Crime and Punishment Fyodor Dostoevsky

Proudhon. He was accused of ‘taking part in conversations
against the censorship, of reading a letter from Byelinsky
to Gogol, and of knowing of the intention to set up a
printing press.’ Under Nicholas I. (that ‘stern and just
man,’ as Maurice Baring calls him) this was enough, and
he was condemned to death. After eight months’
imprisonment he was with twenty-one others taken out to
the Semyonovsky Square to be shot. Writing to his
brother Mihail, Dostoevsky says: ‘They snapped words
over our heads, and they made us put on the white shirts
worn by persons condemned to death. Thereupon we