A RUSSIAN PHILOSOPHE ALEXANDER RADISHCHEV

Transcription

1 A RUSSIAN PHILOSOPHE ALEXANDER RADISHCHEV

2 Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev ( ) Oil painting by an unknown eighteenth-century artist

3 A RUSSIAN PHILOSOPHE ALEXANDER RADISHCHEV by ALLEN McCONNELL MARTINUS NIJHOFF I THE HAGUE I 1964

4 ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / Copyright I964 by Martinus Nijhoff. The Hague. Netherlands All rights reserved. including the right to translate or to r ~ p r othis d ubook c e or parts thereof in any form Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1 st edition 1964

5 To my mother and the memory of my father

6 PREFACE Alexander Radishchev's major work, A Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow, first published in 1790, was the most scathing denunciation of serfdom and autocracy that had ever appeared in Russia. Its author was immediately arrested, tried for treason, and condemned to death, the sentence being later commuted to exile in Siberia. Catherine the Great, who had provided Radishchev with a schooling in despotism in the Corps des Pages and with an introduction to the Enlightenment at the University of Leipzig, saw in his book a gratuitous insult to herself as well as an attempt to incite a revolt that would bring him to power. Forgetting that many of its ideas were the same as those she had herself expressed earlier, she denounced it as the fruit of foreign abstract theories acting on an excitable, ambitious and resentful man. The Journey was effectively suppressed for more than a century. Any mention of Radishchev was discouraged by the censor for seventy years. A generation after Radishchev's death in 1802, Pushkin's biography of him was refused publication permission on the ground that the subject of it was forgotten and deserved to remain so. Conservative and nationalist Russian historians have in general followed Catherine's line that Radishchev was "infected with the French madness" (as expressed in the writings of the philosophes, including Rousseau), a reckless power-seeker, a small man embittered by failing to reach the heights in the bureaucracy, at best a victim of an education sentimentale, at worst an ideologue of peasant rebellion. Liberal scholars, while conceding his great sensibility, have called attention to the many humane and enlightened ideals Radishchev shared with Catherine and have even suggested that his purpose in writing the Journey was to persuade the "philosophe on the throne" to carry out her professed aims. To commentators of this persuasion he has seemed a self-sacrificing martyr, a naive Don Quixote of "knight-like scrupulousness" who wanted to warn the Empress of the danger of another Pugachev rebellion. To the more enthusiastic he has

7 VIII PREFACE been a bold and independent thinker, even "the peak of eighteenthcentury social science." Soviet historians initially adopted the liberal attitude toward Radishchev, though some of the more popular writers early laid great stress on his revolutionary ardor. A few classically Marxist analyses sought to destroy the image of Radishchev as above classes and to reduce his humanitarianism and radicalism to the natural consequence of his family's declining fortunes. Most early Soviet theorists, however, portrayed him as a man of high courage and principle, an aristocrat who loved the oppressed masses. By the late 1930's the Party line stressed his nationalism and revolutionary conviction. He was no longer a mere reformer, an author of "passionate monologues in Rousseau's manner," or an imitator of Sterne and Raynal. He had become a consistent, resolute, implacable, indeed a "monolithic" revolutionary. Since Stalin's death Soviet scholars, while largely retaining the obligatory salutation to a revolutionary martyr, have carried on thorough archival research concerning him and have brought to light many facts which yield valuable insights into his world and contribute to an appreciation of the complexity and pathos of his life. The most recent full-length study of Radishchev reiterates the notion that Radishchev's progressive opinions were a consequence of romantic intoxication with the ideas of French writers, while an increasing number of monographic studies, Soviet and Western, point to the depth and consistency of Radishchev's concern with the social, ethical and philosophical problems raised by the writers of the Enlightenment in Western Europe. Monographs and articles, showing the quality and extent of the influence of Sterne, Herder, Helvetius, Mably, Rousseau and Raynal have disproved the earlier sweeping generalizations and provide the opportunity to give a more balanced picture of the Russian philosophe. No fully satisfactory biography of Radishchev has appeared in any language. This work is intended to fill this gap in the history of the Russian and European Enlightenment. I would like to thank President Barnaby C. Keeney and the Brown University Fund for Travel and Research for a grant which enabled me to do research in the U.S.S.R. and the Social Science Research Council for a grant which assisted in the preparation of the manuscript. I would also like to thank Richard W. Emery, former Dean of the Faculty at Queens College and the Committee of Faculty Research

8 PREFACE IX for their most helpful lightening of my teaching responsibilities. My gratitude goes also to the editors of the American Slavic and East European Review, the Slavic and East European Journal, the Journal 0/ the History 0/ Ideas and the Journal 0/ Modern History for permission to use passages and ideas from my articles appearing in their journals. I would like to thank friends who have given generously of their time and knowledge. Marc Raeff saved me from many an error from first chapter to last and made numerous constructive suggestions. Jacques Barzun read the typescript through and lowe much to his sure judgment, unerring taste and kind encouragement. Andrew G. Whiteside thoughtfully persused the concluding chapters, exposing blind spots and passages which assumed that all my readers would be Radishchev specialists. Mrs. Pamela Forcey subjected the manuscript to brilliant editorial scrutiny. The late Robert Pierce Casey gave me learned and generous instruction in the Russian language, as did Elias Tartak, whose percipient insights into Russian and Western literatures have been a constant. inspiration. A. McC.

9 TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface Abbreviations VII XII I. A Russian Aristocrat's Youth 1 II. Leipzig University: (1) Education in Despotism 17 III. Leipzig University: (2) Introduction to the Enlightenment 30 IV. Return to Russia V. Military Law Courts and the St. Petersburg Customs Office VI. The Journey: Conventional Ideas VII. The Journey: Warnings, Appeals and Hopes. 87 VIII. Arrest and Trial. 106 IX. Journey to Ilimsk 123. X. Ilimsk XI. Man and Immortality 152 XII. Return to Russia.163 XIII. Return to Service 177 XIV. Epilogue: "In Radishchev's Steps". 192 Selected Bibliography 210 Index

10 ABBREVIA TIONS A. K. V. Prince Semion Mikhailovich Vorontsov. Arkhiv kniazia Vorontsova, 40 books in 32 vols., (M., ). Cht. O. I. D. R. Chtenie v Imperatorskom Obshchestve Istorii i Drevnostei Rossiiskikh pri Moskovskom Universitete, (M., ). P. S. S. Akademiia Nauk, SSSR. A. N. Radishchev. Polnoe Sobranie Sochinenii, (M.-L., t. I (1938); t. II (1941); t. III, (1952). P. S. Z. Polnoe Sobranie Zakonov Rossiiskoi Imperii, s I649 goda, Pervaia seriia, (SPb., 1830). P. S. R. L. Arkheogra icheskaia Kotnissiia, Polnoe Sobranie Russkikh Letopisei, 25 v. (SPb., ). Sb. I. R. I. O. Sbornik Imperatorskago Russkago Istoricheskago Obshchestva, 148 V., (SPb., ). Ts. G. A. D. A. Tsentral'nyi Gosudarstvennyi Arkhiv Drevnikh Aktov. Zh. M. N. P. Zhurnal M inisterstva N arodnago Prosveshcheniia, (SPb., ).