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November

By: HISTORY.com Editors

1849

Fyodor Dostoevsky is sentenced to death

HISTORY.com Editors

Published: November 13, 2009

Last Updated: January 24, 2025

On November 16, 1849, a Russian court sentences Fyodor Dostoevsky to death for his allegedly anti-government activities linked to a radical intellectual group. His execution is stayed at the last minute.

Dostoevsky’s father was a doctor at Moscow’s Hospital for the Poor, where he grew rich enough to buy land and serfs. After his father’s death, Dostoevsky, who suffered from epilepsy, studied military engineering and became a civil servant while secretly writing novels. His first, Poor People, and his second, The Double, were both published in 1846-the first was a hit, the second a failure.

Dostoevsky began participating in a radical intellectual discussion group called the Petrashevsky Circle. The group was suspected of subversive activites, which led to Dostoevsky’s arrest in 1849, and his sentencing to death.

On December 22, 1849, Dostoevsky was led before the firing squad but received a last-minute reprieve and was sent to a Siberian labor camp, where he worked for four years. He was released in 1854 and worked as a soldier on the Mongolian frontier. He married a widow and finally returned to Russia in 1859. The following year, he founded a magazine and two years after that journeyed to Europe for the first time.

In 1864 and 1865, his wife and his brother died, the magazine folded, and Dostoevsky found himself deeply in debt, which he exacerbated by gambling.

In 1866, he published Crime and Punishment, one of his most popular works. In 1867, he married a stenographer, and the couple fled to Europe to escape his creditors. His novel The Possessed (1872) was successful, and the couple returned to St. Petersburg. He published The Brothers Karamazov in 1880 to immediate success, but he died a year later.

Timeline

Also on This Day in History

Discover more of the major events, famous births, notable deaths and everything else history-making that happened on November 16th

1532

Francisco Pizarro traps Incan emperor Atahualpa

Francisco Pizarro, the Spanish explorer and conquistador, springs a trap on the Incan emperor, Atahualpa. Pizarro forces him to convert to Christianity before eventually killing him.

Cruel Conquistador

1776

British capture Fort Washington

Hessian Lieutenant General Wilhelm von Knyphausen and a force of 3,000 Hessian mercenaries and 5,000 Redcoats lay siege to Fort Washington at the northern end and highest point of Manhattan Island. Throughout the morning, Knyphausen met stiff resistance from the Patriot riflemen inside the fort, but by afternoon, the Patriots were overwhelmed, and the garrison […]

1821

Trade opens on the Santa Fe Trail

On November 16, 1821, Missouri Indian trader William Becknell arrives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, sells his goods at an enormous profit and makes plans to return the next year over the route that will become known as the Santa Fe Trail. It would become one of the most important and lucrative of the Old […]

1907

Oklahoma enters the Union

Indian Territory and Oklahoma Territory collectively enter the United States as Oklahoma, the 46th state. Oklahoma, with a name derived from the Choctaw Indian words okla, meaning “people,” and humma, meaning “red,” has a history of human occupation dating back 15,000 years. The first Europeans to visit the region were Spanish explorers in the 16th […]

1941

Joseph Goebbels publishes his screed of hate

On November 16, 1941, Joseph Goebbels publishes in the German magazine Das Reich that “The Jews wanted the war, and now they have it”—referring to the Nazi propaganda scheme to shift the blame for the world war onto European Jews, thereby giving the Nazis a rationalization for the so-called Final Solution. Just two days earlier, […]

1957

Body of Ed Gein’s final victim, Bernice Worden, is found

On November 16, 1957, the body of Bernice Worden of Plainfield, Wisconsin, is found, the final victim of infamous killer Edward Gein. His grave robbing, necrophilia and copious corpse trophies gained national attention, and may have provided inspiration for the characters of Norman Bates in Psycho and serial killer Buffalo Bill in The Silence of […]

1959

“The Sound of Music” premieres on Broadway

On November 16, 1959, The Sound of Music opens on Broadway, becoming a smash success from the first night. Did a young Austrian nun named Maria von Trapp really take to the hills surrounding Salzburg to sing spontaneously of her love of music? No, but nearly all of the particulars of her 1949 book, The […]

1974

The Arecibo Message, an attempt to communicate with extraterrestrials, is sent into space

On November 16, 1974, eight years before E.T. did the “Phone Home” thing on film, researchers send humanity’s first real-life, deliberate radio message into outer space to extraterrestrials. The message goes out from the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, where the Arecibo radio telescope was getting a major upgrade and conducting a ceremony to mark […]

2001

First Harry Potter film opens

On November 16, 2001, the British author J.K. Rowling’s star creation—bespectacled boy wizard Harry Potter—makes his big-screen debut in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, which opens in movie theaters across the United States. Based on the mega-best-selling fantasy novel of the same name, the film, which starred Daniel Radcliffe in the title role, went […]

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HISTORY.com Editors

HISTORY.com works with a wide range of writers and editors to create accurate and informative content. All articles are regularly reviewed and updated by the HISTORY.com team. Articles with the “HISTORY.com Editors” byline have been written or edited by the HISTORY.com editors, including Amanda Onion, Missy Sullivan, Matt Mullen, Christian Zapata and Cristiana Lombardo.

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Citation Information

Article title
Fyodor Dostoevsky is sentenced to death
Author
HISTORY.com Editors
Website Name
History
URL
https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/november-16/fyodor-dostoevsky-is-sentenced-to-death
Date Accessed
May 08, 2025
Publisher
A&E Television Networks
Last Updated
January 24, 2025
Original Published Date
November 13, 2009

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