Future teachers became acquainted with one of the major books of the 18th century

May 22, 2024

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Future teachers became acquainted with one of the major books of the 18th century

At the multidisciplinary college in the city of Kuznetsk, staff from the A. N. Radishchev Museum organized a traveling exhibition of a single item from the museum's collection, "The Fate of a 'Seditious' Book," for the 275th anniversary of A. N. Radishchev's birth.

Students learned about the history of the creation of the famous book, found out about surviving copies, and were able to see the 1905 edition of "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow."

Visitors were told that one of the most famous Russian books of the 18th century, Alexander Nikolayevich Radishchev's "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow," first appeared in May 1790. Printed in a small run at a private press, it was issued without the author's name on the title page, which nonetheless did not save the writer. "The Journey" provoked the wrath of Empress Catherine II, and after a short investigation Radishchev was arrested and on 4 September 1790 was convicted of "a crime against his oath and duty as a subject by publishing a book filled with the most harmful speculations that undermine public peace...".

Sentenced to death, Radishchev was pardoned and exiled for ten years to the Ilimsk ostrog. Six years later Paul I would restore his freedom, and in 1802 the writer—morally broken and suffering from severe physical ailments—died after drinking poison. His work, the cause of his suffering and posthumous fame, would remain banned in Russia for another century, circulating only in handwritten copies, in abridged versions, or in foreign editions.

It was published in full and legally only after the 1905 revolution and the manifesto that resulted from it, which granted Russians freedom of conscience, speech, assembly, associations, and personal inviolability.

The exhibit presented at the exhibition is the first scholarly edition of "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow," published in 1905 in St. Petersburg with commentaries by Nikolai Pavlovich Pavlov-Silvansky and Pavel Eliseevich Shchegolev. In their joint preface the editors stated: "We print 'Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow' preserving the orthography of its first 1790 edition, and indicate all the peculiarities of the original text of the work according to the manuscript corrected by Radishchev and kept in the State Archive."

Nikolai Pavlovich Pavlov-Silvansky, who undertook the compilation of the author's biographical sketch, stressed: "Radishchev's book, famous for its tragic fate, belongs to the most remarkable works of Russian literature not only as a political treatise but also as an artistic work. It goes without saying, of course, that this composition, written in 1790, is still far from the heights of creativity that our literature reached only in the second half of the last century... But in this picture, through a thick layer of dust of outdated phrasing and through the faded colors of sentimentalism and affected pathos, bright traits of life, impulses of strong feeling, and the brilliance of bold, profound thought shine through... Radishchev's book was a bold, great revolt against contemporaneity in the name of the natural rights of man."