Biography of Radishchev and his works. Poetic creativity of Radishchev

Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev was born on August 20, 1749 in Moscow. His literary interests were varied: prose, poetry, philosophy. But most enlightened people associate this name with the book “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow,” which played a fatal role in his fate.

He spent his childhood in the Kaluga province in the village of Nemtsovo. He received his home education first in his father’s house, then in the house of his uncle A.M. Argamakov, former rector of Moscow University. The year 1762 was marked by the coronation of Catherine II. Young Alexander was promoted to page and sent to the St. Petersburg Page Corps. Four years later, together with twelve other young nobles, he was sent to Germany to study law at the University of Leipzig. Here he received an excellent education and became infected with the advanced ideas of French enlighteners.

Upon his return to St. Petersburg in 1771, Radishchev briefly served in the Senate with the rank of titular adviser, then was appointed chief auditor to the headquarters of Chief General Bruce, who commanded in St. Petersburg. In 1775 he submitted his resignation and got married. Two years later, having entered the service of the Komerc Collegium, he formed a close friendship with Count Vorontsov, who later helped him during his period of exile. For ten years, from 1780 to 1790, he served in the St. Petersburg customs, where he rose to the position of chief.

Creative activity

The foundations of his worldview and his civic position were formed during his years of study at the University of Leipzig. Upon his return to St. Petersburg in 1771, two months later he sent a small part of his future book “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow” to the editorial office of the magazine “Painter”, where it was published anonymously. Two years later, his works such as “Diary of One Week”, “Officer Exercises”, and a translation of Mably’s book “Reflections on Greek History” were published. Throughout the 80s, he wrote his “Journey,” prose, and poetry. By 1789, he already had his own printing house at home, and in May 1790 he printed the main book of his life, “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow.”

Arrest and exile

The book sold out instantly. Bold denunciations of serfdom and other phenomena of life at that time received a wide public response. Catherine II, who read the book, was furious: “A rebel, worse than Pugachev.” The publication of the book was followed by the arrest of the author. Radishchev led his own defense. Didn't name any of his assistants. By the decision of the court, which incriminated him with articles on “attack on the sovereign’s health,” “conspiracies and treason,” he was sentenced to death, which was replaced by ten years of exile in Siberia, in the Ilimsk prison.

During these years of exile, Radishchev created a treatise “On Man, His Mortality and Immortality,” which was published only after the author’s death. The treatise is so interesting in its essence that we will devote a few words to it. Consists of 4 volumes and is devoted to the issue of the immortality of the soul. Moreover, in the first two volumes the complete inconsistency of the assertion about the immortality of the soul is proven, that this is all nothing more than a play of the imagination and an empty dream. In the third and fourth volumes the opposite is proven, what was denied in the previous two volumes. The reader was, as it were, invited to make his own choice. However, the argument in favor of the immortality of the soul is given here in a rather trivial manner, but the opposite, denying immortality, is original and unacceptable from the point of view of the church. Therefore, this treatise, which has the appearance of being contradictory, can be perceived unambiguously in content as anti-religious.

While in exile, fulfilling the instructions of Count A. Vorontsov, Radishchev studied Siberian crafts, the economy of the region, and the life of peasants. In letters to Vorontsov, he outlined his thoughts on organizing an expedition along the Northern Sea Route. In Ilimsk the following were written: “Letter about the Chinese trade” (1792), “Abridged narrative about the acquisition of Siberia” (1791), “Description of the Tobolsk governorship”, etc.

With the coming to power of Paul I in 1786, Radishchev was returned from exile with an order to live on his estate Nemtsovo in the Kaluga province. The coming to power of Alexander I gave Radishchev complete freedom. He returned to St. Petersburg, where he was appointed a member of the Commission for drafting laws. Together with his friend and patron Vorontsov, he developed the constitutional project “The Most Gracious Letter of Grant.”

Alexander Petrovich passed away suddenly. There are two versions of his death. In the first case, the following allegedly happened. The project that he prepared together with his friend Count Vorontsov demanded the abolition of serfdom in Russia, the elimination of class privileges and the arbitrariness of those in power. The head of the commission, Count P. Zavadsky, threatened with a new exile for this. This was the last straw for the broken Radishchev and he committed suicide by taking poison.

However, this version does not fit with the records from the register of the Volkovsky cemetery in St. Petersburg. It says that on September 13, 1802, “college adviser Alexander Radishchev” was buried; fifty-three years old, died of consumption,” priest Vasily Nalimov was present at the removal. It is well known that according to the church laws of that time, any deceased person was buried by a priest. Regarding suicides, there was and is a strict ban on burials in the cemetery, including their funeral services. Considering that Radishchev was buried according to the church rules of that time, in the presence of a priest, and with a record in the burial documents indicating a natural cause of death, this version of death from suicide is untenable.

Another version of his death is more reliable. According to the testimony of the sons of Alexander Nikolaevich, the cause of his death was an absurd accident, an accident. Radishchev accidentally drank a glass of strong vodka (royal vodka), which was intended for burning out the old officer's epaulettes of his eldest son.

Radishchev's grave has not survived to this day. There is an assumption that his grave is located near the Church of the Resurrection. In 1987, a corresponding memorial plaque was installed on its wall.

Radishchev was not only a prose writer, but also a poet. He owns twelve lyric poems and four unfinished poems: “The Creation of the World”, “Bova”, “Songs sung at competitions in honor of the ancient Slavic deities”, “Historical Song”. In poetry, as in prose, he sought to pave new paths. Radishchev's innovative aspirations are associated with his revision of the poetry of classicism, including poetic meters assigned to certain genres. Radishchev also proposed abandoning rhyme and turning to blank verse. The introduction of rhymeless verse was felt by him as the liberation of Russian poetry from foreign forms alien to it, as a return to folk, national origins. The best of his lyrical poems are the ode “Liberty” and “The Eighteenth Century,” in which the poet strives to comprehend the movement of history and grasp its patterns. Ode "Liberty". It was published with abbreviations in “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow”, in the chapter “Tver”. The ode was created at a time when the American Revolution had just ended and the French Revolution had begun. Its civic pathos reflects the inexorable desire of peoples to throw off feudal-absolutist oppression. Radishchev begins his ode with the glorification of freedom, which he considers a priceless gift of nature. In a country where the overwhelming majority of the population was in serfdom, this very thought was a challenge to the existing order. Religion surrounded the power of the ruler with a divine aura and thereby freed him from responsibility to the people. Not content with speculative evidence of the inevitability of revolution, Radishchev seeks to rely on the experience of history. It recalls the English Revolution, the execution of the English king. Humanity, according to Radishchev, goes through a cyclical path in its development. Freedom turns into tyranny, tyranny into freedom. In its style, the ode “Liberty” is a direct heir to Lomonosov’s laudable odes. It is written in iambic tetrameter, ten-line stanzas with the same rhyme scheme. But its content is strikingly different from Lomonosov’s odes. Radishchev does not believe in enlightened monarchs and therefore freedom and the indignation of the people against the tsar become the objects of his praise. Radishchev strives to comprehend this turbulent, complex, contradictory era as a whole.

34. Ideological and thematic originality of the “journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow.” The originality of the genre and genre composition.

On the first page, the author indicates the reason that prompted him to write the book: I looked around and my soul suffered from human suffering. Pity gives rise to the desire to help the oppressed. The traveler also belongs to the circle of “sensitive” heroes. He is emotional, impressionable, responsive to other people's joy and to other people's grief. One of the expressions of sensitivity in “The Journey” is tears, which the heroes of sentimental works are never ashamed of, seeing in them a manifestation of the subtle spiritual organization of man. The traveler says goodbye to his friends in tears. The traveler's heightened sensitivity is expressed not only in tears, but also in gestures and actions. So, at the Gorodnya station he “holds to his heart” a young recruit, although he sees him for the first time. In Edrovo, he hugs and kisses the peasant girl Anyuta, which led her to considerable embarrassment. In contrast to the peasants, the landowners are depicted in “The Journey” as people who have lost not only sensitivity, but also elementary human qualities. Idleness and the habit of commanding deeply corrupted them and developed arrogance and callousness. The noblewoman from the chapter “Gorodnya” “united the stingiest soul and the cruel and stern heart with physical beauty.” The “travel” genre chosen by Radishchev is extremely characteristic of sentimentalism. It originates from Sterne's "Sentimental Journey". The form created by Stern could be filled with a wide variety of content. But the mechanism used by Radishchev was not at all like Postern’s and for other purposes. "P." presented in the form of notes from a traveler, where works of other genres are skillfully introduced: the satirical “dream”, the ode “Liberty”, journalistic articles (for example, “on the origin of censorship”, the chapter “Torzhok”). This form is thin. The work was innovative for Russians. 18th century literature And it gave R. the opportunity to talk deeply and multifacetedly about the social and spiritual life of the nation. The style of Radishchev's book is complex, but this complexity has its own logic and unity. R. bringing into the system diverse impressions of the external world - fact, feeling, thought. The first of them - real-life - is associated with the description of numerous phenomena observed by the traveler. The vocabulary of this stylistic layer is distinguished by specificity and objectivity. The second stylistic layer is emotional. It is associated with the psychological reaction of the traveler or other storytellers to certain facts and events. A wide variety of feelings are presented here: tenderness, joy, admiration, compassion, sorrow. The third layer - ideological - contains the author’s thoughts, in some cases expressed in lengthy “projects”. These arguments are based on educational ideas: the right to self-defense, education of man and citizen, the laws of nature and the laws of society. This layer is characterized by the use of Church Slavonic vocabulary and high civil speech. Radishchev focused attention not on moral, but on social and political problems of the serf state. As a conscientious investigator, Radishchev collects evidence against the autocratic state. The more incriminating facts, the more convincing the verdict. Here the typical is represented by a multitude of characters, most of whom give an idea of the essence, the social nature of the two main classes of Russian society of that time - landowners and peasants. The basis of the “Journey” is a call for revolution, but R. understands that real liberation is possible only after decades, so for now it is necessary to somehow alleviate the fate of the people in other ways.

35. The system of images and the image of the traveler in “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow” The problem of artistic method in the work.

Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev is the first revolutionary writer in Russia who proclaimed the right of the people to violently overthrow the despotic power of the landowners and the tsar. Radishchev is the predecessor of Decembrist and revolutionary democratic thought of the 19th century. Radishchev’s best work is his “Journey.” This book turned out to be the pinnacle of social thought in Russia in the 18th century.

“Journey” is one of the brightest works of Russian sentimentalism. This is a highly emotional book. “Sensitivity,” according to Radishchev’s deep conviction, is the most valuable quality of a person.

On the first page, the author indicates the reason that prompted him to write the book: I looked around and my soul suffered from human suffering. Pity gives rise to the desire to help the oppressed. The traveler also belongs to the circle of “sensitive” heroes. He is emotional, impressionable, responsive to other people's joy and to other people's grief. One of the expressions of sensitivity in “The Journey” is tears, which the heroes of sentimental works are never ashamed of, seeing in them a manifestation of the subtle spiritual organization of man. The traveler says goodbye to his friends in tears. The traveler's heightened sensitivity is expressed not only in tears, but also in gestures and actions. So, at the Gorodnya station he “holds to his heart” a young recruit, although he sees him for the first time. In Edrovo, he hugs and kisses the peasant girl Anyuta, which led her to considerable embarrassment. In contrast to the peasants, the landowners are depicted in “The Journey” as people who have lost not only sensitivity, but also elementary human qualities. Idleness and the habit of commanding deeply corrupted them and developed arrogance and callousness. The noblewoman from the chapter “Gorodnya” “united the stingiest soul and the cruel and stern heart with physical beauty.” The “travel” genre chosen by Radishchev is extremely characteristic of sentimentalism. It originates from Sterne's "Sentimental Journey". The form created by Stern could be filled with a wide variety of content. But the mechanism used by Radishchev was not at all like Postern’s and for other purposes. The style of Radishchev's book is complex, but this complexity has its own logic and unity. R. bringing into the system diverse impressions of the external world - fact, feeling, thought. The first of them - real-life - is associated with the description of numerous phenomena observed by the traveler. The vocabulary of this stylistic layer is distinguished by its specificity and objectivity. The second stylistic layer is emotional. It is associated with the psychological reaction of the traveler or other storytellers to certain facts and events. A wide variety of feelings are presented here: tenderness, joy, admiration, compassion, sorrow. The third layer - ideological - contains the author’s thoughts, in some cases expressed in lengthy “projects”. These arguments are based on educational ideas: the right to self-defense, education of man and citizen, the laws of nature and the laws of society. This layer is characterized by the use of Church Slavonic vocabulary and high civil speech. Radishchev focused attention not on moral, but on social and political problems of the serf state. As a conscientious investigator, Radishchev collects evidence against the autocratic state. The more incriminating facts, the more convincing the verdict. Here the typical is represented by a multitude of characters, most of whom give an idea of the essence, the social nature of the two main classes of Russian society of that time - landowners and peasants.

Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev was born in August 1749 into the family of a middle-class landowner. The first years of Alexander Nikolaevich were spent in the village of Verkhniy Ablyazov, Saratov province. A combination of favorable circumstances meant that he received a good education. Alexander learned the Russian language in the usual way of that time, that is, through the book of hours in the psalter. However, this home teaching did not last long, since in 1757 Radishchev was sent to the house of a Moscow relative of his mother, Argamakov, an intelligent, rich and enlightened man, who was the curator of Moscow University. Here, together with the children of his relative and other young people, he was brought up under the supervision of a French tutor, and also took advantage of the lessons of university professors and teachers. During the coronation of Empress Catherine II, Argamakov enrolled Radishchev as a page; after the court returned to St. Petersburg, he sent him to the capital to continue his studies in the Corps of Pages. As a page, Radishchev had the opportunity to observe the life of Catherine’s court, where he often visited as part of his position.

In 1765, Catherine, seeing that in Russia in the most important and governmental places there was a shortage of people who knew laws and jurisprudence, ordered the selection of 12 young people, including six pages, to be sent to the University of Leipzig. Radishchev was among these chosen ones. All preparations were made with a generous hand; the young people were provided with more than sufficient maintenance (800 rubles per person per year). In addition to jurisprudence, Radishchev listened to philosophy, studied the Latin classics in detail, and studied medicine and chemistry. He knew all subjects very thoroughly. His son later wrote that Radishchev was an almost universal person. With a deep knowledge of laws, he also had concepts in literature. All the classical authors - Latin, French, German, English and Italian - were completely familiar to him, just like everything that was then written in Russian. In medicine he could pass the doctor's examination and was in practice a very good physician. Chemistry was at one time his favorite activity. Among the languages, he was fluent in French and German, and later learned English. He knew music, played the violin, was a talented dancer, a skilled fencer, a good rider and a successful hunter.

Upon their return to St. Petersburg in 1771, Radishchev and his friend Alexei Kutuzov entered the Senate as protocol clerks with the rank of titular councilors. However, the service here did not last long. In 1773, Radishchev became a captain on the staff of the commander-in-chief in St. Petersburg, Count Bruce, and served under him as chief auditor (reporter on court cases). It was the most enjoyable time of his life. The boss loved and distinguished him, introduced him into the best St. Petersburg society. During these years, Radishchev became close friends with the famous publisher and educator Novikov and translated several books for him from German and French.

In 1775, Radishchev married the niece of his university friend Anna Vasilievna Rubanovskaya and retired as a second major. He lived for two years on his estate, as well as in Moscow, and did not serve anywhere. At the end of 1777, he again began to look for a place and soon became an assessor at the Commerce College, the president of which was then Count Vorontsov. In order to better understand his duties, Radishchev, as he himself recalled later, spent a whole year reading magazines and definitions of the Commerce Board, so that he soon acquired decent knowledge on all issues. In his new position, he showed unshakable strength of character in defending just causes and extraordinary honesty. Being in a position where others made millions through bribes, he gained nothing and lived his whole life on one salary. Count Vorontsov valued Radishchev's opinion very highly and consulted with him on all matters and issues. Soon he obtained for him the rank of court councilor. In 1780, Radishchev was appointed assistant manager of the St. Petersburg customs. In 1783, his first wife died in childbirth. This was a great personal grief for him. He was left with four small children. In their memories and all household chores, Radishchev began to receive a lot of constant help from the sister of his late wife Anna Vasilievna, Elizaveta Vasilievna Rubanovskaya. Gradually she became the person closest to him.

Radishchev devoted all his free time from service to literary works. Already in his early works one can see the deep influence of the French enlighteners, and the influence is not external, speculative, but deep, assimilated by the heart and all his ardent nature. Radishchev had a sense of innate justice. He was outraged and indignant by any manifestation of despotism and slavery, any abuse of power or infringement of individual rights.

It is easy to understand how strange and unusual the strange admirer of freedom must have seemed in Russia, where autocracy and serfdom were officially recognized state institutions and deeply rooted phenomena. It was even fashionable to talk about freedom in Russia before the start of the French Revolution, and sincere admirers of Rousseau and Voltaire could be found among high Russian society. Repression and persecution befell Radishchev after, instead of abstract ones, he indignantly attacked the landowners-soul-owners and associated the word “despotism” with the Russian monarchy. Then in his fiery sermon they immediately saw sedition in different areas of application, but in essence they were always the same. In 1773, translating for Novikov the book of the French educator Mabley “Reflections on Greek History,” Radishchev conveys the word despotism as “autocracy” and immediately in a special note (in full agreement with the theory of “natural law” and “social contract”) explains, What “autocracy is the state most contrary to human nature... If we live under the rule of laws, then this is not because we absolutely must do it: but because we find benefits in it. If we give the law the honor of our rights and our natural power, then so that it is used in our favor: about this we make a silent agreement with society. If it is violated, then we are released from our obligation. The injustice of the sovereign gives the people, their judges, the same and more rights over them that the law gives over criminals.”. We immediately see the idea of the dominant power of the people in his treatise “Again on Legal Subjection,” which Radishchev worked on in the 1780s. He wrote: “the free power of the people is the original power, and therefore the highest power, the unified composition of society, capable of founding and destroying...”. Radishchev unconditionally recognized the people’s right to overthrow the unjust, lawless government. “The bad use of popular power,” he wrote, “is the greatest crime... not the sovereign, but the law can take away property, honor, liberty or life from a citizen. By taking away one of these rights from a citizen, the sovereign violates the original condition and, having a script in his hands, loses his rights to the throne.” The ode “Liberty,” completed in 1783, essentially expressed the same views, but expressed with ardent pathos and passionate poetic language, they acquired a completely different sound, and Radishchev did not even try to publish it then.

In 1789, he purchased a printing press, a typeface, and set up a printing house in his house. It was here that Radishchev’s main book, “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow,” which he had been working on since 1785, was published.

The "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow" was completed in December 1788. Radishchev received censorship permission to publish the manuscript in July 1789. Early next year he began printing the book. In May it was published without the author's name and went on sale. Soon the novel began to be in demand - the copies that Radishchev gave to the bookseller Zotov quickly sold out. But then “Journey...” caught the eye of Catherine II and plunged her into the greatest indignation. She ordered to immediately find the author. The investigation began. Radishchev found out about this and hastened to burn the remaining edition of the book. However, this could no longer ward off inevitable disaster. On June 30 he was arrested and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. The matter could not be difficult, since all the seditious thoughts of the author were clearly expressed in his book. Already on July 24, the Criminal Chamber decided to subject Radishchev to the death penalty, and the book to be confiscated and destroyed. In September, the Empress replaced this punishment with ten years of exile in the Ilimsk prison. For Radishchev, the time had come for difficult trials.

He spent the first three months on the way to his place of exile shackled. Then a decree came from the empress to unchain him. In Tobolsk, Radishchev was caught up by Elizaveta Vasilievna Rubanovskaya, who decided to follow him to Siberia. Radishchev's two little sons were with her. The arrival of his sister-in-law made him very happy. The future no longer seemed hopeless to him. Indeed, in Ilimsk Radishchev was given complete freedom, and he was given the opportunity to arrange his life comfortably. There were eight servants with him. A house with five rooms and many services was prepared for the exile: a kitchen, human quarters, sheds, cellars, and so on. But having enough money, Radishchev immediately began to build a new house with 8 rooms, which was soon completed with the help of carpenters sent by the governor. Here Radishchev had a large office and library. He immediately bought several cows, two horses, a variety of poultry and garden vegetables. In exile, he continued to lead a very active lifestyle - he got up early, read and wrote a lot. During these years, he wrote the treatise “On Man, His Death and Immortality”, the political and economic essay “Letter on the Chinese Trade”, as well as “Abridged Narrative of the Acquisition of Siberia”. Radishchev subscribed to several metropolitan and foreign magazines and was aware of all the news. In his free time, he did a lot of chemical research. He himself taught children history, geography, German and French, hunted a lot in the summer and loved to sail on a boat on Ilim. In Siberia, Radishchev married Elizaveta Vasilievna, who bore him three children in the following years.

After the death of Catherine II, Paul I allowed Radishchev to return to Moscow and live on his estates. In February 1797, Radishchev left Ilimsk. On the way, a terrible misfortune awaited him - Elizaveta Vasilievna caught a cold, fell ill and died shortly after arriving in Tobolsk. Having been widowed for the second time, Radishchev, alone with his children, arrived in the summer of 1799 in his village of Nemtsovo. Here he lived continuously until the death of Paul I. While doing housework, he did not forget his literary works - he wrote the poem “Bova” in 12 songs, taken from an ancient fairy tale, as well as several articles.

Upon the accession of Emperor Alexander I to the throne, Radishchev was returned to his previous titles of collegiate adviser and complete freedom. He immediately left for St. Petersburg, where the emperor, who was planning profound reforms of Russian society, appointed him a member of the commission for drawing up laws. Radishchev passionately devoted himself to drafting a new “Civil Code”. The thoughts that he tried to reflect in his project were the following:

Everyone is equal before the law;

The table of ranks is destroyed;

Prohibition of torture during investigation;

Tolerance;

Freedom of speech;

Abolition of the serf peahen;

Replacing the poll tax with a land tax;

Freedom of trade.

In the future, he talked about introducing a constitution in Russia. However, his views in no way coincided with the views of the Chairman of the Commission, Count Zavadsky. The count once remarked to him that Radishchev’s too enthusiastic way of thinking had already brought misfortune upon him once and that he might be subjected to a similar misfortune another time. These words, according to the testimony of Radishchev’s sons, made an extraordinary impression on their father. He suddenly became thoughtful, began to worry incessantly, and was constantly in a bad mood. Close friends began to notice strange things about him that indicated the onset of mental illness. On September 11, 1802, Radishchev unexpectedly took poison. All attempts to save him were unsuccessful, and he died on the same day.

The work of Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev (1749–1802) is closely connected with the traditions of Russian and European literature of the Enlightenment. The problems of genre, style, and finally, Radishchev’s creative method can be historically understood only in constant correlation with these traditions. The Pugachev uprising, the war for independence in America, the Great French Revolution - all this contributed to the formation of Radishchev’s worldview, which deeply comprehended the events of his time. Having generalized their experience, Radishchev creatively perceived, in many ways overestimating in his own way, the ideas of the largest European philosophers and writers of the 18th century: J. J. Rousseau, G. B. de Mabley, G. T. F. Raynal, D. Diderot, P. Holbach, K. A. Helvetia, I. G. Herder and others.
The connections that exist between the work of Radishchev and his Russian predecessors, starting with the authors of lives, Trediakovsky and Lomonosov and ending with Novikov and Fonvizin, are complex and multifaceted. The ideals that inspired the writers of the Russian Enlightenment were close to Radishchev with their humanistic pathos. Man, his social relations, his creative potential, his moral dignity - this is what remains the focus of attention of the author of “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow” throughout his life.
But, turning to the same questions that worried Russian enlighteners, Radishchev often polemicized with them. He resolved these issues in his own way, in accordance with the system that developed in the writer’s mind based on the assimilation of the experience of his predecessors and its critical rethinking. The evolution of Radishchev's socio-political views, determined primarily by the events of the French Revolution, was reflected in the writer's work. Each work written by Radishchev before, simultaneously with, or after “The Journey,” as well as the “Journey” itself, cannot be considered in isolation, without parallels with other works of this author.
One of Radishchev’s first literary works was the translation of Mably’s book “Reflections on Greek History” (1773). The translator supplied the text with his own notes, which revealed the independence and political acuity of his thoughts. In one of the notes, Radishchev explains his understanding of the word “autocracy”, relying on Rousseau’s theory of the social contract: “Autocracy is the state most contrary to human nature... If we live under the rule of laws, then this is not because we must do it irrevocably, but for that we find benefits in it.” In the educational theory, Radishchev especially highlights the issue of the sovereign’s responsibility to the people: “The injustice of the sovereign gives the people, their judges, the same and more rights over them that the law gives them over criminals” (2, 282).
The problem of the ideal sovereign was one of the most important in the literature of the Enlightenment. Acutely aware of the contradictions and disorders of contemporary social life, the enlighteners hoped that the world would change for the better with the coming to power of a wise and fair monarch. Russian and European writers, supporters of enlightened absolutism, often turned to the theme of Peter I, idealizing his image and nature of activity. Radishchev approaches this problem in his own way: his thoughts about the most just structure of society are associated with a thoughtful analysis of the experience of history. The theme of Peter I appears in one of Radishchev’s first original works - “A Letter to a Friend Living in Tobolsk, on the Duty of His Title” (1782). The reason for writing the “Letter” was the grand opening of the monument to Peter I (“The Bronze Horseman”) in St. Petersburg in 1782. Having described this event in quite detail and accurately, the writer proceeds to general discussions. One of the main questions raised in the “Letter” is the question of what a great sovereign is. Listing a whole series of rulers, Radishchev notes that “the endearment calls them great,” but in reality they are not worthy of this name. The more significant and weighty the review of the activities of Peter I sounds: “... we recognize in Peter an extraordinary man, who rightly deserved the title of great” (1, 150). Radishchev does not idealize the monarch Peter I, as many other writers of the 18th century did. (in particular, Voltaire in “History of the Russian Empire”), but strives to impartially assess his historical role. Recognizing Peter as great, the author of “Letter to a Friend” makes a very significant reservation: “And I will say that Peter could have been more glorious, exalting himself and exalting his fatherland, asserting private freedom” (1, 151).
Since the late 1770s. The question of “private liberty”, of personal freedom, acquired acute political content in feudal Russia: numerous popular unrest and especially the peasant war led by Pugachev (1773–1775) confronted the utopian ideas of the enlighteners with harsh reality. The pacification of the riots led to increased oppression, to the complete enslavement of Russian peasants, to the deprivation of their most basic rights, the rights of “natural man” exalted by the enlighteners.
At the same time, Russian readers followed with keen interest the events of the American Revolution (1775–1783), which proclaimed the slogans of independence and freedom.
All this found a direct response in Radishchev’s works of the early 1780s, where the theme of “liberty” became one of the main ones. By 1781–1783 refers to the creation of the ode “Liberty”, which was then included in the text of “Travel”. The writer turned to the traditional genre of classicist poetry - the ode. The “subject” of Radishchev’s ode is unusual: it is not the sovereign, not the outstanding political figure, not the commander who is being praised:
O blessed gift of heaven,
The source of all great things,
O liberty, liberty, priceless gift,
Let the slave sing your praises.
(1, 1)
The theme, the system of images, the style of “Liberty” - all this is inextricably linked with the traditions of Russian civil poetry of the 18th century. The poet Radishchev was especially close to the experience of those authors who, turning to the transcription of psalms, gave the biblical text a bold tyrant-fighting meaning. Derzhavin’s famous poem - an arrangement of the 81st Psalm “To Rulers and Judges” (1780) was the closest predecessor of “Liberty”.
At the same time, Radishchev’s ode marked a new stage in the history of Russian socio-political thought and literature. For the first time in a work of art, the idea of the legitimacy of the people's revolution was substantiated with such consistency and completeness. Radishchev came to this idea as a result of understanding the centuries-old experience of the struggle of peoples for liberation from the yoke of tyrants. Reminders of Yu. Brutus, W. Tell, O. Cromwell and the execution of Charles I vividly correlate with the stanzas of the ode, which deal with contemporary events of the writer: first of all, the victory of the American Republic, which defended its independence in the war with England. The excursions and parallels conducted by Radishchev reveal certain historical patterns that help to assess the specific situation in feudal Russia at the end of the 18th century.
The reader of “Liberty” is presented with a picture that is poetically generalized and at the same time accurately characterizes the alignment of political forces:
Let us look into the vast region,
Where a dim throne is worth slavery.
The city authorities there are all peaceful,
The king has in vain the image of a deity.
The royal power protects the faith,
Faith asserts the power of the Tsar;
Union society is oppressed.
(1, 3–4)
Slavery rests, as Radishchev shows, not only on violence, but also on deception: a church that “makes you fear the truth” and justifies tyranny is no less terrible than tyranny itself. “The slave who sings of freedom” throws off this oppression and ceases to be a slave, turning into a formidable avenger, a prophet of the coming revolution. He welcomes the popular uprising, the trial of the tyrant king and his execution.
This revolutionary idea of just vengeance, expressed for the first time in a “clearly and clearly rebellious ode,” was further developed in another work by Radishchev, “The Life of Fyodor Vasilyevich Ushakov” (1788). Ushakov is a contemporary of the writer, his elder friend; He studied with Radishchev in Leipzig, and here he died while still a very young man. Ushakov was known only to a narrow circle of his comrades, but for Radishchev he is a true hero, and his life is a “life.”
The appeal to the hagiographic genre was of fundamental importance for Radishchev: “The Life of Ushakov is polemically pointed against both the real lives of saints and against panegyrics to nobles.”
At the same time, Radishchev continues the hagiographic tradition as if on a new level. The hero of the life is an ascetic, ready for self-denial in the name of an idea, firmly enduring any trials. The element of idealization, characteristic of hagiographic literature, was important in its own way for Radishchev. His hero is an extraordinary person: “firmness of thoughts and free expression thereof” acts as a manifestation of the moral strength of Ushakov, who acquires the “commitment” of friends and at the same time the hatred of Bokum, who oppresses the students. Ushakov becomes the ideological inspirer of the rebellion against the arbitrariness and arbitrariness of the boss. At the same time, Radishchev’s hero is inspired not by Christian teaching, but by the desire for social justice: “A single indignation at untruth rebelled in his soul and communicated its swell to ours” (1, 163).
As in “Letter to a Friend,” in “The Life of Ushakov” specific events, in which the author himself was an eyewitness and participant, become the basis for reflection on political topics. The clash between the students and Bokum is presented by Radishchev as an episode reflecting in miniature the history of the relationship between the despotic ruler and his subjects. Accordingly, the narrative has, as it were, two plans: one is a sequential presentation of events with everyday details, sometimes even comic, the other is a philosophical understanding of the events described, the search for patterns that predetermine their outcome. Speaking about the “private oppressor” Bokum, Radishchev immediately turns the conversation to “general oppressors”: “Our guide did not know that it was bad to always reject the just demand of subordinates and that the highest authorities were sometimes crushed by untimely elasticity and reckless severity” (1, 162) . A direct continuation of this thought was the famous conclusion in “Travel” that freedom “should be expected from the very severity of enslavement” (1, 352).
An ordinary person, not distinguished by nobility, influence at court or wealth, was at that time already a fairly typical hero of works of European and Russian literature. However, the image created by Radishchev is completely original and remarkable in that it represents the ideal of a citizen, a person valuable to society, to the fatherland and therefore truly great: “... who sees into the darkness of the future and understands that he could be in society, after many centuries he will strive for it” (1, 186). “The Life of Ushakov” is an autobiographical work, partly a confession (characteristic, for example, is the author’s bitter admission that he was not with Ushakov in the last minutes of his life). “The inner man,” which became the main subject of depiction of European and Russian sentimentalism in the literature, is also of keen interest to Radishchev. At the same time, psychological analysis leads the writer to the study of human social connections.
According to Radishchev, a “private person” inevitably manifests himself as a social being. Therefore, it is quite natural that the writer is interested in what the relationship is between an individual member of society and his fellow citizens, in particular the problem of patriotism.
“A Conversation about the Son of the Fatherland,” published by Radishchev in 1789, was a highly polemical work. Here the dispute was with both the previous tradition and Radishchev’s contemporary official interpretation of patriotism. A year earlier, in 1788, the writer finished “The Tale of Lomonosov,” begun back in 1780 and later included in “Travel.” Glorifying the merits of Lomonosov, Radishchev emphasized the patriotic nature of his activities: “You lived for the glory of the Russian name” (1, 380). However, the flattery of Elizaveta Petrovna in Lomonosov’s poems evokes condemnation from Radishchev: no considerations of state benefit, paramount for Lomonosov, can force Radishchev to recognize the need for praise to the empress, who does not deserve it. Radishchev argued not only and not so much with Lomonosov, but with those who wanted to see in him a court recorder, who sought to present love for the sovereign as the main quality of a true son of the fatherland.
In the book of the Prussian king Frederick II, “Letters of Love for the Fatherland,” published in Russian translation in 1779, 1780 and finally in 1789, devotion to the sovereign was proclaimed the basis of patriotic feelings. This work expressed precisely those ideas that Catherine II sought to strengthen in the minds of her subjects: “The sovereign is that supreme person who, instead of rules, has her own will.” This focus on loyal patriotism was opposed by Radishchev’s “Conversation about the Son of the Fatherland.” Here we were talking about obedience only to the sovereign who acts as the “guardian of the laws”, as the “father of the people”. According to Radishchev, a true son of the Fatherland must be a free man, not a slave obeying coercion, but a citizen acting in full accordance with his moral principles: “... a true man and a son of the Fatherland are one and the same” (1, 220).
Speaking about those who, in the author's opinion, are not worthy of the name of son of the fatherland, the writer gives brief but expressive characteristics of several characters well known to the Russian reader from satirical journalism: a dandy, an oppressor and a villain, a conqueror, a glutton. Analogues to these types are not difficult to find in the works of Novikov, Fonvizin, Krylov. Radishchev’s main work, “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow,” turns out to be closely connected with these traditions of Russian literature of the 18th century, in fact, with its satirical line.
No less important for the writer is another line coming from Lomonosov with his heroic patriotic pathos, with his high system of thoughts. Like the enlighteners, Radishchev is characterized by a feeling of discrepancy between what is and what should be and the confidence that the discovery of this discrepancy is the main key to solving all problems. The basis for such a belief is the idea that a person is initially inherent in some kind of internal justice, the concept of what? ok so what? evil. “There is no person,” says the “Conversation,” “no matter how depraved and blinded he is by himself, so that he does not feel the rightness and beauty of things and deeds” (1, 218).
In full accordance with this thought, Radishchev wrote: “Man’s misfortunes come from man, and often only from the fact that he looks indirectly at the objects around him” (1, 227). This problem of “direct”, i.e., unbiased, vision occupied the young Krylov at that time, as can be seen from the very first letters of “Spirit Mail” (1789). Criticism of monarchical power, evil satire of noble persons, right up to the empress herself - all this united Radishchev with other most radical writers of the 1770–1780s, primarily with Novikov and Fonvizin.
The immediate predecessor of Radishchev’s “Travel” was the famous “Excerpt of a trip to *** I*** T***”, published in N. I. Novikov’s magazine “Painter” (1772).
The peasant question was posed very seriously in the “Excerpt”: it spoke loudly about the poverty and lack of rights of the serfs, slavery and tyranny were condemned as a crime against “humanity.” But only a few years later, in Radishchev’s “Travel,” completed and published in 1790, this theme was first developed to consistently revolutionary conclusions: the entire system based on the oppression of man by man was rejected, and the path to liberation was indicated - a popular uprising.
“A Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow” is, in Herzen’s words, “a serious, sad, sorrow-filled book,” which reflects Radishchev’s political ideas, the peculiarities of his literary talent, and, finally, the very personality of the revolutionary writer with maximum completeness.
Radishchev dedicated this book, like “The Life of Ushakov,” to A. M. Kutuzov, his “sympathizer” and “dear friend,” with whom he studied together in Leipzig.
The question of who to dedicate the book to was far from formal; it was of fundamental importance: this already revealed the writer’s literary orientation. The originality of Radishchev’s position is also manifested in his dedication: the particular and the general here organically merge, and we are talking about the author’s friend, one specific person, and about all of humanity. “I looked around me - my soul became wounded by the suffering of humanity” (1, 227) - this famous phrase of Radishchev, included in his dedication, serves as a natural prologue to the entire book.
In terms of genre, “Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow” correlates with the popular in the 18th century. literature of “travel”, both European and Russian. However, all these works are so heterogeneous both in character and style that turning to this genre did not limit the author to any specific canons and rules and provided him with great creative freedom.
Radishchev based his book on domestic material: it dealt with the most pressing issues of Russian social life. The division into chapters according to the names of postal stations between St. Petersburg and Moscow was far from formal in nature, and often determined the content of a particular chapter: excursions into Russian history in the chapter “Novgorod”, a description of “depraved morals” in “Valdai”, a discussion about the benefits of construction when looking at the gateways at Vyshny Volochyok. From Radishchev’s book you can learn a lot about Russian life at the end of the 18th century, including the famous description of a Russian hut in “Pawns,” a description of the roads, and a mention of how the heroes are dressed. All these details, however, are important for the writer not in themselves, but insofar as they help the development of his main idea; the plot basis is not a chain of external events, but a movement of thought. As in the works that preceded the Journey, Radishchev moves from each particular fact to generalizations. Examples of “private disorder in society” follow one after another: the case of the traveler’s friend Ch... (“Chudovo”), the episode with the oyster lover and the story of a companion hiding from unjust persecutors (“Spasskaya Polest”), Krestyankin’s narrative (“Zaitsovo”) , etc. Each fact must be comprehended by the reader in its entirety, while conclusions and conclusions must be suggested by the author himself.
In recent studies, the question of the composition of “Travel” has been studied quite well. It has been proven that each chapter of the “Journey” should not be considered in isolation, but in its correlation with other chapters. The writer reveals the complete inconsistency of the liberal illusions that some of his intended readers, his contemporaries, are in the grip of. Reflecting on the truths that became obvious to him, the writer often encountered misunderstanding even on the part of his friends (for example, the same Kutuzov). Radishchev wants to help others abandon their delusions, remove the thorn from their eyes, like the wanderer from “Spasskaya Polestya.”
On the one hand, the novelty and originality of “opinions”, on the other, the desire to convince those who do not share them, the desire to be understood. Like a terrible nightmare, the traveler sees in a dream that he is “alone, abandoned, a hermit in the midst of nature” (1, 228). This episode characterizes, of course, not only Radishchev’s hero, but also the writer himself, who cannot imagine himself outside of social connections and contacts. The main and most effective means of communication remains the word, “the firstborn of everything,” according to Radishchev. In “The Tale of Lomonosov,” which logically concludes the entire book, the writer speaks of “the invaluable right to influence his contemporaries” - a right that the author of “Travel” himself “accepted from nature,” following Lomonosov. “Citizen of Future Times,” Radishchev writes not a treatise, but a literary work, and turns to traditional genres that are completely legitimized in the minds of his readers. The “Journey” includes an ode, a word of praise, and chapters repeating common satirical genres of the 18th century. (writing, sleep, etc.).
Having carefully thought out the composition of “Travels”, giving it internal logic, Radishchev appealed to both the reader’s reason and feelings. One of the main features of Radishchev’s creative method as a whole was correctly identified by G. A. Gukovsky, who drew attention to the emotional side of “The Journey”: “The reader must be convinced not only by the fact as such, but also by the power of the author’s enthusiasm; the reader must enter into the psychology of the author and look at events and things from his position. “The Journey” is a passionate monologue, a sermon, and not a collection of essays.”
The author’s voice is constantly heard in Radishchev’s book: sometimes these are detailed statements, imbued with indignation and sorrow, sometimes brief but expressive remarks, such as a sarcastic remark made as if in passing: “But the government has ever blushed!” or a rhetorical question: “Tell me, in whose head could there be more inconsistencies, if not in the king’s?” (1, 348).
The results of the latest research, however, force us to clarify the characteristics of the “Journey” given by G. A. Gukovsky. Radishchev's book is essentially not a monologue, since there is a certain distance between the author and his characters, who pronounce the next philippics. Many heroes, of course, express the thoughts of the author himself and directly express the feelings that possess him. But the book reveals a clash of different opinions. Some heroes are close to the author (the traveler himself, Krestyankin, the Krestitsky nobleman, the “newfangled poet”, Ch..., the author of the “project for the future”), others represent a hostile camp. The speech of each of them is emotionally rich: each passionately proves that he is right, and Krestyankin’s opponents, refuting his “harmful opinions,” also speak quite eloquently. Like Ushakov, Krestyankin shows mental firmness and responds to his opponents with dignity. There is, as it were, a competition of speakers, in which the hero closest to the author wins the moral victory. At the same time, none of the characters expressing the author’s opinion completely takes on the role of a mouthpiece for the author’s ideas, as was the case in the literature of classicism. Radishchev's "Journey" is comparable in this regard to such works by Diderot as "Ramo's Nephew" and "Conversation between a Father and Children." “The concept of Diderot as a thinker,” writes a modern researcher, “can be revealed only from the context of the entire work as a whole, only from the totality of points of view that collide during the exchange of opinions and reproduce the interweaving of complex life contradictions.” The similarity between Diderot and Radishchev in this regard is a particularly remarkable phenomenon, since we are talking, of course, not about borrowing a technique (“Ramo’s Nephew,” created in the 1760–1770s, was published only in the 19th century), but about the manifestation certain trends in both French and Russian literature of the second half of the 18th century. – trends associated with the development of the realistic method.
Truth in Radishchev’s view invariably retained its unambiguity and certainty: “opposing truths” did not exist for the writer of the 18th century. “The Journey” reflected the consistency and integrity of Radishchev’s political program, his ability to relate the final goal of the struggle to specific historical conditions. However, the heroes of “The Journey” differ in the degree of their closeness to that unchangeable and eternal truth, in which the author sees the “highest deity.” The reader’s task, therefore, is not reduced to passive assimilation of the idea directly expressed by the author: the reader is given the opportunity to compare different points of view, comprehend them and draw independent conclusions, i.e., to come closer to understanding the truth.
The attraction to the genre of oratorical prose, a genre closely related to church preaching, largely determines the style of “The Journey,” its archaic syntax and abundance of Slavicisms. The high syllable predominates in Radishchev, but, contrary to the theory of classicism, the unity of the “calm” is not respected. In satirical and everyday scenes, pathos was inappropriate and impossible: accordingly, the writer’s language undergoes a metamorphosis, becomes simpler, approaches a living, spoken language, the language of Fonvizin and Krylov the prose writer.
Pushkin called “Journey” a “satirical appeal to indignation,” accurately noting one of the book’s features. Radishchev's talent as a satirist manifested itself primarily in the depiction of private and general oppressors: nobles abusing their power, “hard-hearted” feudal landowners, unjust judges and indifferent officials. The crowd of these oppressors has many faces: among them are Baron Duryndin, and Karp Demenich, and the assessor, and the sovereign, “something sitting on the throne.” Some of the satirical images created by Radishchev continue the gallery of characters of Russian journalism and at the same time represent a new stage of artistic typification, a stage associated primarily with the name of Fonvizin.
In “Travel,” Radishchev repeatedly refers to Fonvizin’s works, including “Court Grammar,” which was banned by censorship but circulated in lists. Describing the menacing appearance of an “excellent personage” (“Zavidovo”) at the post station, Radishchev ironically remarks:
“Blessed are those adorned with ranks and ribbons. All nature obeys them,” and then adds sarcastically: “Who knows of those who tremble from the lash threatening them, that the one in whose name they threaten him is called dumb in court grammar, that he has neither A, ... nor O, ... at all I couldn’t tell my life; that he is a debtor, and it is a shame to say to whom with his exaltation; that in his soul he is the stingiest creature” (1, 372–373).
The acute social orientation of Fonvizin’s satire, his art of generalization, his understanding of the role of circumstances that shape a person’s character - all this was close to Radishchev, who simultaneously with the author of “Minor” solved the same artistic problems. But the originality of Radishchev’s literary position was due to the peculiarities of his worldview, his revolutionary views. Radishchev develops the “doctrine of an active person,” showing “not only a person’s dependence on the social environment, but also his ability to act against it.”
The principles of depicting characters in Fonvizin and Radishchev are very similar, but the difference in the social positions of these writers leads them to create different types of positive heroes. Some of Radishchev's heroes can be compared with Fonvizin's Starodum and Pravdivy. However, these are more “sympathizers” than like-minded people of the author, and they do not embody the writer’s ethical ideal.
In “The Journey,” for the first time in Russian literature, the people become the real hero of the work. Radishchev's reflections on the historical fate of Russia are inextricably linked with his desire to understand the character and soul of the Russian people. From the very first pages of the book this theme becomes the leading one. Listening to the mournful song of the coachman (“Sofia”), the traveler notices that almost all Russian folk songs “are the essence of a soft tone.” “In this musical location of the people’s ear, know how to establish the reins of government. In them you will find the formation of the soul of our people” (1, 229–230), - Radishchev makes this conclusion, based not on a momentary impression, but on a deep knowledge of people’s life. The coachman's song confirms the author's long-standing observations and gives him a reason to generalize them.
A peasant, talking about the reprisal of serfs against their tyrant landowner (“Zaitsovo”), sees in this seemingly extraordinary case the manifestation of a certain pattern. “I noticed from numerous examples (my italics - N.K.),” he says, “that the Russian people are very patient, and endure to the very extreme, but when they put an end to their patience, then nothing can hold them back, so as not to bowed down to cruelty" (1, 272–273).
Each meeting of the traveler with the peasants reveals new aspects of the Russian folk character: a kind of collective image is created. In conversations with the traveler, the peasants show prudence, alertness of mind, and kindness. A plowman, working diligently on Sunday in his own field (“Lyubani”), calmly and with full consciousness of his rightness explains that it would be a sin to work just as diligently for the master: “He has a hundred hands for one mouth in his arable land, and I have two, for seven mouths" (1, 233). The words of a peasant woman who sends a hungry boy for a piece of sugar, “boyar food” (“Pawns”), amaze the traveler not only with their bitter meaning, but also with the very form of the statement: “This reproach, uttered not with anger or indignation, but with a deep feeling of spiritual sorrow, filled my heart with sadness" (1, 377).
Radishchev shows that, despite all the oppression and humiliation, the peasants retain their human dignity and high moral ideals. “The Journey” tells the story of the fates of several people from the people, and their individual portraits complement and enliven the overall picture. This is a peasant girl Anyuta (“Edrovo”), who delights the traveler with her sincerity and purity, a serf intellectual who prefers difficult soldier’s service to “always desecration” in the house of an inhuman landowner (“Gorodnya”), a blind singer who rejects too rich alms (“Wedge”). . The traveler feels the great moral strength of these people; they evoke not pity, but deep sympathy and respect. It is not so easy for “Master” to win their trust, but the traveler, a hero who in many respects is close to Radishchev himself, succeeds. “The key to the mysteries of the people,” as Herzen put it, Radishchev found in folk art and managed to very organically introduce rich folklore material into his book. Folk songs, lamentations, proverbs and sayings involve the reader in the poetic world of the Russian peasantry, helping to imbue them with the humane and patriotic ideas that the author of “The Journey” develops, striving to “be an accomplice in the well-being of his own kind.” Radishchev does not idealize patriarchal antiquity: he strives to show that the powerless position of the peasantry also fetters its rich creative potential. Another problem arises in “The Journey” - the problem of introducing the people to world culture and civilization.
In the chapter “Podberezie” the writer recalls the time when “superstition and all its accretions, ignorance, slavery, the Inquisition, and many other things reigned” (1, 260). The Middle Ages, with its fanaticism, with the unlimited dominance of papal power, seems to Radishchev to be one of the darkest eras in the history of mankind.
In “Discourse on the Origin of Censorship” (“Torzhok”), the writer returns to the same topic, explaining the meaning of censorship restrictions in medieval Germany: “The priests wanted some of the participants in their power to be enlightened, so that the people would honor science of divine origin, above its concept and I wouldn’t dare touch it” (1, 343).
Speaking about the people, Radishchev obviously primarily means the working masses, and in relation to contemporary Russia, the peasantry. In “The Journey”, at the same time, those representatives of other classes - commoners and nobles - who are close to national interests are depicted with obvious sympathy. Radishchev creates a completely new type of positive hero - the image of a people's defender, a revolutionary, an image that was further developed in the works of Russian writers of the 19th century. Certain features inherent in such a hero can be found in the “soothsayer of water” - the author of the ode, in Ushakov; similar images appear in “Journey”: this is both the traveler himself and a certain nameless man, emerging “from among the people”, “alien to the hope of bribes, alien to slavish trepidation”, “courageous writers rebelling against destruction and omnipotence” (1, 391) , among which is the author of “The Journey”.
In the spirit of the times, Radishchev emphasized the autobiographical nature of his works: the very biography of the revolutionary writer is inseparable from his work. In the process of working on “The Journey,” Radishchev was well aware of the seditious nature of his book and could partly foresee the danger that threatened him. Interesting in this regard is the conversation between the traveler and the “newfangled poet” regarding the ode “Liberty.” Expressing doubts that “permission” to publish the ode can be obtained, the traveler advises correcting the verses, seeing in them “the absurdity of thoughts.” The poet responds to this with a contemptuous look and invites his interlocutor to read the poem “The Creation of the World,” ironically asking: “Read this paper and tell me if they won’t go to jail for it too” (1, 431). Radishchev’s “trial” unfolded almost immediately after the release of “Journey.” In the last days of May 1790, the book, printed in Radishchev's home printing house, with a circulation of about 650 copies, began to go on sale. In the twentieth of June, an investigation into the author had already begun; on June 30, the writer was arrested and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. At this time, Catherine II began reading the “daring” book, peppering it with her comments. “The writer does not like kings, and where he can reduce his love and respect for them, he greedily clings to them with rare courage,” the empress admitted. After numerous grueling interrogations, Radishchev was sentenced to death and spent more than two weeks awaiting it. On September 4, on the occasion of peace with Sweden, the execution was “mercifully” replaced by a ten-year exile in Siberia, in the Ilimsk prison. The most difficult trials did not break the writer, and one of the remarkable evidence of this was the poem written by Radishchev on the way to exile:
You want to know: who am I? what am I? where am I going? –
I am the same as I was and will be all my life:
Not a cattle, not a tree, not a slave, but a man!
(1, 123)
The whole complex of Radishchev’s ideas about the “true man,” great for his moral virtues, a fighter, was reflected through the personal and private. The writer emphasized loyalty to his previous ideals (“I am the same as I was”) and, as it were, defined his program for the future (“and I will be throughout my entire life”). It is therefore quite natural that works written both before and after “The Journey” invariably correlate with it.
The idea that a person cannot “be alone” (1, 144) turns out to be one of the most important in Radishchev’s “Diary of One Week.” The question of when the “Diary” was written remains a subject of debate in modern literary criticism: some researchers attribute the “Diary” to 1770, others to 1790 or 1800. The content of the “Diary” is a description of the experiences caused by separation from friends: melancholy, the suspicion that they had forgotten him, the joy of meeting him. “But where should I look for quenching my grief, even momentarily? “Where?” the author, abandoned by his friends, asks sadly and answers himself: “Reason speaks: in yourself. No, no, this is where I find destruction, here is sorrow, here is hell; let's go" (1, 140). The hero goes to the “common walk,” but, not finding consolation here among the indifferent, he goes to the theater, to “Beverley,” to “shed tears over the unfortunate.” Sympathy for Beverly reduces the hero’s own grief, reveals his involvement in what is happening in the world around him, and restores the social connections necessary for a person. These connections helped Radishchev during the most difficult periods of his life.
In exile, the writer actively studied the economy, history, and life of the Siberian population. The result of many years of thinking about the physical and moral nature of man and independent comprehension of some of the ideas of Herder and other European thinkers was Radishchev’s philosophical treatise “On Man, on His Mortality and Immortality,” written in Siberia. The doctrine of an active person is reflected here too, and a comparison of the treatise with other works of the writer shows that for Radishchev the idea of immortality was connected with his thoughts about life after death in the minds of his contemporaries and posterity.
After the death of Catherine II in 1796, Radishchev was given the opportunity to leave Ilimsk and settle in the village of Nemtsov, Kaluga province, but only in 1801, already under Alexander I, was the writer allowed to return to St. Petersburg. As during the years of work on “Journey,” Radishchev continues to turn to the experience of history. One of his most significant works created in Nemtsov is “The Historical Song,” which is not only an excursion into the past, but also an assessment of the writer’s contemporary events in France. Wise over years of trials and the lessons of the French Revolution, Radishchev, as if at a new level, returns to his old thoughts about the corrupting influence of autocratic power:
Oh, how difficult it is, sitting
Above all and without
No obstacles in desires,
Sit on a magnificent throne
No hangover and no fuss.
(1, 117)
Themes and motifs of Radishchev’s earlier works also appear in the poem “Bova,” as M. P. Alekseev showed by carefully analyzing the surviving text of the poem. This humorous poem and fairy tale, describing the funny adventures of Bova, has a second, philosophical plan. Hints on the author's personal circumstances, deviations from the fairy-tale plot with excursions into modern times - all this gave the poem a special journalistic character that distinguished it from works of a similar genre. Lomonosov's traditions of natural philosophical poetry intersect in "Beauvais" with the influence of Russian pre-romantic poetry contemporary to Radishchev. The writer himself points out, in particular, among the samples he was guided by when creating “Bova”, S. S. Bobrov’s poem “Tavrida”.
The author of “Travel” does not stand aside from the problems that, each in his own way, were being solved at the same time by Derzhavin, Dmitriev, Karamzin, Kapnist and other poets of the late 18th – early 19th centuries. The general interest in the poetry of ancient peoples and in Russian folklore, especially in connection with the discovery of “The Tale of Igor’s Campaign,” is also stimulated by Radishchev’s appeal to the theme of the Slavic past in the poem “Songs Sung at Competitions in Honor of the Ancient Slavic Deities.” Radishchev invariably remained an enemy of all standards, canonized techniques and cliches. “Parnassus is surrounded by Yambs, and Rhymes stand guard everywhere” (1, 353) – the writer ironically stated in “Travel”. Russian poetry seems to Radishchev as one of the important areas that needs to be reformed. “An example of how one can write in more than just iambics” was already given in “Journey”: this is the “canticle” contained in its text, “The Creation of the World.”
In the 1790s. Many people are fighting the “dominance of iambs”: Derzhavin, Dmitriev, Lvov, Karamzin, Neledinsky Meletsky and others strive to enrich Russian poetry with new rhythms and write unrhymed poems.
Radishchev acted at the same time as a theorist who sensitively grasped some very important trends in the development of Russian poetry at the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries. (up to the experiments of A. Kh. Vostokov, who relied in many ways directly on Radishchev). By promoting dactylic meter, the author of “Travel” sought to attract the attention of his contemporaries to Trediakovsky’s poetic works and his experiments in creating the Russian hexameter. The essay “Monument to the Dactylo Trochaic Knight”, specially dedicated to Trediakovsky, develops the considerations that were expressed in the “Travel” in the chapter “Tver” regarding the advantages of the polymetric system of versification.
Attention to the “expressive harmony” of verse was associated with Radishchev’s general conviction that the form of a word is inseparable from its semantics. Radishchev consistently sought to implement his theoretical positions in his own literary work. His experiments with poetic meters, his deliberately difficult style, his attitude to genre traditions - all this had to correspond to the novelty of the writer’s ideas.
A striking example of this harmonious combination of form and content is one of Radishchev’s most recent works - the poem “The Eighteenth Century,” highly appreciated by Pushkin. “The Eighteenth Century” is written in an elegiac distich (a combination of hexameter and pentameter), and the very sound of the verse, solemn and tragic, and the composition of the poem, and the system of images - all this constitutes an organic artistic unity:
No, you will not be forgotten, a century of madness and wisdom.
You will be damned forever, forever by the surprise of everyone.
(1, 127)
The poet judges his age, which shaped his own consciousness as the consciousness of a “citizen of future times.” The problem of immortality, which occupied such a significant place in the system of Radishchev’s views, takes on enormous proportions here: the time perspective is measured in centuries and we are talking about the destinies of all humanity. Dialectically assessing the contradictions of his century (“the century is crazy and wise”) and summing up its results, Radishchev realizes how illusory some of the ideas of the Enlightenment were, which revealed their inconsistency in practice, especially during the revolutionary events in France. But the humanistic nature of the philosophy of the enlighteners, their faith in man and his high destiny - all this remains dear and close to Radishchev, who in his final work continues to glorify “truth, freedom and light” as eternal, enduring values.
The lines of the poem addressed to Alexander, who had just ascended the throne, can be correctly understood in relation to the facts of the biography of the poet himself. Under Alexander, Radishchev begins his activities in the Commission for Drafting Laws, but very soon becomes convinced that his bold projects cannot be implemented: they only bring upon the author threats of a “new Siberia.” The writer's suicide was the last courageous act of protest against the system of autocracy and violence. “The monarchs,” wrote V.I. Lenin, “either flirted with liberalism, or were the executioners of the Radishchevs.” In the article “On the National Pride of the Great Russians,” V.I. Lenin was the first to name Radishchev among Russian revolutionary writers.
Radishchev's "Travel", prohibited by tsarist censorship, was distributed in numerous copies. In 1858, A. I. Herzen undertook the publication of a seditious book in London. In Russia, its publication was possible only after 1905, but only under Soviet power were the merits of the revolutionary writer truly appreciated. According to Lenin’s plan of “monumental propaganda,” monuments to Radishchev were erected in Moscow and Petrograd in 1918. Numerous scientific and popular editions of the writer’s works, the study of his life and work, his social and literary connections - all this made it possible to present Radishchev’s place in the history of Russian culture and literature in a new way.
For most Russian writers of the 19th century. turning to the freedom-loving theme meant the resurrection of Radishchev’s traditions. Some were attracted by the high order of Radishchev’s thoughts and feelings, the rebellious spirit of his works; to others he was close primarily as a satirist. But regardless of which side of the writer’s work came to the fore, Radishchev’s word continued to participate in the literary life of the 19th century, just as the very appearance of the revolutionary writer remained in the minds of subsequent generations as a living example of selfless heroism.

The work of Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev, the first Russian revolutionary writer, was prepared by significant events that took place in the 18th century in Russia and abroad and is closely connected with the traditions of the Russian and European Enlightenment.

Being at the origins of the Russian liberation movement, Radishchev anticipated the emergence of the ideas of the Decembrists, far ahead of his predecessors and contemporaries in the consistency and boldness of revolutionary conclusions.

Already Radishchev’s first literary performance, a translation of Mably’s book “Reflections on Greek History,” testified to the independence and maturity of his political views.

“Autocracy is the state most contrary to human nature,” the translator writes in the comments to Mably’s text.

In “A Letter to a Friend Living in Tobolsk, Due to the Duty of His Title,” dedicated to the opening of the monument to Peter in St. Petersburg, Radishchev thinks about what a great sovereign should be like. In Peter he sees an “extraordinary husband”, a man who “renewed Russia”, and at the same time a “powerful autocrat” who “exterminated the last signs of the wild freedom of his state.”

In 1783 the famous ode “Liberty” was written. The author welcomes the American Revolution in it, but the main theme of the ode is freedom - the “priceless gift” of man. Radishchev argues that slavery is based on violence and deception: the state and the church “jointly oppress society.” The laws created by the autocracy and consecrated by the church took away freedom from the people and gave them slavery. The main idea of the poem is the idea of revolutionary revenge on tyrants. Radishchev welcomes the popular uprising; he believes that the poet’s task is to “predict freedom.” For the first time in Russian literature, revolutionary thought was embodied in poetic form.

The autobiographical story “The Life of Fyodor Vasilyevich Ushakov” is a memory of the years spent in Germany. The main character of the story is Radishchev’s friend from the university, who became the ideological inspirer of the student revolt against the arbitrariness and tyranny of Major Bokum. Radishchev strives to create the image of a positive hero, a citizen, an ascetic, ready for self-denial and heroism in the name of an idea.

The problem of the hero of time is also posed in the “Conversation about the Son of the Fatherland.” According to the writer, only a free citizen who acts in accordance with his convictions and moral principles can be a true son of the Fatherland.

From the mid-1780s, Radishchev began writing the main work of his life, which reflected his political views, the uniqueness of his personality and the features of his artistic method.

In the dedication to Kutuzov, a friend at the University of Leipzig, there is a phrase that became the “key” to understanding the entire content of the book: “I looked around me - my soul became wounded by the suffering of humanity.” Indeed, “The Journey...” covered the most diverse aspects of Russian life and showed the despotism of the autocracy, and the depravity and hypocrisy of nobles, and the corruption of self-interested officials, and the monstrous oppression and humiliation of the Russian people. This work became Radishchev's main creative achievement.