Dostoevsky's penal servitude facility in numbers

The article under discussion presents a detailed analysis of some archival documents of the Russian State Military History Archive in Moscow: the drawings of the Omsk Ostrog [[ɐˈstroɡ] ‘fortress’], which served as a katorga [[ˈkatərgə] ‘penal servitude’] prison, as well as the maps of its surroundings. The work examines the area and the size of the structures both on the territory of the prison and outside and attempts to restore the picture of the formerly exisisting prison barracks. The results thus obtained are consistently compared with the available studies of the Omsk Katorga structures as penned by the Russian author F. M. Dostoevsky. As a result, the exact sizes of all the structures and premises inside the penal facility were identified; the size of the area for one prisoner, the design drawing of the military hospital are described; the appearance of the elements of the every-day life in the penal servitude facility and the rules and order the prisoners had to follow in their correspondence with relatives are clarified. The actual sizes of the structures let us create a more accurate idea of the life F. M. Dostoevsky had during his Omsk penal servitude.