 Their relationship is not verified; Anna Dostoevskaya spoke of a good affair, but Korvin-Krukovskaya's sister, the mathematician Sofia Kovalevskaya, thought that Korvin-Krukovskaya had rejected him.In his youth, Dostoevsky enjoyed reading Nikolai Karamzin's "History of the Russian State", which praised conservatism and Russian independence, ideas that Dostoevsky would embrace later in life.Before his arrest for participating in the Petrashevsky Circle in 1849, Dostoevsky remarked, "As far as I am concerned, nothing was ever more ridiculous than the idea of a republican government in Russia."