Several months after the replacement of Perovsky, an attractive twenty-year-old woman walked up the steps to Dostoevsky's apartment. It was about 11:30 in the morning, and the young woman's name was Anna Snitkina. She had gray eyes, a broad forehead and a firm chin. Although she was a bit apprehensive about the coming encounter, her face normally reflected a certain resoluteness. For a woman so young, she was well educated and possessed an unusual degree of common sense mixed with intelligence. She had completed a secondary education and had also enrolled in a Pedagogical Institute recently opened for women, but she dropped out after a year to help care for her dying father. She still, however, had time to take a stenography class at night. It was due to this training that she was now on her way to begin working for a novelist whose works she had read and enjoyed.

Most recently she had read the first parts of his Crime and Punishment, which had been appearing serially that year in Katkov's The Russian Messenger. In fact, the big stone corner building in which she now found herself, with its many small apartments, reminded her of the one lived in by Raskolnikov, the hero of Dostoevsky's new novel.

Indeed,much of the story was set in the writer's own neighborhood, not far from the Haymarket Square and about a mile south of the Winter Palace. In his novel he wrote of Sonia, a good-hearted woman forced into prostitution by poverty and the irresponsibility of her alcoholic father, Mr Marmeladov.

Less than five months after the death of Nekrasov, Dostoevsky was crushed by the death of someone much closer to him, his two-year-old son Alyosha. One May morning in 1878, shortly before the family was to leave the capital for their summer retreat at Staraya Russa,Anna noticed that her little Alyosha's oval face began to twitch. She called the children's doctor,who came over, gave her a prescription, and assured her that the twitching would soon cease. But since it continued, she awoke Dostoevsky, and they decided to seek out a specialist in nervous disorders. The specialist promised to come as soon as possible and arrived early in the afternoon. By that time the infant was unconscious, and his little body convulsed sporadically in spasms. The doctor told Dostoevsky, but not Anna, that the boy was near death. Dostoevsky knelt down next to the couch where they had placed Alyosha. Anna knelt beside him, not knowing what the doctor had told her husband. About an hour later, after the convulsions had begun to occur less frequently, the infant stopped breathing. His father kissed him, made the sign of the cross over him three times, and let out his grief in sobs and tears. Anna and the other children, their eight-year-old daughter Lyubov and the six-year-old Fedor, also cried.

A few days later, after a church service, the family stood in the Great Okhta Cemetery on a beautiful May day and watched Alyosha's little white coffin being lowered into the ground.

Shortly after the Tsar's return from the Crimea, Sophia Perovskaya was on the streets watching his movement about the capital. She was one of the leaders of the People's Will, and she and her friends were again plotting to kill him. Her job and that of a small group aiding her was to detect any pattern in the Tsar's activities as his carriage sped around the city.

For a long time she had been against assassinations. After being released from prison in 1874 and spending some time with her mother in the Crimea, she had worked as a doctor's apprentice in the Simbirsk Province and then attended a course for doctors' assistants in Simferopol, where her father had once been vice-governor. After graduating, she was put in charge of arranging a couple of barracks for wounded soldiers who would be brought to Simferopol as a result of the hostilities just begun against the Ottoman Empire. But before any arrived, she was ordered to the capital to take part in the Trial of the 193, most of whose defendants had been arrested three years earlier for engaging in revolutionary propaganda. At the time of Zasulich's shooting of General Trepov, which occurred the day after Sophia's own acquittal, she still believed that the weapons of the revolutionaries should be words and not guns. Yet tales which she heard of mistreatment of prisoners angered her, and her opposition to actions such as those of Zasulich began to soften.

The year 1866 was an eventful one for Alexander II. First, a man named Karakozov tried to assassinate him, and then he experienced sexual intimacy with a beloved young woman still in her late teens.

As the year began, the Tsar's subjects again were discontented. During the Polish rebellion the Russian public had enthusiastically cheered him, and many intellectuals supported his repression of the Poles. But the crisis was now over, and the public was concerned with other matters. The diary of the government official Nikitenko is illustrative of the mood of the times. He complains of the radical ideas expressed in The Contemporary, but also of government censorship policies. He fears that Russia is on the brink of anarchy, due in part to the lack of respect for authority, but he is also critical of a government which seems both weak and arbitrary, and which is apparently indifferent to public concerns.

Yet the educated public hardly spoke with a unified voice.While Nekrasov's The Contemporary attacked the government from the left, Katkov's increasingly conservative and outspoken newspaper, The Moscow Gazette, criticized government ministers and policies for being too liberal.

Dissatisfaction was compounded by the continuing economic problems of the empire. Alexander wished to modernize and strengthen Russia, especially to build up its railways. But how was he to pay the cost? And, despite occasional cautious words, he desired the continuing expansion of Russia's empire in places such as Central Asia, one reason that military spending continued to eat up about one-third of the government's budget.

During the week that the dead Emperor's body lay in state in the cathedral, Sub-lieutenant Leo Tolstoy was stationed more than a thousand miles to the south. He was in the Crimea, near the besieged city of Sevastopol. Here nature was already beginning to display its crocuses, snowdrops and hyacinths; and larks, linnets and brilliant goldfinches were twittering and singing their songs. On March 1st, the lieutenant wrote in his diary: “The Emperor died on February 18th, and now we are to take the oath to the new Emperor. Great changes await Russia. It is necessary to work and be manly to take part in these important moments of Russia's life.”

No doubt he was exhorting himself as he often did. His mother had died when he was almost two and his father, Count Nicholas Tolstoy, when he was almost nine. Kindly relatives completed the upbringing of the five Tolstoy children, but from an early age Leo exhorted and chastised himself as if he were his own parent.He was always setting goals for himself.When he was nineteen, for example, and about to leave Kazan University before obtaining a degree, he set out a two-year educational plan for himself.He would study the following: “the entire course of judicial science needed for the final exam at the university … practical medicine and part of its theory … French, Russian, German, English, Italian and Latin … agriculture … history, geography and statistics … mathematics … music and painting … the natural sciences.”2 In addition, he intended to write a dissertation, as well as compositions on all the subjects which he studied.

On the same Sunday when many in the capital discovered the court's verdict and sentence, they also heard rumors about a provocative speech given the night before which dared to recommend mercy for the assassins. The speaker was Vladimir Soloviev. In a large hall of the capital's Credit Society, before some eight hundred people, he had given a lecture entitled “A Critique of Contemporary Education and the Crisis in the World Process.” Among the audience were many students and sitting in the front were Sophia Tolstaya and her niece, Sophia Khitrovo, with whom Soloviev was still in love.

Since the previous fall, Soloviev had been lecturing as a private docent at both St Petersburg University and the Higher Courses for Women, established in the capital in 1878 – women were not permitted to enroll in the universities. His reputation among the students seemed to increase with each lecture. He welcomed their questions and objections, and especially enjoyed answering the students who were sympathetic with the revolutionary left. In a lecture at the Higher Courses for Women following the arrest of Sophia Perovskaya, Soloviev had publicly stated that the path of revolutionary violence was the wrong way, that it was impossible to bring about truth and justice by force, that it would only lead to despotism.

On the Thursday when the trial of the assassins began, he gave the first of two speeches at the Credit Society lecture hall. But compared to the one he gave two nights later, the first one did not cause much controversy.

The morning after Zhelyabov's arrest, the Tsar, Katia and their eight-year-old son, Gogo, attended a two-hour Lenten service in the chapel of the Winter Palace. The Tsarevich and other members of the royal family were also present. Later, sometime after breakfasting with Katia, the Tsar heard the welcome news that the terrorist leader Zhelyabov had been arrested. Alexander seemed in good spirits that day, the danger of assassination seemed to be receding.

On that same Saturday, after Zhelyabov had failed to come back to their apartment the previous night, Sophia Perovskaya also discovered that her companion was now imprisoned. In addition, she learned that on that very morning the police had checked out the cheese shop, but had not discovered the tunnel. She and the other remaining free members of the executive committee decided to go ahead with plans to assassinate the Tsar on the following day.

In a flat on the corner of the Voznesensky Prospect and the Catherine Canal, where they met that afternoon, the other revolutionaries accepted Sophia's request that she be allowed to take Zhelyabov's place directing the bomb throwers. They were, however, only to spring into action if plans to set off the mine under the street failed. Following the meeting, she and one of the other revolutionaries returned to Sophia's apartment to retrieve anything of importance left behind.Now that Zhelyabov had been arrested, it was no longer safe for her to remain there.

A few weeks after arriving in Geneva, the Dostoevskys attended a session of the Congress of the League of Peace and Freedom, which had been called together amidst the fears of a possible Franco-Prussian war. What a contrast it offered to the military review presented by Napoleon III to Alexander II and William of Prussia at Longchamp just a few months earlier! Instead of monarchs reviewing troops, its leading luminaries were revolutionaries condemning militarism and war.

The most famous of them was Garibaldi, the romantic fighter for Italian independence and unity and a symbol of hope for oppressed nationalities throughout Europe and even beyond. On the day on which he entered Geneva, the Dostoevskys were among the large crowd that waited along the wide and straight Rue du Mont Blanc, down which Garibaldi was scheduled to ride en route to his hotel near the northern side of the Mont Blanc Bridge. Flags and bunting decorated some of the hotels and other buildings along the street. Finally, a cannon shot was heard and the whistle of the locomotive. After some time Garibaldi appeared amidst a large procession of guilds, societies and organizations that had marched to meet him and accompany him to his hotel. The groups had their colorful flags and banners, and some bands played. The sun had already begun to set over Lake Geneva.

Garibaldi rode in an open carriage drawn by four magnificent horses. Both of the Dostoevskys, who were in separate places among the crowd, thought that he had a kindly, sympathetic face.

About a month after the Tsar's departure from London, Fedor Dostoevsky arrived in Bad Ems. His Tsar had left this famous health resort less than a week before, seen off at the train station by his uncle Kaiser William, the Emperor of Germany. A reporter stated that the Tsar seemed to have benefited from the waters. But it is more likely that he looked healthier just being with Katia in this lovely valley town.

It was a beautiful sunny day close to noon when Dostoevsky's train pulled in from Berlin. At first, as he wrote to his wife Anna, he found Ems to be a beautiful place. The narrow, gentle Lahn River flowed through the town, which squeezed itself in between high hills which overlooked it on both sides.

Ems was then one of the most famous spas in all of Europe. As in Baden- Baden, the cream of European society could be seen walking its promenades or sitting in its gardens. Kaiser William went there regularly, as did the Russian Tsar. In 1870, the two monarchs, along with Bismarck and Gorchakov,met there. Shortly after the Tsar returned to Russia that year a famous meeting occurred at Ems between Kaiser William and the French ambassador to Prussia. It was utilized by Bismarck to provoke France into a war which would help to complete the unification of Germany. Alexander at that time gave diplomatic support to his uncle by pressuring Austria not to become involved against Prussia.

In August 1878, several months after Dostoevsky and Soloviev returned from the Optina Monastery, Tolstoy and Turgenev rode together in Tolstoy's carriage over a dirt road heading for his estate at Yasnaya Polyana. It was the first time the two had been together since they had quarreled seventeen years earlier. The initiative for reconciliation came from Tolstoy. That April he had written to Turgenev: “Let us shake hands and, please, forgive me thoroughly for all that I was guilty of towards you … If you can forgive me, I offer you all the friendship of which I am capable.At our age, there is only one good – loving relations with people.”

Tolstoy had been prompted to write the letter by the effects of a prolonged spiritual crisis which he was then undergoing and which he later described in detail in his My Confession. At the very end of the previous decade, while in a strange town one night, he had experienced a horrifying fear of death. There seemed to be no specific cause for this night of anxiety and fear, spent in a strange inn, and after returning to Yasnaya Polyana he seemed to regain his inner balance. But gradually by the middle of the seventies the fear of death began to haunt him more and more, and it gradually transformed his life. Three months after his forty-seventh birthday he wrote to a friend that he felt old age had begun for him.

At the end of June 1877, the Tsar was in Simnitza, Rumania with his soldiers. Russia was again at war with Turkey, for the tenth time in two centuries. The day before his arrival in this little town, Russian troops had crossed the Danube under Turkish fire and successfully secured the opposite Bulgarian bank and surrounding heights. Before the day was over, they had also taken over the small town of Sistova, which lay a few miles south of the great river. After arriving in Simnitza, with an entourage that included the Tsarevich and Minister of War Milyutin, Alexander visited the wounded and established his quarters at a nearby country house which sat up on a hill overlooking a wide stretch of the Danube below. Later that same day he and his retinue rode down to the river and were transported to the southern bank. His soldiers greeted him with cheers and a regimental band. Then flanked by two solid rows of soldiers, his party rode up into the hills to congratulate the generals and troops now situated near Sistova.As the Tsar strode up on this hot sunny day to shake the hand of one of his victorious generals, an English war correspondent thought that he looked younger than his fifty-nine years and every inch a majestic ruler.

At the entrance of Sistova the Bulgarians welcomed him warmly. He was met by a crowd led by clergymen carrying banners, the gospels and a cross. Alexander told them to lead him to their church.

On July 1st, 1879, Vladimir Soloviev wrote to a friend: “I am living through a very sad time.” He went on to explain that his father was suffering from an incurable heart disease. The son was then with his sick father at the Neskuchny Garden. On a summer night, amidst the trees, ponds and ravines of this large park, one could sometimes hear from down below on the Moscow River voices singing “Down along the Mother Volga.” The Solovievs stayed that summer in the best part of Neskuchny, at one of the pavilions near the royal-owned Alexander Palace.

Just a few days before, they had celebrated the father's name day. Family and friends were there, and Tsar Alexander's tall sons Sergei and Paul, whom the professor had tutored, stopped by. He sat on the flagstone terrace with a blanket wrapped around his swollen legs. His receding hair and full beard were white and his eyes seemed calm and benign, but he knew that although he was only fifty-nine, he probably had not much longer to live. Nevertheless, as he had done now for almost three decades, he continued writing his History of Russia from Ancient Times. That summer he worked over volume twenty-nine, dealing with an early portion of Catherine the Great's reign.

Early in October, after the family had moved back to its spacious apartment about a mile west of the Kremlin, the professor died.

It was finally time to move the body. The funeral bells were tolling in the churches of St Petersburg. For nine days the corpse of the dead Emperor, Nicholas I of Russia, had remained within the red walls of the Winter Palace. On some of these days the odor of his decomposing body had been almost unbearable. But it was now Sunday, February 27th 1855, and the winter sun was shining brilliantly.

As the procession began to move, the new Tsar and “Emperor and Autocrat of all the Russias,” Alexander II, walked behind the coffin of his father. In his Cossack overcoat he was tall and regal, and his blue-gray eyes stared straight ahead. He was thirty-six years old, and the heavy responsibility of ruling a country at war was now his.

His father had also come to power under difficult circumstances: a group of conspirators opposed to autocracy and serfdom – they were later called Decembrists – had tried to prevent him from coming to the throne. And so his reign had begun with bloodshed and the arrest of these revolutionaries, among whom were a number of aristocratic young army officers.

But the difficulties now facing Alexander II were, if not as dramatic, more complex. Despite inferior equipment, shortages of supplies and diplomatic isolation, he somehow had to successfully conclude the present war in the Crimea. That, however, was just the first of his problems.

During the year following the death of the Tsar's oldest son, Professor Soloviev gave lessons in history to the new Tsarevich Alexander, just as he had earlier done for his older brother. The selection of Soloviev reflected the outstanding reputation the historian had by now achieved.

The professor spent part of his summers during the mid sixties at Pokrovskoe, an area of pleasant summer dachas on the outskirts of Moscow. There he continued working on his History of Russia from Ancient Times. Despite administrative and teaching duties at Moscow University and his occasional tutoring of a Tsarevich, he had managed since 1851 to continue publishing his history at the rate of a volume per year. During the mid-sixties he was writing several volumes on the reign of Peter the Great, an era like his own, full of great changes. After rising at 6:00 a.m. and a long morning walk in this area dotted with trees, dachas, peasant huts, ponds, a small river running under a precipice and a green cupolated village church, he would come back to his study and work on the reign of the man he thought the greatest leader in history.

In his memoirs, Soloviev would compare Alexander II unfavorably with Peter the Great. As the historian saw it, they both held the reigns of power in a period of transition; but whereas Peter's strong hands had directed a successful transformation, Alexander's weak hands allowed the carriage of state to rush ahead toward its destruction.

Two years before Dostoevsky arrived in Tver from Semipalatinsk, a prisoner arrived by sleigh at his family estate not far from that city. The prisoner was Michael Bakunin on his way to banishment in Siberia.

Premukhino was the name of the large Bakunin estate with its hundreds of serfs, and it was where Michael and his five brothers and four sisters had grown up. The family's big, one-storied, neo-classical house stood on a hill surrounded by woods and fields, and at the bottom of the hill was the river Osuga. After having to leave this estate to attend a military school in St Petersburg when he was fourteen, Bakunin always remembered it fondly.

While he was in prison, his father had died and long before that his sister Lyubov. But the rest of the family awaited him. How close Michael had once been to his sisters and brothers, especially his sisters, who were always falling in love with his friends! Bakunin's favorite, the blue-eyed Tatyana, had once loved Turgenev so ardently that she never really got over it. She was now in her early forties and still single.

When as a young man, Michael had returned home for a time from St Petersburg or Moscow, he had often defied his parents and acted as a champion for his brothers, all younger than he, or for his sisters. He was then a curlyhaired, rebellious youth who disapproved of what he considered the superfluous world of the nobility.

After leaving Paris, Alexander II stopped off in Baden-Baden, a lovely German resort town. One of the little city's most prominent residents, Ivan Turgenev, joined other Russians in going to the train station to welcome the Tsar. The author wrote to a friend telling him that Alexander seemed thinner and suggested that the loss of weight was connected with the vile act of the would-be assassin in Paris.

About a month later another Russian visitor came to Baden-Baden, and one hot stifling day at about noon, he walked up to a pleasant but modest two-story house, sitting in a courtyard, a stone's throw away from the little Oos River. The visitor was Dostoevsky, and the man who lodged in the top story of this house on Schillerstrasse was Turgenev, who was at that moment having lunch.

Turgenev had been residing here, no more than a ten-minute walk up a slight hill to the Viardot villa, ever since following Pauline Viardot and her family to Baden-Baden four years earlier. The Viardot house, along with its separate concert hall and theater buildings, was one of the social centers of this internationally famous resort and spa. Royalty and distinguished men and women of the arts frequently visited the Viardots, and Turgenev himself had already arranged to have his own villa constructed on property which he had bought next to that of Pauline.

Late in the afternoon of Saturday, June 1, 1867, the Tsar and his entourage arrived at the Gare du Nord in Paris. He was met there by the French Emperor, Napoleon III, who was a smaller and older man than the Tsar and sported a goatee and a mustache with long waxed ends.

Their personalities were as different as their appearances. While Alexander cared little for ideas, Napoleon III was somewhat of an intellectual who had written a number of books. His two-volume History of Caesar, published just two years earlier, had been a sensation and led to a European-wide debate on the role and ethical rights of great historical figures, a subject, as we have seen, of interest in different ways to Dostoevsky, Professor Soloviev and Tolstoy. While Alexander was bred for autocracy and, following Karakozov's assassination attempt, was becoming more isolated from the Russian public, Louis Napoleon had to first be elected president and then later confirmed as Emperor and was an early master at manipulating public opinion. And while Alexander expressed only disdain for radicals, Napoleon III had once flirted with some of their ideas and still attempted to depict himself as a champion of social justice.

Now with a cavalry escort, the two monarchs rode together to the Emperor's Tuileries Palace. The French Emperor was tactful enough to avoid the route which would have taken them down the recently constructed Boulevard de Sebastopol.