Crime and Punishment a plan to kill an unscrupulous pawnbroker for her money. Before the killing, Raskolnikov believes that with the money he could liberate himself from poverty and go on to perform great deeds; but afterwards he finds himself racked with confusion, paranoia, and disgust for what he has done. His moral justifications disintegrate completely as he struggles with guilt and horror, and confronts the real world consequences of his deed. Dostoevsky conceived the idea of "Crime and Punishment", prompted by the case of Pierre François Lacenaire, in the summer of 1865. He had been working on another project at the time
Crime and Punishment success. Although the remaining parts of the novel had still to be written, an anonymous reviewer wrote that "the novel promises to be one of the most important works of the author of "The House of the Dead"". In his memoirs, the conservative belletrist Nikolay Strakhov recalled that in Russia "Crime and Punishment" was the literary sensation of 1866. The novel soon attracted the criticism of the liberal and radical critics. G.Z. Yeliseyev sprang to the defense of the Russian student corporations, and wondered, "Has there ever been a case of a student committing murder for the sake of robbery?"