A Brief Biography: He was 25 and had already captured the hearts of Russia with his novel Poor Folk. Fame quickly went to his head. He drank immoderately and partied wildly. He carelessly criticized the Czarist regime. You don't that in Czarist Russia. He was arrested in St. Petersburg and sentenced to death by the firing squad along with several other dissidents. It was a cold December morning. Dressed in a white execution gown, he was led to the wall of the prison courtyard with the others. Blindfolded, he waited for the last sound he would hear, the crack of a pistol echoing off the prison walls. Instead he heard fast paced footsteps; then the announcement that the Czar had commuted his sentence to ten years of hard labor. So intense was that moment that he suffered an epileptic seizure…