Facing the firing squad.

The Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote his best works- after facing his own execution by a firing squad!

On 22nd December 1849, twenty political prisoners were made to face the firing squad. The first three were blindfolded and tied to the post.

Dostoevsky was among the second batch on three men to be executed.

An officer rode in with a white flag at the very last moment! Their death sentence has been reduced to imprisonment in Siberia.

Dostoevsky served four years hard labor in a camp. After his release he wrote his prison experience in The House of the dead in 1861 and The Crime and Punishment in the year 1866.