The well laid-out Dostoevsky Museum incorporates the wooden house where the exiled writer lived from 1857 to 1859 with his wife and baby. The displays range over Dostoevsky’s life and works, including his five years in jail at Oms and five years of enforced military service at Semey. His rooms have been maintained in the style of his day. Tours, in English, Russian or Kazakh, cost 300T.
It was in Semey that Dostoevsky made friends with the extraordinary Shokan Ualikhanov (Chokan Valikhanov), a prince of the Kazakh Middle Horde, explorer, intellectual, and spy in the Russian army. A statue of both men stands outside the museum.
