How did Fyodor Dostoyevsky describe the importance of individual freedom in The House of the Dead?

In his novel The House of the Dead, which draws upon his own experiences in a Siberian prison labor camp, Fyodor Dostoyevsky illustrates that the need for individual freedom is the essential quality that defines humanity.1

Following a traumatic mock-execution and his subsequent imprisonment, Dostoyevsky moved away from the deterministic and materialist views held by many of his contemporaries. Instead, he came to value individual responsibility, integrity, and freedom with profound intensity. By depicting the horrors of prison life—including the brutality of guards and the degradation of the environment—he argued that the deprivation of liberty is a fundamental assault on the human spirit. This conviction regarding the primacy of individual freedom placed him in direct opposition to the radical determinists and socialists of the Russian intelligentsia, who sought to impose political ideologies upon society.1