Crime and Punishment seeking to affirm this "freedom" in himself, Raskolnikov is in perpetual revolt against society, himself, and God. He thinks that he is self-sufficient and self-contained, but at the end "his boundless self-confidence must disappear in the face of what is greater than himself, and his self-fabricated justification must humble itself before the higher justice of God". Dostoevsky calls for the regeneration and renewal of "sick" Russian society through the re-discovery of its national identity, its religion, and its roots. The first part of "Crime and Punishment" published in the January and February issues of "The Russian Messenger" met with public
Capital punishment in Sweden for a non-fatal assault was on 29 March 1837, when Anders Gustaf Lindberg was beheaded in Stockholm. Between 1800 and 1866, 644 executions were carried out in Sweden, the second highest per-capita number in Europe after Spain. In 1864, when the Penal Code was reformed, and the use of capital punishment was severely restricted, rather than abolished (as had been proposed), and hanging was abolished. In the following years (from 1866) up until the abolishment of the death penalty in 1921, fifteen people were executed (out of about 120 sentenced). The only crime that after 1864 carried a mandatory death