Dostoevsky wrote the sketches “Notes from the House of the Dead” after returning from penal servitude. They constitute a unique document containing stories about the fates of real convicts whom the writer encountered at hard labor, as well as many characteristic sayings and expressions he heard from prisoners and soldiers. But it is also a profound philosophical work by an outstanding thinker, whose central idea is Freedom as a necessary condition of human existence. “Despite any measures, a living man cannot be turned into a corpse,” asserts the author of “Notes from the House of the Dead.”