Every item is of fine craftsmanship, and was made after on 19th century sketches to precisely repeat things in use during the renowned writer's lifetime. The gifts will reach the museum quite soon, say jail authorities.
The Parfino camp has been assisting local historians for several years now. Thus, its bosses recently helped the museum people obtain a batch of bricks from the Omsk jail in Siberia, where Dostoyevsky was serving his term in 1850-54.
He was convicted to hard labor among other members of the Petrashevsky underground revolutionary society. Its gatherings discussed serfdom abolition prospects, and judicial and censorship reforms. Society activists were reading French socialist literature. The most radical of them were plotting a revolutionary coup. All were arrested in 1849, Dostoyevsky among them.
