Crime and Punishment entitled "The Drunkards", which was to deal with "the present question of drunkenness ... [in] all its ramifications, especially the picture of a family and the bringing up of children in these circumstances, etc., etc." This theme, centering on the story of the Marmeladov family, became ancillary to the story of Raskolnikov and his crime. At the time Dostoevsky owed large sums of money to creditors, and was trying to help the family of his brother Mikhail, who had died in early 1864. After appeals elsewhere failed, Dostoevsky turned as a last resort to the publisher Mikhail Katkov, and sought
Kin punishment Kin punishment Kin punishment is the practice of punishing the family members of someone accused of a crime, either in place of or in addition to the perpetrator. It refers to the principle of a family sharing responsibility for a crime committed by one of its members, and is a form of collective punishment. Kin punishment has been used authoritarian states as a form of extortion or harassment. Countries that have practiced kin punishment include pre-Christian European cultures, Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and non-Western cultures including China, Japan, and North Korea. In traditional Germanic law, the law of Germanic