Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow

September 15, 2020
A satirical tour of the Russia of Catherine the Great's era by an author then considered a political radical. Radishchev is not well known even to Russian readers, write the translators in their detailed introduction; his works were often censored and printed in samizdat or foreign editions, and in any event he wrote a kind of fusty prose that was common to his time, before modernism had broken through--which gave him a later reputation as a "bad writer." His novel, though often entertaining, suffers from some of that old-fashioned feel: "At last the din of the postal carriage's bell, grown wearisome to my ears, summoned beneficent Morpheus" is a characteristic phrase. The protagonist is on his way from the imperial capital to the most important city in the heartland, but not much of the action of the novel is set at either terminus. Instead, things occur inside a variety of conveyances, including boats ("At length, the second of these imitators of Moses in the crossing of depths of sea on foot without a miracle halted on a rock, while we lost the first from view altogether") and the aforementioned postal carriage. That protagonist has a habit of asking pesky questions or venturing observances that cause his interlocutors to walk away or ride off in a huff: He wonders at the feudalism that binds serfs to their masters ("What a diabolical idea it is to lend one's own peasants to another for work"), subtly criticizes the utility of political dynasties ("in this world everything reverts to its previous stage since everything has its origin in destruction"), twits literary critics ("What the iamb, trochee, dactyl, or anapest are everyone knows who has even the slightest understanding of the rules of versification"), and even sneaks in a few digs at the censors ("And now, without imposing censorship on the postal horses, I set off on my journey in haste"). A valuable glimpse of Russia as seen in the years just before its 19th-century literary renaissance.

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September 28, 2020
Radishchev (1749–1802) crafts a masterly fictional travelogue, combining philosophy, poetry, and the political ideals of the Enlightenment in an unequivocal condemnation of serfdom, censorship, and corruption. The unnamed narrator travels via horse-drawn carriage between St. Petersburg and Moscow, making many stops at post stations and villages. In vignettes named after these points (“Novgorod,” “Bronnitsy,” “Zaitsovo”), he records the scenery, overheard conversations, and encounters with friends and strangers. Some of the book’s most heartrending accounts include, in “Gorodnya,” that of a serf educated along with his master’s son who is then denigrated and regularly beaten on orders from the son’s new wife, and a man trapped by his escalating debts in” Spasskaya Polest,” which lead to the premature deaths of his wife and newborn child. The travelogue also includes sketches like the story of the town of Valdai, where unmarried women sell pretzels and seduce travelers. Various, engaging, and deeply affecting, the book was a source of trouble for the nobleman Radishchev, who despite an accomplished career as a civil servant was banished to Siberia by Catherine the Great in 1790 for writing this protorevolutionary work, which was suppressed in Russia until the early 20th century. Kahn and Reyfman’s attentive new translation is a boon for English-language readers.