Alexander Radischev (1749-1802)

Russia’s Abolitionist Martyr

As a literary work, Radischev is condensing many experiences over the years into one journey. To prove his ideological point promoting basic human rights, he makes the peasants articulate, hard-working, and sober. He uses melodrama to yank his reader’s emotions around: the healthy, intelligent worker who will never achieve his goal of freedom no matter how hard he works; the beautiful, loyal young woman sold to a sexual predator.

His ‘journey’ is propaganda, but how do we evaluate propaganda?

Lesson Plan: Compose a Declaration of Independence style list of “Whereas” to address grievances about Russia’s agricultural and political system:

Whereas the serf system to guarantee labor for agricultural production is hopelessly corrupt, inefficient, arbitrary and brutal.

Therefore be it resolved:

Whereas the auction of souls at the block debases the master as well as the peasant, serfdom is abolished.

Whereas flogging and beating are barbarous punishments, the lash and the knout, as well as all other forms of corporal punishment are abolished as tools of punishment.

Whereas the forced service of peasants in the army for twenty-five years is an excessive commitment, the term of service in the military should be limited to five years.

Whereas landowners exercise arbitrary sway in legal judgment, an independent and professional judiciary shall be established to render judgment impartially on the basis of universal laws.

Peasants should be allowed to save capital to pay the commutation tax directly and thus opt out of mandatory workdays for master. (sharecropping)

Boyar Duma: Representative Government with franchise for property owners

Freedom of the Press

“A Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow” (1788-90)

Describe Radischev’s background and education. List the influences on him that may have contributed to his liberal and courageous stand on the issues of the day.

A rather traditional Russian story of the way the system works: bureaucracy and land and personal connections:

The son of landowning gentry (The gentry owned land through inheritance or through grants from the tsar for service.) Radischev’s father was a well-educated landowner (the exception, not the rule).

As a child he lived in St. Petersburg with the curator of the university, exposed to enlightened ideas from the outset of his education. He met Lomonsov, the Russian Ben Franklin, a scientist and writer. Radischev works as a page in service to the Court, the royal’s society, and does not like it too much.

In 1766 Radischev travelled to Germany to study at the University of Leipzig, a major intellectual center where he hangs out with Goethe, Kutuzov and the like. He had been sent there by Catherine herself to be trained as a government minister (the enlightened despot at work). Radischev imbibed deeply the principles at the core of the philosophes’ movement: judicial reform, the abolition of torture (and serfdom), political representation, anti-church rhetoric, and a firm belief in progress.

When Radischev returned home, he joined the establishment as a civil servant in the military. He translated a work about ancient Greek political forms. He got married and earned successive promotions to become Chief of the Custom House who regulated import/export taxes. (He needs to purchase more land and so obtain more ‘souls’ so that he can support his family.) He was having a spectacular career in the state bureaucracy, and then he risked everything to publish “The Journey”.

Outline the publishing history of “A Journey…”

Radischev had been working on The Journey for fifteen years. (He had begun it while journeying through the region ravaged by the Pugachev Rebellion in 1776.)

Why did he publish this tract which he knew would get him into serious trouble?

His father was protected by his serfs during the Pugachev Rebellion (because of his decent treatment of them.) Perhaps during his court experience as a youth, he saw the corruption and political maneuvering, and the luxury there. There is a strict hierarchy there. To succeed you have to be friends with the right group, and you have to suck up to the powerful people. Certainly, his idealistic Western education made him consider the situation of the peasants unjust. Russia had not gone through an Enlightenment due to its isolation from Europe from the 13th to the 18th centuries. Radischev’s goal may have been to catalyze a reform movement by making himself a martyr.

Outline the vicissitudes of Radischev’s life after the publication of “A Journey…”

Catherine revoked his gentry status, seized his land, and condemned Radischev to death, but later she commuted his sentence (his friends interceded) to ten years at hard labor in Siberia, a mere 4500 miles from St. Petersburg. Many prisoners did not survive the long walk in chains to get there. Again, because of his social position and connections, Radischev made the journey without chains, and he found better living conditions when he got there and received better treatment than other prisoners. He was basically kept out in the middle of nowhere, but his family was allowed to journey with him to Siberia, but his wife died, and Radischev married his wife’s sister.

In 1796 Catherine died, and in 1800 Paul I was assassinated. Alexander I commuted Radischev’s sentence and restored his position in the ministry. Radischev worked with Speransky commission to recommend reforms to the new tsar. In 1802 Radischev committed suicide despairing at any hope for change by working within the system.

List or make marginal notes of the warts and blemishes in Russian social, economic and political life featured in each excerpt of “The Journey…”

What did Radischev see along the way?

Lyubani:

Tenant Lessee Oppression: Radischev sees a peasant working on a Sunday and asks him why. By letting fields to landless tenants, the landlord receives payment for the head tax from a peasant who can then squeeze as much profit as possible for himself from the serfs on the estate. Working for himself on his own parcel of land, the peasant would have the incentive to pay off the obrok quickly. In this case the serf is forced to work but has no incentive to work hard. The peasant has no recourse to the courts because the landlord exploiting him also serves as judge and jury. Crown peasants were in better shape because for them the tax is set and cannot be manipulated by the landowner.

In Radischev’s liberal analysis, the lack of an incentive for peasants produces inefficiency throughout the system. Morally, he argues that serfdom corrupts both the serf and the master. The serf suffers physical and emotional punishment, burdensome taxes, disease, and alcoholism bred by hopelessness. The master corrupts the law with arbitrary and capricious punishments when he reduces his understanding of society to pure self-interest. Furthermore, anyone who wants to change the system is muzzled from public expression of his opinion by censorship by the Tsar’s officials.

YET in ….

Vyshny Volochak (267-68)

The hard headed proprietor uses the logic of the factory to take advantage of the system and wrest the maximum personal advantage. He treats the serfs as slaves, refusing to allot any time or land to the peasant’s personal use while doling out starvation wages, but he succeeds in enlarging his holdings by 10x. (just like in the United States)

Radischev urges the peasants to burn his property and society to ostracize him. (Uh-oh, I think he just played the class warfare card!)

Catherine’s reaction? Radischev is infected with the French madness and his real motivation is vengeance for being denied entrance to the palace and her court.

Torzhok (269-71)

Radischev articulates his argument against censorship which is based on classical liberal principles about free competition assigning value to the best quality commodities, even information. The free flow of information is self-regulating. Because people are rational, they will impugn libel without the need for government intervention. In the marketplace of ideas, the truth will out. (Of course, Radischev had never heard of tabloids or reality television.)

Mednoe (271-73)

A serf auction: the selling of souls (auctioning the assets of a debtor who has lost all his money gambling and drinking.) Radischev tells the story of serfs who had served a master for a lifetime being sold off; throughout their lives these household serfs had looked after the master and the master’s son, becoming part of the family on the way. Their daughter (the mother of the master’s child) is sold to a master intent on forcing her into sexual submission. (Compare to The Narrative of Frederick Douglass.)

Gordnya (272-77)

If you are a young male Russian, you are facing the draft. The first man has just been drafted and is forced to leave behind his fiancé. He tells his girl to stop crying. It’s an honor to serve the nation this way. However, he will be gone for a long time. Who will support them? Who will be the man?

Radischev tells the story of a peasant boy who was raised as the ‘brother’ of a master’s son who is sold illegally by new masters into the army. Still, the peasant has the ultimate choice to live the soldier’s life and risk becoming mere cannon fodder or to live as a serf, under threat of the knout and the noose.

Men forced into the army. The master had set them free but by agreement with another recruiting officer, the commune purchased these serfs and substituted them for their own draftees. Forced draft into the army: free men sold like cattle.

Commune: the original form of the peasant organization in Russia. obschina; mir (also means ‘peace’ and ‘the universe’) Basic Rules? Land is shared. You don’t work, you don’t eat.