Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow
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- $18.99
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- $18.99
Publisher Description
Alexander Radishchev’s Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow is among the most important pieces of writing to come out of Russia in the age of Catherine the Great. An account of a fictional journey along a postal route, it blends literature, philosophy, and political economy to expose social and economic injustices and their causes at all levels of Russian society. Not long after the book’s publication in 1790, Radishchev was condemned to death for its radicalism and ultimately exiled to Siberia instead.
Radishchev’s literary journey is guided by intense moral conviction. He sought to confront the reader with urgent ethical questions, laying bare the cruelty of serfdom and other institutionalized forms of exploitation. The Journey’s multiple strands include sentimental fictions, allegorical discourses, poetry, theatrical plots, historical essays, a treatise on raising children, and comments on corruption and political economy, all informed by Enlightenment arguments and an interest in placing Russia in its European context. Radishchev is perhaps the first in a long line of Russian writer-dissenters such as Herzen and Solzhenitsyn who created a singular literary idiom to express a subversive message. In Andrew Kahn and Irina Reyfman’s idiomatic and stylistically sensitive translation, one of imperial Russia’s most notorious clandestine books is now accessible to English-speaking readers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Radishchev (1749 1802) crafts a masterly fictional travelogue, combining philosophy, poetry, and the political ideals of the Enlightenment in an unequivocal condemnation of serfdom, censorship, and corruption. The unnamed narrator travels via horse-drawn carriage between St. Petersburg and Moscow, making many stops at post stations and villages. In vignettes named after these points ("Novgorod," "Bronnitsy," "Zaitsovo"), he records the scenery, overheard conversations, and encounters with friends and strangers. Some of the book's most heartrending accounts include, in "Gorodnya," that of a serf educated along with his master's son who is then denigrated and regularly beaten on orders from the son's new wife, and a man trapped by his escalating debts in" Spasskaya Polest," which lead to the premature deaths of his wife and newborn child. The travelogue also includes sketches like the story of the town of Valdai, where unmarried women sell pretzels and seduce travelers. Various, engaging, and deeply affecting, the book was a source of trouble for the nobleman Radishchev, who despite an accomplished career as a civil servant was banished to Siberia by Catherine the Great in 1790 for writing this protorevolutionary work, which was suppressed in Russia until the early 20th century. Kahn and Reyfman's attentive new translation is a boon for English-language readers.
