Alexander Radishchev: The Russian writer who suffered most for his work
Everything began perfectly: a young Alexander Radishchev graduated from the Page Corps and, for his achievements, was included among the young noblemen who, by order of Catherine the Great, were to be sent to study at the University of Leipzig. There, he spent five years fulfilling the empress' orders: mastering Latin, French, German, English and Italian, as well as studying philosophy, history, and law.
Returning to Russia, he worked as an auditor on the staff of St. Petersburg Governor-General Yakov Bruce and rose to the post of head of the city customs office. Radishchev devoted his free time to writing: he wrote prose and poetry and translated foreign works. He also closely followed events abroad, including the American Revolution, which inspired his ode ‘Liberty’. Beginning in 1771, he also began committing his observations of life in Russia to paper – from these disparate fragments, the book ‘Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow’ began to take shape.
"A rebel is worse than Pugachev!"
This is precisely how Catherine the Great expressed her indignation at the publication of Radishchev's book. However, as the writer later explained, he merely wanted to draw the landowners' attention to the plight of the peasantry. Taking Laurence Sterne's book ‘Sentimental Journey Through France and Italy’ as a model, he wrote 25 chapters – one for each stop between the two cities. In them, he described the corruption of officials, landowners who treated peasants cruelly and cunning merchants who were willing to deceive anyone.
By pure chance, the book passed censorship – Chief of Police Ryleyev didn't bother reading it, limiting himself to the chapter titles and… deciding it was a travel guide. Alexander Radishchev published "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow" anonymously in 1790, albeit in his own printing house, in a print run of 650 copies. One of them fell into the hands of Gavriil Derzhavin, who presented it to Catherine the Great.
The epigraph alone – "A monster with a hundred mouths and a bark" – would have been enough to anger the empress. But, she read the entire book and concluded that it was nothing more than support for the ideas of the French Revolution. The writer was, subsequently, arrested and sent to the Peter and Paul Fortress. The author of ‘Journey…’ was accused of filling his book with harmful fabrications, disturbing public peace, undermining respect for authority and insulting the tsar's power. The court stripped him of all ranks and awards, including his noble title, ordered the destruction of his books and sentenced Radishchev himself to death. The writer spent over a month awaiting execution. But, Catherine II relented, commuting the death sentence to ten years of exile in Ilimsk prison, adding that the writer "was going to mourn the pitiful fate of the peasantry".
Return to St. Petersburg
Six years after the Empress' death, Tsar Paul I permitted the writer to return to his village. He was later restored to his nobility and even given a job on the Law Drafting Commission. However, in 1802, Alexander Radishchev died under unclear circumstances. Official documents state that he died of tuberculosis. However, there is a theory that the writer, in a state of mental derangement, drank a glass of aqua regia (a solution of nitric and hydrochloric acids used to clean epaulettes and uniform buttons).
Most of the “seditious” book published in 1790 was destroyed, but it was copied and passed from hand to hand. ‘Journey…’ was published as a limited edition in 1888, but the price – 25 rubles – was practically prohibitive. Only after the 1905 revolution was the ban on publishing Radishchev's work fully lifted.