In the final scene of Crime and Punishment, the antihero Raskolnikov and his ostensible redeemer, Sonya, sit pensively reflecting on the vast Eurasian steppe and the freedom it had to offer. The scene was no doubt influenced by the years that Fyodor Dostoevsky spent in Siberian exile (1854-1859), where he once wrote to a Kazakh friend (possibly on the very desk displayed in the Dostoevsky Museum), “Isn’t it a great challenge for you, isn’t it your sacred cause—to be the first to explain to Russia the role of the steppes in…
