F. Dostoyevskiy Omsk State Literary Museum, Omsk, Omskaya oblast, Russia
The Museum occupies a historical building — the Commandant’s of the Omsk Fortress House (built 1799). Here lived the last Commandant of the Fortress, Aleksey F’odorovich de Grave, who rendered a special assistance to F. M. Dostoevsky during his prison years.
The exposition is held in nine rooms and consists of two sections: ‘F. M. Dostoevsky and Siberia’ and ‘Writers of Omsk’.
In the first section one can find a complete biography of F. M. Dostoevsky with the attention focused on his Siberian years. A special room is dedicated to the writer’s prison years.
Here the atmosphere of a prison of that period is reconstructed: on one side a visitor can see a plank bad fixed to the wall, foot shackles, prisoners’ rags and other prison things, on the other there are a picture of Voskresensky Cathedral, the Gospel, an icon with an icon-lamp.
Necessary attention is paid to people who surrounded F. M. Dostoevsky in Siberia — to those about whom the writer will say ‘If I had not found good men here, I would have died’ The exposition tells us about the Commandant A. F. de Grave, the Kapustin family and Chokan Valikhanov .
The history of creation of great novels is viewed in the light of the writer’s special experience, which he acquired in Siberian prison. As a whole, the exposition ‘F. M. Dostoevsky and Siberia’ is made as a way from the darkness to light, through ‘crucibles of ordeals’ to the discovery of faith.
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