Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky Civil penalty. Civil execution of Chernyshevsky and description of the execution as a gift
Alexander Inostrantsev, a mineralogist, in his memoirs (accidentally found) describes how he watched the civil execution of Chernyshevsky as a student. The first thing you think of, of course, was Nabokov reading this? To be honest, there is no great resemblance - Inostrantsev stood far away and really didn’t see anything - except for “probably a sawn sword,” which the cunning Nabokov turned into a “badly sawn one”. The description of the execution at Dara, the commentators tell us, for the most part borrowed from Steklov ("Chernyshevsky, his life and work" of 1909 in two volumes, not on the net, there are some shadows on Googlebooks, and Foreigners are not there. And this Steklov is not Steklov at all, the chatty Wikipedia tells us, but Ovshy Nakhamkis, in the same 1909, converted to Christianity - all of a sudden! Chernyshevsky, perhaps, inspired him? - wrote in Pravda, noted by Lenin, arrested in 1938, died in the Saratov prison of the NKVD in 1941 from dysentery and extreme exhaustion, who would doubt it). But on the other hand, in the biography of Chernyshevsky from ZhZL 1955, the scene civil execution coincides with Nabokov's description in all plot and descriptive points. ZhZL-author Nikolai Veniaminovich Bogoslovsky (here, one Nikolai with a seminary surname and a biblical patronymic begins to get confused with another, Vladimir Vladimirovich pushes a sporadic midnight researcher by the arm) refers to a certain eyewitness, a student of the Military Academy, who left a description in his diary. Who is it? I think Bogoslovsky took it from the same Steklov, from where Nabokov also took his own. I bet Alexander Dolinin He has known all this for a long time, he is not up to "those extraordinary impressions that in the middle of the night put a young man in his underwear for a diary."
Here is a description of Inostrantsev, and everyone will find a Gift for himself:
“In the autumn of this year, I had to witness one event that made an extremely difficult impression on me - this is the civil execution of Chernyshevsky. that the meeting, which I was not present, decided that all the students should gather the next day early in the morning on Konnaya Square to protest against the civil execution of Chernyshevsky. As a duty of association, I considered it necessary to also attend. It’s close from Peski to Konnaya Square, but I’m all He asked me to wake me up at home at 5 o'clock in order to be at the place of execution on time.When I arrived at Horse Square, it was buried in mud, since it was very rainy and cold.
A scaffold was built on the square, surrounded by a rather dense chain of troops, of which a significant number were gathered, for, as I later learned, an attempt was expected to kidnap Chernyshevsky. Although I arrived very early, I still could not penetrate even close to the army, and therefore I had to observe the events from afar. The crowd gathered was huge; up to the line of troops, the square began to fill up with people even more, among which young people of both sexes predominated. Quite a long time, in the rain, we waited for the arrival. At last there was a cry in the crowd; "They're taking it!" - and indeed a carriage appeared, drawn by a pair of horses, which, at the entrance to the square, got stuck in the mud, and the horses could not move it in any way ... Unusually quickly, a mass of young people rushed to help the horses from the crowd, and some pushing the carriage from behind, some helping the horses in front, they pretty soon delivered the carriage to the chain of troops, where, thanks to this latter, the mud was already significantly trampled down, and the horses could bring the carriage straight to the scaffold, and the helpers were quickly pushed aside. When the carriage appeared on the square, several people climbed the scaffold, some in civilian uniforms, some in military dress. When the carriage stopped, two gendarmes got out first, followed by Chernyshevsky; the gendarmes immediately drew their broadswords, stood on both sides of Chernyshevsky, and so he was escorted to the scaffold. From the distance, I could not see Chernyshevsky's expression. As soon as Chernyshevsky was taken to the scaffold, one of those on it in civilian uniform came out and began to read the paper; I heard his voice, but I could not make out what he was reading from the distance.
Then Chernyshevsky was forced to kneel, the executioner stood in front of him, holding a sword in his hands, which, probably, had been filed before, pretty soon broke over the very head of the punished. With this the rite ended. Again Chernyshevsky was led to the carriage, seated with the gendarmes, and some of the latter on horseback surrounded the carriage, and the train started back. It was already easy to drive back, as the crowd had partly trampled down the dirt of the square. When the carriage left the chain of troops, rather numerous cries and exclamations of sympathy for Chernyshevsky were heard on the square, and the carriage quickly retired, taking away the executed. I did not see any attempt to release Chernyshevsky.
The very process of execution, for only one literary work, in the absence of any other accusations, made an extremely depressing impression on me, and, largely embittered, I went back with the crowd. Turning around somehow by chance, I noticed that not far behind me my father was returning from the execution, talking with some gentleman. I involuntarily drew attention to the fact that on my father's head was a kepi, surrounded along the crown by a wide gold galloon, while he usually wore from military uniform only one cap. Such a headdress on his father, obviously, was put on by him for greater impressiveness; he was obviously afraid that some trick on my part would put me under arrest and he would help me out. So one by one we came home for morning tea.
A day after the civil execution, when I wanted, under a fresh impression, to write down the details of it in my notebook, I remembered that my father had it. The fact is that during my visit, while still a schoolboy, to my brother-doctor, I made extracts from a number of forbidden books in a notebook specially set up by me in 4 = ° 21, copied some stanzas, and Ogarev’s poems were not only all in this notebook, but I knew many of them by heart. Once I also received a portrait of Herzen from my brother, which I pasted on the outside of the hard cover of a notebook. Shortly before the day of the execution, my father came into my room on some business and saw this notebook. Having learned from me what was in it, my father asked me to let him read it, which I did. Remembering this notebook, I went downstairs to my father with a request to return this notebook to me at least for a while, but my father told me that he had burned it. In his defense, my father told me that he knew for certain that before the execution of Chernyshevsky there were intensified searches and arrests of students and that he was very afraid that, as he put it, because of such stupidity as this notebook, I would not suffer. He also informed me that for my protection he went to the execution of Chernyshevsky. In this way, my notebook disappeared, and with it, to a large extent, my liberalism of that time.
On May 19, 1864, an event took place on Mytninskaya Square in St. Petersburg, which forever entered the annals of the Russian freedom movement. It was a foggy, hazy Petersburg morning. It drizzled cold, piercing rain. Streams of water slid along the tall black pillar with chains, long drops fell to the ground from the wet wooden platform of the scaffold.
By eight o'clock in the morning more than two thousand people had gathered here. Writers, magazine staff, students of the medical-surgical academy, officers of the army rifle battalions came to say goodbye to a man who for about seven years had been the ruler of the thoughts of the revolutionary-minded part of Russian society. After a long wait, a carriage appeared, surrounded by mounted gendarmes, and Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky climbed onto the scaffold. The executioner took off his hat, and the reading of the sentence began. A not very competent official did it loudly, but badly, with stutters, with pauses. In one place, he choked and barely uttered\"satsali-(*133) calic ideas\". A smile flickered across Chernyshevsky's pale face. The verdict announced that Chernyshevsky \"his literary activity had a great influence on young people\" and that\"for the intent to overthrow the existing order\" he is deprived\"of all rights of the state\" and refers\"to hard labor for 14 years\", and then\"settled in Siberia forever \".
The rain intensified. Chernyshevsky often raised his hand, wiping cold water flowing down the face, running down the collar of the coat. Finally the reading stopped. \"The executioners lowered him to his knees. They broke a saber over his head and then, raising him even higher a few steps, took his hands in chains attached to a post. At that time it began to rain very heavily, the executioner put a hat on him. Chernyshevsky thanked him , straightened his cap, as far as his hands allowed him, and then, putting his hand in his hand, calmly awaited the end of this procedure. There was dead silence in the crowd, - recalls an eyewitness of the "civil execution".- At the end of the ceremony, everyone rushed to the carriage, broke through line of policemen... and only by the efforts of mounted gendarmes the crowd was separated from the carriage. Then... bouquets of flowers were thrown to him. One woman who threw flowers was arrested. Someone shouted: "Farewell, Chernyshevsky! \" This cry was immediately supported by others and then was replaced by an even more caustic word\"goodbye \". The next day, May 20, 1864, Chernyshevsky in shackles, under the protection of gendarmes, was sent to Siberia, where he was destined to live for almost 20 years in isolation from society, from relatives , from a favorite thing. Worse than any penal servitude was this debilitating inaction, this doom to reflect on the brightly lived and suddenly cut off years ...
Childhood
Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky was born on July 12 (24), 1828 in Saratov in the family of Archpriest Gavriil Ivanovich Chernyshevsky and his wife Evgenia Yegorovna (née Golubeva). Both his grandfather and maternal great-grandfather were priests. Grandfather, Yegor Ivanovich Golubev, archpriest of the Sergius Church in Saratov, died in 1818, and the Saratov governor turned to the Penza bishop with a request to send the "best student" to the vacant place with the condition, as was customary in the clergy, to marry the daughter of the deceased archpriest. The librarian of the Penza Seminary Gavriil Ivanovich Chernyshevsky, a man of high learning and impeccable behavior, turned out to be a worthy person.
In 1816, he was noticed by the famous statesman M. M. Speransky, who fell into disgrace and held the post of Penza governor.
Speransky invited Gavriil Ivanovich to go to St. Petersburg, but at the insistence of his mother, he refused a flattering offer that promised him a brilliant career as a statesman. Gavriil Ivanovich recalled this episode in his life not without regret and transferred the unfulfilled dreams of youth to his only son, who was in no way inferior to his father in talent and abilities. Prosperity and a warm family atmosphere, inspired by deep religious feelings, reigned in the Chernyshevskys' house. \"... All gross pleasures," Chernyshevsky recalled, "seemed disgusting, boring, unbearable to me; this disgust from them has been in me since childhood, thanks, of course, to the modest and strictly moral lifestyle of all my close older relatives \". Chernyshevsky always treated his parents with filial reverence and reverence, shared with them his worries and plans, joys and sorrows. In turn, the mother loved her son selflessly, and for the father he was also an object of undisguised pride. FROM early years the boy showed exceptional natural talent. His father saved him from the spiritual school, preferring an in-depth home education. He himself taught his son Latin and Greek, the boy successfully studied French on his own, and German colonist Gref taught him German. In my father's house was good library, in which, along with spiritual literature, there were works by Russian writers - Pushkin, Zhukovsky, Gogol, as well as modern magazines. In \"Notes of the Fatherland \" the boy read translated novels by Dickens, George Sand, was fond of articles by V. G. Belinsky. So since childhood, Chernyshevsky has become, in his own words, a real\"devourer of books \".
It would seem that family well-being, religious piety, the love with which the boy was surrounded from childhood - nothing foreshadowed in him a future denier, a revolutionary overthrower of the foundations that existed in Russia. social order. However, even I. S. Turgenev drew attention to one feature of Russian revolutionary fighters: \"All the true deniers whom I knew - without exception (Belinsky, Bakunin, Herzen, Dobrolyubov, Speshnee, etc.), came from relatively kind and honest parents. And there is a great meaning in this: (*135) this takes away from the activists, from the deniers, every shadow of personal indignation, personal irritability. They go their own way only because they are more sensitive to the demands of people's life \".
This very sensitivity to another's grief and the suffering of one's neighbor suggested high development Christian moral feelings, committed in the family cradle. The power of denial was fed and maintained by the equal power of faith, hope and love. In contrast to the peace and harmony that reigned in the family, the social untruth hurt the eyes, so from childhood Chernyshevsky began to wonder why \"troubles and what is evil.
To curb daring freethinkers, there have always been proven and effective means. AT tsarist Russia the death penalty was not applied whenever possible, except in exceptional cases. Revolutionaries expected hard labor in Siberia. But before the convict, especially dangerous for the authorities, set off along Vladimirka (at the beginning of this road now) on a long journey, he was subjected to a humiliating civil execution, which involved the deprivation of class, political and civil rights. The history included events related to the application of this procedure to, and after a few decades - to Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky.
The road to the scaffold
Nikolai Chernyshevsky began to walk along a dangerous road as a student. That's when it started revolutionary activity and the first literary works appeared. There were no closed topics for him. He wrote literary-critical and historical-literary works, covered economic and political issues. Nikolai Gavrilovich was also the ideological inspirer of the secret youth revolutionary organization "Land and Freedom".
Source: http://www.rewizor.ru
In 1862, Chernyshevsky was arrested, and he was accused of drawing up a proclamation "Bow to the fraternal peasants from their well-wishers." The appeal fell into the hands of Vsevolod Kostomarov, who turned out to be a provocateur. But even before that, in official correspondence between the gendarmerie and the police, Chernyshevsky was called "enemy number one of the empire." And the direct reason for the arrest was the mention of Chernyshevsky's name in a letter from an emigrant in connection with the idea of publishing Sovremennik in case it was banned by the authorities in London.
Source: https://24smi.org
The investigation into Chernyshevsky's case dragged on for a year and a half. During the imprisonment, Nikolai Gavrilovich went on a hunger strike several times and continued to work. In addition to articles, he completed the novel What Is to Be Done in prison, published in the Sovremennik magazine. In February 1864, a sentence was passed: a link to hard labor for fourteen years and a life-long settlement in Siberia. The emperor reduced hard labor to seven years, but in general Chernyshevsky spent more than twenty years in the tsarist institutions of the penal system. In May 1864, a civil execution took place.
Foggy morning
The civil execution of Chernyshevsky took place on Mytninskaya Square in St. Petersburg on a rainy and foggy morning on May 31, 1864. Especially for the execution, an elevation was built on which stood a black pillar with chains. Serious security measures were taken. The whole square was cordoned off by gendarmes and policemen, and agents in civilian clothes were darting about in the crowd. Chernyshevsky was taken to the square in a prison carriage and brought to a dais. They took off his cap and read the indictment. After reading the verdict, Chernyshevsky was lowered to his knees, and a sword was broken over his head. Further, the procedure involved attaching it with chains to a pole. On his chest was attached a sign with the inscription "state criminal". Herzen responded to this trial with the following words: “This new Russia Russia vile showed the people, exposing Chernyshevsky to shame.
The most popular types of execution in the Middle Ages were beheading and hanging. Moreover, they were applied to people of different classes. Decapitation was used as a punishment for noble people, and the gallows was the lot of the rootless poor. So why did the aristocracies cut off their heads, and the common people were hanged?
Decapitation is the lot of kings and nobles
This type of death penalty has been used everywhere for many millennia. In medieval Europe, such punishment was considered "noble" or "honorable". They cut off the head mainly of aristocrats. When a representative of a noble family laid his head on the chopping block, he showed humility.
Decapitation with a sword, ax or ax was considered the least painful death. A quick death made it possible to avoid public agony, which was important for representatives of noble families. The crowd, thirsty for spectacles, should not have seen low death manifestations.
It was also believed that the aristocrats, being brave and selfless warriors, were prepared specifically for death from edged weapons.
Much in this matter depended on the skills of the executioner. Therefore, often the convict himself or his relatives paid a lot of money so that he did his job with one blow.
Decapitation leads to instant death, which means it saves from violent torment. The sentence was carried out quickly. The condemned lay his head on a log, which was to be no more than six inches thick. This greatly simplified the execution.
The aristocratic connotation of this type of punishment was also reflected in books devoted to the Middle Ages, thus perpetuating its selectivity. In the book “History of the Master” (author Kirill Sinelnikov) there is a quote: “... a noble execution is cutting off the head. This is not hanging for you, the execution of the mob. Decapitation is the lot of kings and nobles."
Hanging
If noblemen were sentenced to beheading, then commoner criminals fell on the gallows.
Hanging is the most common execution in the world. This type of punishment has been considered shameful since ancient times. And there are several explanations for this. Firstly, it was believed that when hanging, the soul cannot leave the body, as if remaining hostage to it. Such dead people were called "mortgages".
Secondly, dying on the gallows was excruciating and painful. Death does not come instantly, a person experiences physical suffering and remains conscious for several seconds, perfectly aware of the approach of the end. All his torments and manifestations of agony are watched by hundreds of onlookers. In 90% of cases, at the moment of strangulation, all the muscles of the body relax, which leads to complete emptying of the intestines and bladder.
In many nations, hanging was considered an unclean death. No one wanted his body to hang out in front of everyone after the execution. Swearing by exposure is an obligatory part of this type of punishment. Many believed that such a death was the worst thing that could happen, and it was reserved only for traitors. People remembered Judas, who hanged himself on an aspen.
A person sentenced to the gallows had to have three ropes: the first two, the thickness of the little finger (tortuzas), were equipped with a loop and were intended for direct strangulation. The third was called a "token" or "throw" - it served to drop the condemned to the gallows. The execution was completed by the executioner, holding on to the crossbar of the gallows, he beat the sentenced man in the stomach with his knee.
Exceptions to the rules
Despite a clear distinction according to belonging to a particular class, there were exceptions to the established rules. For example, if a nobleman raped a girl who was entrusted to him for guardianship, then he was deprived of his nobility and all the privileges associated with the title. If during the detention he resisted, then the gallows awaited him.
Among the military, deserters and traitors were sentenced to hanging. For officers, such a death was so humiliating that they often committed suicide without waiting for the execution of the punishment imposed by the court.
The exception was cases of high treason, in which the nobleman was deprived of all privileges and could be executed as a commoner.
Civil penalty in Russian Empire and other countries - one of the types of shameful punishment in the XVIII-XIX centuries. Her rite consisted in the public humiliation of the punished with the breaking of a sword over his head as a sign of deprivation of all the rights of the state (ranks, class privileges, property rights, parental rights, etc.).
In the Middle Ages, instead of breaking the sword, under the funeral psalms from the knight standing on the scaffold, they removed the knight's vestments (armor, knight's belt, spurs, etc.) in parts, and at the culmination they broke the shield with the noble coat of arms. After that, they sang the 109th psalm of King David, consisting of a set of curses, under the last words of which the herald (and sometimes the king himself) poured cold water on the former knight, symbolizing purification. Then the former knight was lowered from the scaffold with the help of a gallows, the loop of which was passed under the armpits. The former knight, under the hooting of the crowd, was led to the church, where a real funeral service was performed on him, after which he was handed over to the executioner, if he was not prepared by sentence for a different punishment that did not require the executioner’s services (if the knight was relatively “lucky”, then everything could be limited to the deprivation of knighthood). After the execution of the sentence (for example, execution), the heralds publicly announced the children (or other heirs) as “vile (literally villains, French vilain / English villain), deprived of ranks, not having the right to bear arms and appear and participate in games and tournaments , at court and at royal meetings, under fear of being stripped naked and carved with rods, like villans and born from an ignoble father.
Famous personalities subjected to civil execution
November 12, 1708 - a symbolic civil execution of Hetman Mazepa took place in Hlukhiv (in the absence of Mazepa himself, who fled to Turkey)
1768 - struck in all estate and property rights and deprived of the surname Saltychikha (Daria Nikolaevna Saltykova)
On January 10 (21), 1775, on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow, the executioners performed the ritual of the civil execution of Mikhail Shvanvich
on the night of July 12-13, 1826 - Decembrists: 97 people in St. Petersburg and 15 naval officers in Kronstadt
Public trampling of honor was sometimes considered even more severe punishment than the death penalty, since the scolded citizen then had to put up with the dishonor that accompanied him throughout his earthly journey. At all times, both men and women could be humiliated, only depending on the sex, both the methods of dishonor and the causes of shame differed.
Trade execution
Dooming a person to corporal punishment, judges in the person of kings could pursue three goals: kill the criminal, turn him into a cripple, or publicly humiliate him in order to put the offender in his place. Representatives of the upper classes who had lost the trust of the ruler were subjected to the lightest physical flogging, which caused irreparable damage to their personal dignity. Usually, public punishment, regulated by the Sudebnik of 1497, was carried out on trading floors right in front of the common people and therefore was called "commercial execution".
If the executioner used a whip for the death penalty, then the use of a rod or whip was enough to humiliate a person. At the same time, the punished man had to be naked, otherwise these blows did not harm his honor. AT last time"commercial penalty" was used in the Russian Empire in 1845, but Catherine II banned it even earlier.
Pillory
From the 18th century, instead of painful corporal punishment, representatives of the privileged classes began to be subjected to a more humane, but no less humiliating standing at the pillory. Installed in a crowded place on a special platform, the pillory was sometimes equipped with blocks in which the hands and head of the “criminal” were clamped, and sometimes it was equipped only with shackles and a collar hanging on a chain. A nobleman sentenced to public insult was taken to the place of general ridicule on "shameful" black horns, put on his knees and chained to a pillory. Each convict had to stand for the term specified in the verdict, which was counted from the moment when the executioner broke the sword over the head of the punished, symbolizing noble honor.
Defamation
The ritual of breaking the sword, in other words, defamation, was first introduced by Peter I, and initially it was used only in the army, and then moved into general civil practice. This humiliating act was a prelude to the deprivation of their class rights, military ranks, title, status and sending into a lifetime exile. Defamation, as a way of insulting human dignity, was necessarily accompanied by nailing a tablet with the name of the convict to the gallows. This rite of "civil execution" was used in the period from 1716-1766.
beard duty
Peru of Peter I owns another resonant law that changed not only appearance, but also the consciousness of a Russian person, for whom a broad beard from time immemorial has been a sign of honor and nobility. The length of the beard was a measure of respect and aristocracy, so it was diligently grown and cherished like the apple of an eye. Sometimes it was passed on as an inheritance from one generation to another, and the majesty of the family was judged by the addition of the lengths of all the beards in the pedigree.
A spit in the beard was regarded as a personal insult, and therefore it was immediately followed by a weighty blow, restoring the violated honor of the bearded man. A boyar who did not get involved in a fight was considered to have endured an insult and immediately lost the respect of his fellow citizens. Each prince who ruled in Russia in his judicial code, which was called "Pravda", noted in a separate line the punishment provided for an attempt on a beard.
Yaroslav the Wise introduced a fine of 12 hryvnias for causing damage to honor by damaging a beard, and in the Pskov Judicial Code of the 14th century, a vira of 2 rubles was charged for such an offense, although only 1 ruble had to be paid for killing a person. Tsar Ivan the Terrible humiliated objectionable boyars by pulling his beard, as well as cutting it. Having commanded the boyars to remove facial hair, Emperor Peter I encroached on something sacred, the meaning of which is indicated by the saying: "Cut our heads, do not touch our beards." That is why at the initial stage of the "reform" many boyars agreed to pay a hefty "beard duty" to the treasury, so as not to lose this symbol of dignity and honor of the family.
Disfiguring executions
Non-elite citizens were subjected to much more painful humiliation procedures, which could not be hidden, since they were subjected to such cruel measures as nostril plucking and branding.
Initially acting as a punishment for smoking, pulling out the nostrils later turned into a popular procedure for marking recidivist convicts, whose biography was eloquently told by their appearance.
A commoner caught stealing was immediately condemned to hard labor, after which the letters "B", "O" and "P" were burned on his forehead and cheeks, so that everyone who could read knew that he was facing a swindler. Only women, who, according to the law, were not supposed to be branded, could avoid this fate.
Purely female humiliation
It was possible to humiliate a Russian woman by cutting off her hair, which was done by the husband or relatives of the lady in case of convicting her of treason or fornication. However, self-willed landowners often practiced this kind of humiliation for no reason, since they saw in the serfs not people, but an object for entertainment.
To disgrace a married woman, one had simply to rip off her headdress, which after the wedding became an obligatory attribute of her clothes. It is from here that the word “goof off” originates in the meaning of disgrace.
The greatest shame could be incurred by a girl who lost her chastity before marriage. In this case, the gates of her house were smeared with tar, her relatives had the right to beat her, and her chances of getting married were sharply reduced.
July 10 2012
On 1 1864, an event took place on Mytninskaya Square in St. Petersburg, which forever became part of the Russian liberation movement. It was a foggy, hazy Petersburg morning. It drizzled cold, piercing rain. Streams of water slid along the tall black pillar with chains, long drops fell to the ground from the wet wooden platform of the scaffold. By eight o'clock in the morning more than two thousand had gathered here. Writers, magazine staff, students of the medical-surgical academy, officers of the army rifle battalions came to say goodbye to a man who for about seven years had been the ruler of the thoughts of the revolutionary-minded part of Russian society. After a long wait, a carriage appeared, surrounded by mounted gendarmes, and Nikolai Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky climbed onto the scaffold. The executioner took off his hat, and the reading of the sentence began. A not very competent official did it loudly, but badly, with stutters, with pauses. In one place he choked and barely uttered “satsali-(*133)ic ideas”. A smile flickered across Chernyshevsky's pale face. The verdict declared that Chernyshevsky “had a great influence on young people through his literary activity” and that “for intent to overthrow the existing order” he was deprived of “all rights of the state” and referred “to hard labor for 14 years”, and then “settled in Siberia forever.
The rain intensified. Chernyshevsky often raised his hand, wiping the cold water that flowed down his face and ran down the collar of his overcoat. Finally the reading stopped. “The executioners lowered him to his knees. They broke the saber above his head and then, raising him even higher a few steps, took his hands in chains attached to the post. At this time, it began to rain very heavily, the executioner put a hat on him. Chernyshevsky thanked him, straightened his cap as far as his hands would allow him, and then, putting his hand in his hand, calmly awaited the end of this procedure. There was dead silence in the crowd, - an eyewitness of the “civil execution” recalls. - At the end of the ceremony, everyone rushed to the carriage, broke through the line of policemen ... and only by the efforts of the mounted gendarmes, the crowd was separated from the carriage. Then ... bouquets of flowers were thrown to him. One woman who threw flowers was arrested. Someone shouted: “Farewell, Chernyshevsky!” This cry was immediately echoed by others and then replaced by an even more caustic “goodbye”. The next day, May 20, 1864, Chernyshevsky, in shackles, under the protection of gendarmes, was sent to Siberia, where he was destined to live for almost 20 years in isolation from society, from relatives, from his beloved work. Worse than any penal servitude was this debilitating inaction, this doom to reflect on the brightly lived and suddenly cut off years ...