Petrashevsky Circle
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The Petrashevsky Circle was a Russian literary discussion group of progressive-minded commoner-intellectuals in St. Petersburg organized by Mikhail Petrashevsky, a follower of the French utopian socialist Charles Fourier. Among the members were writers, teachers, students, minor government officials, army officers, and so on. While not uniform in their political views, most of them were opponents of the tsarist autocracy and the Russian serfdom. Among those connected with the circle were the writers Dostoyevsky and Saltykov-Shchedrin and the poets Pieshcheyev, Maikov, and Taras Shevchenko.[1]
Like the Lyubomudry group founded earlier in the century, the purpose of the circle was to discuss Western philosophy (specifically Hegel and others) and literature which was officially banned by the Imperial government of Nicholas I.
Nicholas I, worried that the revolutions of 1848 would spread to Russia, mistook the largely harmless group for a subversive revolutionary organization. He closed the circle in 1849 and arrested and incarcerated its members. Fyodor Dostoyevsky was even sentenced to death in 1849 for his involvement, but was reprieved to serve eight years in prison, later reduced to four years by Nicholas I.
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