We’re away until January 3, but we’re reposting some of our favorite pieces from 2016. Enjoy your holiday!

A woodcut by Fritz Eichenberg for The Idiot, ca. 1940s.

I

A Few Facts

1. He wore five-pound shackles on his ankles every day for four years.

2. This was in the prison camp in Omsk where he was serving out a sentence of hard labor after being convicted of sedition for being part of a revolutionary cell dedicated to the liberation of the serfs and freedom of the press.

3. For the seven months following his arrest, he’d been kept in solitary confinement in the Peter and Paul Fortress on the Neva, his cell window smeared with an oily paste to prevent any daylight from seeping through.

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