Feodor, reputedly mentally retarded, took little interest in politics. He was of pious characher and spent most of his time in prayers. Having inherited a land devastated by the excesses of his father Ivan the Terrible, he left the task of governing the country to his able brother-in-law, Boris Godunov. When his only daughter died in infancy, the tsar approached a state of mental breakdown. His failure to procreate brought an end to the centuries-old dynasty and led Russia into the Time of Troubles.
One of them is Vasily Perov (1834-1882), genre painter and portraitist, who created the portraits of some outstanding representatives of Russian culture, among them Feodor Dostoevsky.
In the beginning of 1849 a political scandal shook St. Petersburg: the Secret Police disclosed a conspiracy against the Tsarist government.
It hurt Dostoevsky to watch every day the effects of tyranny and slavery: the suffering of the poor, the oppression of the middle class, the cruelty to serfs found sympathy in him.
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