In December 1849, Fyodor Dostoevsky was led into Semyonovsky Square in St. Petersburg, bound to a post with two other condemned men, and prepared for execution by firing squad. He was 28. He had been convicted of involvement with the Petrashevsky Circle, a group of liberal intellectuals who had read and discussed banned texts, and the sentence was death. He had been in the Peter and Paul Fortress for eight months.