In this blog post, we analyze Radishchev’s criticism of serfdom and autocracy as revealed in his “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow,” and examine how he came to be reevaluated as a revolutionary symbol by figures ranging from Herzen to Lunacharsky.
Radishchev and His Revolutionary Legacy
“We Are Sympathizers” (Мы сочувственники). On July 30, 1918, the Soviet People’s Commissariat, under Lenin’s leadership, resolved to commission statues of “great activists of socialism and the revolution” as well as writers and poets, and the first result of this initiative was the statue of Radishchev. Lunacharsky, who served as People’s Commissar for Education immediately after the revolution and oversaw the early Soviet Union’s cultural policy, delivered a speech at the unveiling ceremony for the Radishchev statue in Petrograd on September 22, 1918, in which he characterized Radishchev as a revolutionary; this speech established Radishchev as a “prophet and forerunner of the revolution” during the Soviet era.
Even without Lunacharsky’s emphasis, Radishchev had already earned the title of “fighter” long before. In the 19th century, Herzen described him as “our sacred forerunner and first fighter” and referred to Radishchev’s ideology as “our dream, the dream of the Decembrists.” Meanwhile, serious scholarly research into Radishchev as a literary figure did not begin in earnest until the 1930s. From this time onward, he began to be recognized as the “author” of ‘Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow’ and was regarded, alongside Karamzin, as a leading literary figure of the late 18th century.
Research on Radishchev flourished around the 200th anniversary of his birth (1949) and the 150th anniversary of his death (1952). During this period, not only literary scholars but also philosophers, historians, economists, and legal scholars participated in uncovering the various facets of his life and work. As a result, it has become virtually impossible to exclude Radishchev when studying the literature, society, and culture of late 18th-century Russia.
Nevertheless, Radishchev is a figure who cannot be easily categorized under any single trend in literary, artistic, or philosophical history. Some of the terms used to describe him are even mutually contradictory. In terms of literary movements, he is considered a realist and a sentimentalist; in the history of ideas, he is both a Rousseauist and a Voltairean; and from a social perspective, he is regarded as an aristocratic revolutionary as well as a democrat and a liberal. While these diverse assessments make it difficult to arrive at a unified understanding, they also demonstrate the rich possibilities for interpreting Radishchev and his era.
Radishchev and the Reality of His Time — “Man Is a Chameleon.”
Radishchev believed that human character is shaped by the surrounding environment and that people act by following examples. In his philosophical essays, he even defined humans as “chameleons that change their color according to their surroundings.” Therefore, he argued that to study human beings, one must first identify the environment in which they live. In the same vein, since literary works are inevitably products of their era, if ‘The Journey’ possesses its own distinct character, it cannot be divorced from the character of the society of that time.
Modern Russia began in earnest around the 18th century. The modern reforms of Peter I (reigned 1682–1725) completely transformed Russian society and its mindset. The foundations of a modern state—including a bureaucracy, a standing army, a tax system, and a unified judicial system—were established at this time, and Peter’s major achievements included the introduction of the Table of Ranks, the creation of a navy, reforms to the system of government, and the relocation of the capital. Believing that Russia was still stuck in the Middle Ages, he pushed for top-down, unilateral reforms.
The ideological backdrop to this modernization was the Enlightenment. Rooted in human reason and the belief that anyone could be enlightened, the Enlightenment dominated not only Western Europe but also 18th-century Russia. Even after the era of Peter the Great, the Enlightenment continued to serve as a governing ideology during the reign of Catherine II (reigned 1762–1796) in the late 18th century.
As a foreign-born empress, Catherine II needed to establish the legitimacy of her rule; she presented herself as an enlightened monarch and continued Peter’s reformist course. While Peter had focused primarily on reforming the state’s governing institutions, Catherine expanded the scope of reform to include more social spheres. Notable achievements during the early years of her reign included the establishment of various schools and the Imperial Academy of Sciences, the operation of orphanages, attempts at enlightened legislation, the reorganization of the social welfare system, and the publication of intellectual journals.
However, the Pugachev Rebellion of 1773 changed the situation. As a result of this event, Catherine abandoned her enlightened course and shifted toward reactionary policies. The American Revolution (1776) and the French Revolution (1789) accelerated her reactionary stance. Her Enlightenment ideals degenerated into a form of disguised Enlightenment, epitomized by the motto, “Think as you please, so long as my absolute monarchy remains intact.”
What Catherine needed was not the support of the common people but that of the nobility. She took measures to expand the rights of the nobility—such as abolishing the lifelong service obligation imposed by the rank-and-file system and liberalizing travel restrictions—thereby granting them greater freedom. As a result, the late 18th century in Russia became the “golden age of the nobility.” In contrast, the lives of the common people grew even more miserable, and the conflict between Catherine and the Enlightenment intellectuals intensified.
Catherine began to crack down on the Enlightenment movement led by the intellectuals she had once supported. She shut down Enlightenment journals and publishing houses, and even discontinued the state-funded study abroad program that had been established to equip talented young people with Enlightenment ideals. It was against this backdrop that Radishchev’s ‘Travels’ was published in 1790, causing a major scandal at the time.
Serfdom and Autocracy — “A Monster with a Hundred Mouths”
For 18th-century intellectuals, the greatest problems facing Russian society were serfdom and autocracy. The ruling class believed that if serfdom were abolished, autocracy would collapse, and they were convinced that maintaining both systems was the only way to preserve their privileges. Serfdom made the lives of the peasants—who constituted the majority of Russia’s population—extremely miserable. Even after Radishchev strongly criticized serfdom and autocracy in ‘The Journey’, serfdom persisted until the mid-19th century and was not officially abolished until 1862 by Alexander II.
In his work, Radishchev depicts serfdom in a variety of ways. According to his report, peasants could not even marry of their own free will; they had to pay a marriage license fee to their landlord to receive permission. It was common for peasants to marry partners chosen by their landlords, and “unequal marriages”—involving significant age differences—were rampant due to coercion. There were even cases where a landlord’s rape of a serf was defended in court.
The land issue was the most serious aspect of serfdom. The fate of peasants depended on whether they worked on state-owned land or on private estates owned by nobles. Peasants working on state-owned land or on the estates of some benevolent landlords could dispose of their surplus produce after paying a fixed rent, but the majority of peasants on private estates were conscripted into corvée labor for the landlord six days a week and could only work to support themselves on their days off or at night.
They had to do whatever the landlord demanded, and even when subjected to unfair treatment, they could hardly expect legal redress. Since the courts and officials were mostly nobles and landlords themselves, they were unlikely to advocate for the serfs. Radishchev sharply criticized this reality, asking, “Who among us is shackled? Who bears the burden of slavery?” And he wrote: “It is the peasants! They are the ones who feed us when we are starving, who satisfy our hunger, who bring us health, and who sustain our lives. Yet they have no right to dispose of what they themselves have harvested and processed.”
Radishchev sharply criticized the situation of his time, in which peasants were deprived of their rights to the land, based on natural law. He pointed out, “In primitive society, the one who cultivates the land has the right to own it and holds it exclusively. But how far have we strayed from primitive society in terms of property rights? We find that those who possess natural rights to the land are completely alienated from it; even while cultivating another’s land, they entrust their livelihood to that person’s authority.”
The crux of his radical ideology was that all humans—whether serfs, nobles, or royalty—are equal. Given that serfdom was accepted as a matter of course at the time and that Radishchev himself was of noble birth, this assertion was highly unconventional. Many of the nobles featured in the work regarded these ideas as subversive and argued that they would lead to the collapse of the state system, but Radishchev believed that human beings “have been endowed by nature with the same essence as nature itself, and therefore all human beings possess the same rights. Consequently, they are all equal, and no one person can rule over another.”
However, the state needed to maintain its system, and at the very core of the mechanisms sustaining that system lay the self-enslavement of citizens. The state encouraged this and turned people into slaves to their passions. Prostitution, which Radishchev cites as an example in the text, is one way the state turns citizens into slaves to their passions. He criticized this, stating, “If a deadly disease is rampant in every nation and is shortening the lives not only of the current generation but also of future generations, whose fault is this? If not the government’s, whose fault is it? By permitting prostitution, the government has not only opened countless paths to depravity but has also poisoned the lives of its citizens.”
Those in power desire tranquility. However, the tranquility and peace they seek are not matters of security or safety intended to protect the people. According to Radishchev’s analysis, the rhetoric of tranquility and peace espoused by the Russian state at the time was nothing more than a disguised ploy to maintain the regime. For Radishchev, tranquility was synonymous with worry and sorrow, and its opposite was courage. He scathingly rebuked them, saying, “You prefer tranquility, worry, and sorrow—not commotion, well-being, and courage… You always preach peace and tranquility, but the conclusions you draw are nothing more than flattery from a man in chains. You even fear the commotion of others. You merely hope that people will find satisfaction in authority and remain ensnared by their passions……”
As a result, people enslave themselves. Radishchev wrote, “Since the spirit of freedom has already vanished from the slaves, they do not even attempt to end their own suffering, nor can they bear to see others set free. They love their own shackles.” Now, citizens not only willingly enjoy their enslaved condition but even go so far as to prevent those who seek to escape it.
Another means by which the autocracy controls its citizens is censorship. Throughout the chapter “Torzhok”—one of the longest in his work—Radishchev strongly criticizes censorship. Although freedom of the press had already been granted by law in Russia as early as 1783, this law did not prohibit censorship. The state enforced censorship to silence its citizens, as the rulers believed that free expression threatened the very existence of state power.
Radishchev sharply exposes the origins of censorship. He views censorship as a mechanism employed by the priestly class to monopolize the teachings of Jesus, exclude alternative interpretations, and maintain their exclusive authority over the interpretation of scripture. Similarly, in the secular age, those in power restrict freedom of the press because they fear their critics. Free publication destroys the idol of power and reveals the true nature of what lies behind it.
The most harmful effect of censorship on society is that it can seriously undermine the achievements that reason has advanced over many years. By banning useful discoveries and new ideas, it can deprive everyone of greatness. Ironically, however, it was thanks to a mistake by the official in charge of censorship that Radishchev’s ‘Travels’ was able to be published during the reign of Catherine the Great.
This does not mean, however, that Radishchev completely rejected absolutism itself. For him, absolutism was a matter of good rulers versus bad rulers. Political concepts such as republicanism or democracy could not be realistically discussed in Russia until the following century. Although information about the American War of Independence and the French Revolution was available even during Radishchev’s active years, practical discussions that substantively challenged absolutism did not become possible until after the Napoleonic Wars and around the time of the Decembrist Uprising in 1825.
For instance, even Radishchev did not unconditionally defend Pugachev’s Rebellion. His criticism was directed not at the awareness of the peasants’ miserable reality itself, but at the violence and deceitfulness of the methods used to achieve it. The fact that Pugachev proclaimed himself emperor was among the points Radishchev criticized.
For Radishchev, a good political system meant a good autocracy. The dream episode in the chapter “Spasskaya Polestch” illustrates this well. An ophthalmologist who appears in the traveler’s dream identifies himself as “Truth” and opens the eyes of the emperor, who had been unable to see the truth clearly. This literally signifies “enlightenment”; it is a scene in which the emperor, blinded by lies and flattery, is rebuked through a dream.
Radishchev emphasizes that the emperor must “realize the vast scope of his responsibility” and always remember “where his authority and power originate.” Therefore, he argues, the emperor’s duty is not to reign but to serve and perform public service.
Radishchev was a reformer rather than a revolutionary. For the most part, he spent his life working in legal roles within the civil service, striving for social transformation and reform. To him, the targets of reform were clear: serfdom and absolutism. His goal was also clear: for people to live as human beings. He stated in strong terms: “Regardless of one’s birth, a citizen is always a human being and will always remain one. And as long as he is a human being, natural law will never be exhausted, just as an inexhaustible source of bliss. Anyone who violates its inviolable and natural attributes is a sinner.” Rarely in Russian history has a figure presented the tasks of reform so bluntly and forcefully.
Principles of Social Reform — Empathy and Courage
In Radishchev’s materialist philosophical system, an initial stimulus was necessary to set things in motion. The same applies to social activity. In ‘Travels’, the example of Socrates frequently appears, and Radishchev presents him as a heroic “role model.” Radishchev wrote, “By practicing virtue, one can earn universal trust, respect, and admiration—even from those who do not wish to acknowledge it. That is why, when the cunning Athenian Senate sentenced Socrates to drink the hemlock, they were inwardly horrified by his virtue.”
While spontaneous and collective action by the people is essential for social reform or overcoming social ills, Radishchev believed that a preliminary process was absolutely necessary. That process consists of the exemplary actions of a courageous minority. Their example must serve as a “spark” that influences and spreads to individuals and groups. His philosophical essay clearly articulates this point: “A great man appears suddenly, but he is not alone. Even the smallest spark, when it falls on a hot object, causes a massive fire. (…) The same is true of human reason.”
The ideals held by a great person spread through this process. He must become the spark of social reform. A great person is great only when his ideals or actions serve as an example and influence others. He is not great in isolation; he attains greatness within the environment where he exerts his influence.
Furthermore, such “great figures” must possess the virtue of courage—a courage that defies death. Radishchev stated, “When brave citizens are massacred, all that remains are souls prepared to accept slavery and weak-willed people who submit to you,” viewing courage as the key to ending slavery. For him, courage is a virtue with social and moral significance; it is the most powerful weapon against serfdom and autocracy, as well as an essential quality for becoming a noble citizen.
According to Radishchev, the secret to defeating the “hundred-headed monster” and achieving freedom lies in courage. When those in power violate the truth for the sake of their own desires, even a single steadfast idea can shake the very foundations of their rule. The words of truth destroy power, and courageous actions eliminate it altogether.
Courage and the Concept of “Humanity” in Radishchev
Therefore, for Radishchev, the concept of humanity is always linked to courage. The story told by the blind old man in the chapter “Klin” reminds us that courage and humanity are synonymous. “You must be brave, but also always remember that you are a human being!” (p. 264) Here, the Russian original of “Be brave!” is “будьте мужественны,” which, etymologically, is the same as saying “Be human.”
Radishchev, too, had a friend who encouraged his courage.
The initials “A. M. K.” at the beginning of the work refer to Alexei Mikhailovich Kutuzov, to whom ‘The Journey’ was dedicated. Consequently, Kutuzov, like Radishchev, was placed on the wanted list due to the publication of ‘The Journey’; while staying in Germany at the time, he was unable to return to Russia and died there the following year, in 1791.
Radishchev and Kutuzov were contemporaries who had formed a friendship as early as 1762 during their time at the Page Corps (Пажеский корпус: a school for training court officials), and they were classmates selected personally by Empress Catherine to study abroad on state scholarships. Their friendship lasted throughout their lives. Their friendship was so deep and enduring that not only “The Journey,” but also Radishchev’s autobiographical novel ‘The Life of Fyodor Vasilyevich Ushakov’ (1789)—which recalls his time studying in Leipzig—was dedicated to Kutuzov.
However, the two friends did not see eye to eye on every issue. Each devoted himself to society in his own way. While Radishchev served primarily as a civil servant, Kutuzov abandoned public office to devote himself to social activism (focusing mainly on the mystical Freemason movement). Although the two sometimes clashed, they always regarded each other as “kindred spirits (сочувственник).” This was because they shared a common understanding of the intellectuals’ social duty toward the peasants, who constituted the majority of Russia’s population at the time. Radishchev could not understand Kutuzov’s inclination toward mysticism “rationally,” but he could deeply sympathize with it insofar as it constituted service to the homeland and society—a pledge they had made together during their student days.
Had it not been for Kutuzov in Radishchev’s life, and Radishchev in Kutuzov’s, ‘The Journey’ would never have seen the light of day. And ‘The Journey’ was the first candle to illuminate the darkness of Russia, spreading from hand to hand and from generation to generation.
A Vast Indictment, the Indeterminacy of Literature, and a Dedication
There was a time when literature could be anything. To be more precise, it was an era when no one knew exactly what literature was or how it would evolve. Consequently, a collection of written words was sometimes accepted as a literary work and other times as a political pamphlet. There was no fundamental difference between the two. This is fundamentally different from the criticism that art was misused as political propaganda. This is because the concept of literature as a linguistic art form had not yet been fully established as it is today. At least, this appears to have been the case in 18th-century Russia.
Radishchev’s ‘Journey’ is a representative work that illustrates this literary context. It is no coincidence that this work was described as a “political pamphlet” both when it was first published and in the years that followed. For instance, Catherine II, upon reading this work, flew into a rage, calling Radishchev “a scoundrel worse than Pugachev.” On the other hand, intellectuals who defended the work’s message maintained a similar stance. Gerzen, the great 19th-century intellectual-in-exile, defined the work as a “mighty indictment.”
Although Gertsen’s expression is likely a metaphor—since it was not an actual indictment filed in court—there is a grain of truth to it. From the perspective of the 18th century, it was not that literature served the role of an indictment, but rather that the “indictment” itself was a work of literature. This work not only demonstrates the social role of literature but also reveals the very birthplace of the modern Russian novel.
