A Journey From St. Petersburg to Moscow is a scathing critique of the institution of serfdom as well as the social hierarchy and oppression present throughout Russia.  Alexander Radishchev’s compelling narrative and focus on the serfs’ humanity results in a text that pushes Russia to address the injustice of serfdom head on–which why Catherine the Great had such a strong, negative reaction to the book and banned it. 

While reading this, I was first struck by the fact that this is the first critique/account of an historical event that was written during the time it took place.  Unlike watching Soviet-era depictions of Ivan or reading literature written centuries after the period in which they cover, A Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow is a real-time account of Russian culture–but perhaps more importantly, it is a real-time reckoning about the injustices present throughout Russia.  In particular, when Radishchev describes his first interaction with the peasant, he remarks, “The words of this peasant awakened in me a multitude of thoughts.  I thought especially of the inequality of treatment within the peasant class…This thought made my blood boil” (267). In this instant, the author has been “awakened” to the cruelty of serfdom–and this awakening is mirrored in the way the the text is written.  Radishchev intimately describes a series of encounters with peasants and serfs in an attempt to reveal their stories–to demonstrates that blanket terms such as “peasants” and “serfs” are dehumanizing. And although the work was banned, it is evident that Radishchev is attempting to provoke the same type of awakening he had in his readers.  The text takes the reader on a “journey” (as the title suggests), a journey that exposes the shortcomings and injustices of Russian society.  

In addition, I found the following remark by Catherine interesting: “[Radishchev] is trying in every possible way to break down respect for authority… to stir up the people…against their superiors and against the government” (278).  To me, this shows how serfdom as an institution was so intertwined with the aristocracy of Russia, and that an attack on serfdom was an attack on the government itself.