that, the sentences they would actually serve were read out.
What happened at Dostoevsky's mock execution?
On 22 December 1849, Fyodor Dostoevsky and his fellow prisoners were taken to Semyonovsky Square in St Petersburg. A death sentence was read, and they were called up in groups of three to be shot. Before his group's turn came, the tsar's reprieve was read out. His sentence became four years of hard labour in Siberia.
It's a heavy story. If you're living with trauma or grief, you can close this page at any moment and call a professional, or anyone you trust. If thoughts of harming yourself have come up, please see a doctor without waiting. If you're in crisis, contact your local emergency services.
What did Dostoevsky write to his brother that day?
Everything I've quoted so far is his own account. I'm reading it in Ethel Colburn Mayne's English, from Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky to his Family and Friends, published in 1914.
Her volume prints only part of the letter: the part about the square, in under two hundred words. The whole letter came out in English some years later, and it runs much longer. I'm keeping to the part she printed, and quoting nothing beyond it.
That part follows the day in order. On her page, only a handful of sentences separate the reading of the death sentence from the reading of the reprieve.
If you'd rather turn from his story to yours, there's the Who Am I? masterclass. Its page says it began when an old friend asked me this: "Robert, when people ask who you are, what do you say back to them?" The link is Receive the Masterclass: USD 297 on the page, and free once GIFT26 goes in at checkout. Or read on.
Did Dostoevsky live as a man who had died once?
Not in any literal sense. He didn't die. A death was read out, prepared and called off. He served the sentence that replaced it, four years of hard labour and then service as a soldier, and he lived until 1881.
"A man who had died once" is how I tend to think of him. The phrase is mine, not his. I mean it as a picture of the years that came after, not as a guess at what he felt.
I don't hold that day up as a gift, or as the price of anything good that came after it. It was a cruelty, done to men who'd been held since April. Nobody needs anything like it for a life to turn.
So I'll leave his day as he set it down for his brother. The question that follows belongs to you.
How does a self take the shape it was given?
Most of us learn who we're supposed to be without anyone announcing it. It comes as a word said often at home, a rule nobody explained, a look that meant "not that". Each one is small. Together they give a life its lean.
Think of a young tree that someone ties to a stake. The tie is a kindness. It keeps the tree upright through its first storms. But the tree grows along the stake, and long after the stake has rotted away, the trunk keeps the line it was given. The stake was only needed for a season or two, and the line it left can last the tree's whole life.
An accent forms the same way. Nobody chooses theirs. It's picked up from the voices nearby, long before you can tell there's any other way to speak.
Plenty of what people call their personality grew like that, along something placed beside them early by someone who meant well. That's why it hardly ever feels like something you were told. It feels like the shape you are. I've written about the rules that grow in like this in how to unlearn conditioning.
Untying it doesn't add anything to the tree. It only stops holding it to a line someone else chose.
For a first look at the shape you'd have had without the stake, I'd start with the Who Am I? masterclass. I lead its final part, and the page calls that part "The kind that doesn't require you to believe anything first." Using the code GIFT26, you can Receive the Masterclass free.
None of what I describe here is therapy, and it isn't medical care either. Anyone in the care of a doctor or therapist ought to carry on working with them, and let that care lead. If anything here touches an old loss, leave it whenever you like, and talk with a professional, or with a person close to you. If you're in crisis, contact your local emergency services.
Which labels do you hand out without noticing?
This exercise points outward, at the words you hand to other people, and it fits inside the day you were going to have anyway. Labels are easier to hear when you're the one saying them.
- Listen for the moment you sum someone up. Out loud or only in your head, about a colleague, a neighbour, the friend who always replies last in the group chat. "She's the worrier." "He's all talk."
- Hold the word back, and ask them something in its place. A real question, about anything: a book they're reading, how the weekend went, where they'd go with a spare afternoon.
- Hear the whole answer out. Whatever it turns out to be, the label you held back can stay unsaid.
Some days no label crosses your mind, and some days asking anyone anything is too much. Those days, skip it. And if the exercise brings back something that hurts, a person close to you or a professional is the one to tell.
Is Unbecome worth reading after this?
My book, Unbecome, is where I'd send you next. Its tagline puts both halves of the work in one line: "Unbecome everything you're not. Remember everything you are." The first half has its own page here: what does it mean to unbecome.
The question I'd ask you is mine, not his, and it has a page of its own in who am I. Who were you before the world told you who to be?
When I write about a life like his, I keep to the record and leave his day his own. A day like that isn't mine to decorate.
"This book is so much more than a read." (Anne, Amazon review of Unbecome)
Robert Simic, guiding the remembering.
P.S. The step I'd take next is the book itself: Get The Paperback