Dostoyevsky is a good example of that - he was caught taking part in (relatively innocent) freethink anti-carist meetings and got sent for 8 years to a severe Siberian labor camp for it. While staying there, he gradually converted to being pro-carist and pro-regime, a stance that was not just a fake to potentially get him out of there sooner.
The conversion is not fake, that is a pretty common trajectory. BTW, he was scheduled for execution, brought to the gallows and pardoned at the last second. That alone changed him.