Mikhail Petrashevsky

Mikhail Petrashevsky
Born	13 November [O.S. 1 November] 1821 Saint Petersburg, Russia
Died	19 December [O.S. 7 December] 1866 Minusinsk, Russia

Mikhail Vasilyevich Butashevich-Petrashevsky (Russian: Михаил Васильевич Буташевич-Петрашевский; 13 November [O.S. 1 November] 1821–19 December [O.S. 7 December] 1866), commonly known as Mikhail Petrashevsky, was a Russian public figure and Utopian theorist.

Mikhail Petrashevsky graduated from the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum (1839) and Saint Petersburg State University with a degree in law (1841). He was then employed as a translator and interpreter at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Petrashevsky is known to have edited and authored most of the theoretical articles for the Pocket Dictionary of Foreign Words (1846), which popularized democratic and materialist ideas and principles of utopian socialism.

In 1844, Petrashevsky's apartment became the venue for social gatherings of intellectuals, which from 1845 took place on a weekly basis. These meetings were later dubbed pyatnitsy ("Fridays") and those attending them would be known as Petrashevtsy. The latter came to Petrashevsky's house and used his personal library, which contained banned books on materialist philosophy, utopian socialism, and history of revolutionary movements.

Among the well-known members of the young intelligentsia who participated in the Petroshevsky Circle was the writer Fyodor Dostoevsky, who belonged to the circle during the 1850s. Mikhail

In late 1848 Mikhail Petrashevsky took part in meetings aimed at creating a secret society.

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