On March 30, 1856, Emperor Alexander II, newly ascended to the Russian throne, addressed the Marshalls of the Nobility of Moscow Province with a set of remarks that sent shock waves through the Russian elite. “Rumors have been circulating,” the tsar noted, “that I wish to give the peasants their freedom. This is unjust, and you can say this to everyone from right to left. But hostile feelings and unhappiness between peasants and their landowners persist … I am convinced that sooner or later we will have to take this step. It would be much better if this happens from above than from below.”

With these words, Alexander (1855–81) set in motion a long and complex process leading five years later to the abolition of serfdom. Liberating Russia's peasants involved more than just a change in their legal status. Serfdom lay at the heart of an intricate web of institutions, structures, and relationships that penetrated all corners of Russian life. It was the quintessential Gordian knot that had to be severed in order for Russia to join its European neighbors in advancing toward modernity. By abolishing serfdom, Alexander and his supporters were ushering in a new era.

At the time of Alexander's remarks to the Moscow nobility, Fyodor Dostoevsky was living in exile on the edge of the Kazakh steppe in the remote town of Semipalatinsk. He had recently been released from four years in penal servitude for his role in the Petrashevsky circle*, an alleged conspiracy of utopian socialists, dedicated in part to alleviating the plight of the peasantry. Dostoevsky's spiritual transformation in prison, recounted in his semi-autobiographical novel Notes from the House of the Dead (1860–2), had shifted his priorities, and while he undoubtedly approved of the abolition of serfdom, the theme does not figure prominently either in his published work or in his private correspondence. Unlike his contemporary Leo Tolstoy, Dostoevsky did not make peasant life a focal point of his creativity. He is best known as an urban writer, probing the depths of the individual psyche against the bleak backdrop of St. Petersburg's slums. While he shared Tolstoy's faith in the innate goodness of the Russian common folk, the narod*, his attention as a writer was drawn toward the moral dilemmas of Russia's educated society.