recalled the experience twenty years later in The Idiot: "The uncertainty and feeling of aversion for the new thing which was going to overtake him immediately, was terrible". An aide-de-camp arrived carrying the Tsar's pardon and the commuted sentences. Swords were broken over the heads of the prisoners, signifying exclusion from civilian life henceforth. They were placed in shackles, and preparations began for their transport to Siberia. After serving four to six years of imprisonment and hard labour, the prisoners' sentences were commuted to exile and service in the army. The members of the circle exiled to Siberia and the Kazakh steppe influenced the nascent Kazakh intelligentsia. One of the most notable interlocutors of Dostoevsky during his time of exile was the Kazakh scholar and military officer Chokan Valikhanov. Speshnev edited a newspaper in Irkutsk from 1857 to 1859. Some, such as Petrashevsky, died in exile, but both Speshnev and Dostoevsky were allowed to return to Petersburg in late 1859, exactly ten years after their departure. In 1860 Dostoevsky published Notes From the House of the Dead, a novel based on his experiences in katorga and exile. In 1871 he published Demons, a novel that drew to some extent on his experiences with the Petrshevsky Circle and Speshnev's conspiratorial group. The central character of the novel, Nikolai Stavrogin, was inspired by Speshnev. List of Petrashevists Mikhail Petrashevsky, titular councilor, 27 years old Dmitry Akhsharumov, Ph.D. St. Petersburg State University, 26 years old Hippolyte Deboo, serving in the Asian Department, 25 years old Konstantin Deboo, serving in the Asian Department, 38 years old Fyodor Dostoyevsky, a retired engineer lieutenant, writer, 27 years old Sergei Durov, a retired collegiate assessor, writer, 33 years old Vasily Golovinski, titular councilor, 20 years old Nikolai Petrovich Grigoriev, Lieutenant Guards Horse-Grenadier Regiment Alexander Evropeus, a retired collegiate secretary, 2? years old Basil Kamen, the son of honorary citizen, 19 years old Nikolay Kashkin, serving in the Asian Department, 20 years old Fedor Lvov, captain of the Life Guards regiment of Chasseurs, 25 years old Nikolay Mombelli, the lieutenant of the Life Guards regiment of Moscow, 27 years old Alexander Palm, lieutenant of the Life Guards regiment of Chasseurs, 27 years old Aleksey Pleshcheyev, non-serviceman, writer, 23 years old Nikolay Speshnev, lord of the Kursk province, 28 years old Konstantin Timkovsky, titular councilor, 35 years old Felix Toll, master chief engineering school, 26 years old Pavel Filippov,