Omsk State Literary Museum named F.M. Dostoevsky's

A version of the New Testament, published in 1823 and one of the most prized exhibits at the museum, is the same copy that Dostoevsky received from N.D. Fonvizina and P.E. Annenkova, the wives of Decembrists, while he was imprisoned in Tobolsk jail, which he kept throughout his life

Omsk, the second largest Siberian city, was founded at the beginning of the 18th century at the confluence of the Om and Irtysh rivers as a Russian vanguard for expansion to the south of Siberia. Over the course of its three-century history, the city has changed from being a border fortress and a capital for Siberian Cossacks to a place of exile and even the capital of the Whites in 1918–1919 during the civil war with a provisional government headed by Admiral Kolchak.

Dostoevsky, having been convicted for involvement in a socialist circle, spent four painful years of penal servitude in an Omsk prison. Hard work, severe conditions and a ban on keeping records made the writer feel as if he had been buried alive. However, it is here that he embraced the issues that became central to his creative work, including those on personal freedom, suffering and the soul, people and intellectuals. The Dostoevsky Museum is situated in a historic building where Dostoevsky visited the commander of the Omsk Fortress. The permanent exhibition illustrates the writer’s biography with detailed flashbacks to the Siberian period, all while reconstructing the feel of the prison barrack. Individual rooms are devoted to Omsk writers.

Omsk State Literary Museum named F.M. Dostoevsky's

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