Petrashevsky Circle - Members of Assembly, Circles Close To Petrashevists

Members of Assembly, Circles Close To Petrashevists

In the history of literature of the 19th century, the so-called Mikhail Petrashevsky occupies a prominent place, because no one has participated in the Russian political process as much as writers and scientists. But the circle Petrashevsky through its individual members (Durova, mostly) was in close contact with many others, which argued in exactly the same spirit against oppression of censorship, the ugliness of serfdom, and the corruption of officialdom. With a passionate interest they read and commented on the theories of Étienne Cabet, Charles Fourier, Proudhon, and finally, listened with delight to Belinsky's letter to Gogol.

A certain group of the Circle held its meetings at Irinarkh Vvedenskiy; among its members were young writers and students of G. E. Blagosvetlov, A.P. Milyukov and N.A. Chernyshevsky. A well-known memoirs' author F. F. Vigel, who knew of these meetings and the way they were linked to those held at Petrashevsky's, reported on the Vvedensky group. The lack of precise data in his report, not to mention the help of Rostovtsev, Vvedensky's friend, saved the latter and his friends.

Some members escaped persecution, among them V.A. Èngel, later an active participant in Herzen's Polar Star, a famous theorist of Slavophilism Nikolai Danilevsky, Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin and poet Apollon Maykov who often visited Petrashevsky's Friday meetings.

Valerian Maikov and Belinsky, two well-known writers, associated with the Petrashevsky Circle, died actually before it was broken. Valerian Maykov was very close to Petrashevsky and took a large part in the compilation of Kirillov's work, "Dictionary of Foreign Words", one of the prosess' corpus delicti.

Vissarion Belinsky, the author of 'Letter to Gogol' would have been classified as the most dangerous criminal, since many of the Petrashevsky Circle members' only fault had been participation in spreading this letter's text around. Among such was the poet Aleksey Pleshcheev who, according to the verdict, "for distributing letters Belinsky, was deprived of all rights of the state and sent to hard labor in factories for 4 years." One of the reasons for Golovinski, Dostoyevsky and Palm's convictions was actually the 'failure to report' on those who took part in publishing the Belinsky's letter.