Alexander Radishchev First Russian Radical

A Journey From St Petersburg to Moscow Upsets Catherine the Great

Jun 28, 2009

Alexander Radishchev wrote a book exposing the divide between rich and poor in eighteenth century Russian society. It was a courageous and pioneering publication.

A Journey from St Petersburg to Moscow, published in May 1790, was a chronicle of outrage at the social and economic discrepancies prevalent in Russia at the time. It poured scorn and ridicule on the ruling elite, including Catherine the Great herself.

Somehow this publication slipped through the hands of the censor. When it arrived at the Court of Catherine the Great it caused a furore.

The anonymous authorship was soon traced to Alexander Radishchev, an official in charge of the Petersburg Customs House. He was a widower in his early forties, and the inflammatory tract had been printed from his own printing press with the help of his serfs. Radishchev was imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress and tortured. Catherine ordered his beheading. Radishchev recanted, pleading for his life. He was sentenced with his family to ten years exile to Siberia.

On his return Radishchev re-entered the service of Alexander I, contributing to drawing up plans to end serfdom. This had been his dream, but it came to nothing. He committed suicide.

The Ideals that Influenced Radishchev

As a boy Radishchev had attended the Corps of Pages school and served at the Imperial Court. As a youth he attended Moscow University. He was extremely bright and was sent by the Empress to spend five years at the University of Leipzig studying mainly law, but additionally absorbing French philosophy.

Other Russians had gone abroad like Radishchev, and been fired with enthusiasm for ideas of liberty and freedom. On their return to Russia they normally settled down, taking advantage of Catherine’s enlightened despotism to further their careers. Radishchev did not fit this pattern – he was a man before his time in a country unready for radical change.

Radishchev’s Journey... was deeply influenced by ideals of Western Enlightenment, although rooted in Russian conditions. Inspired by the American Revolution and in part by the French Revolution, the book called for religious tolerance, equality of possessions and inevitably the sweeping away of the monarchy.

Although the author had absorbed these concepts as a young man, unlike many of his compatriots, he never lost his youthful radicalism.

Catherine The Great's Backlash as a Result of Radishchev’s Publication

Catherine, like Peter the Great before her, had encouraged the dissemination of Western ideals. But in practice the French Revolution had frightened the monarchs of Europe and the publication of Journey from St Petersburg to Moscow only added fuel to Catherine’s paranoia. She therefore ordered the:

Nevertheless, Journey from St Petersburg to Moscow was read voraciously by the frustrated middle classes, undercover and usually in transcript. It gave hope to those who despaired of change.

Radishchev Seen as Ancestor of Russian Revolution

Once the momentum for reform began in the mid-nineteenth century, Radishchev’s pioneering effort was recognised for the seminal work it truly was. Early in the twentieth century A Journey from St Petersburg to Moscow became available to the general public and Radishchev was regarded as a prophet and martyr of Russian freedom.

On 22nd September 1918, a year after the Bolshevik Revolution, a statue to Radishchev was unveiled in the gardens of the Winter Palace, St Petersburg.

Roads to Revolution: A Century of Russian Radicalism by Avrahm Yarmolinsky (Princeton University Press, 1986)