Alexander radishchev message. Brief biography of Radishchev Alexander Nikolaevich

Date of birth: August 31, 1749
Died: September 24, 1802
Place of birth: village of Verkhnee Ablyazovo, Saratov province

Alexander Radishchev- famous Russian writer, Radishchev A.N.- poet, lawmaker, lawyer and one of the leaders of the St. Petersburg customs. Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev was born on August 31, 1749 in the small village of Verkhnee Ablyazovo in the Saratov province.

Childhood:

Nikolai Afanasevich Radishchev, the writer's father, was a very wealthy landowner. The writer's mother, Fekla Savvichna Argamakova, was also of very high origin. Alexander himself was the oldest child in a large family, in which, besides him, there were 6 more boys and 4 girls. The Radishchevs were known for their very soft, almost liberal attitude towards their serfs. Alexander himself was raised by the serf Peter Mamontov.

Education:

At the age of 7, Alexander was taken to Moscow, where he passed home education in the house of the mother's relatives. The big house hosted the most different people, among whom were professors. The boy's tutor was a French Republican. As a teenager, he became a page under Empress Catherine II. The Arkamakovs appointed him to this position.

Although the Page building itself could not be called an excellent educational institution, it was there that Radishchev first got acquainted with the tsarist life and received a court education. His efforts in a new place did not go unnoticed and at the age of 17 he was sent to the University of Leipzig, where he received an excellent humanitarian and legal education, which was an excellent help in his subsequent work for the good of the state.

In 1771 he returned to the capital of the Russian Empire to take his place in the state apparatus of the country.

Service to the state:

Immediately upon his return from Germany, he received the rank of titular councilor and became an ordinary protocolist in the Senate. This position did not in the least correspond to his requirements, and therefore he left the service shortly after his appointment. He was taken under his wing by Ya.A. Bruce, by appointing the St. Petersburg Governor-General to the headquarters.

Here Radishchev again faced the horrors of serfdom and resigned just a few years later. In 1778, Radishchev returned to government service, but now to the commercial college, ten years later he became the head of customs and successfully ran the department for several years.

Creation:

Throughout his life, Radishchev wrote a lot, but his first success was "The Life of Fyodor Vasilyevich Ushakov", which he dedicated to his close friend, who shared housing with him in Leipzig during his studies. After the imperial decree on the permission of free printing houses was issued, Radishchev opened his own printing house at his home. It was from here that the "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow" was published, in which a lot was said about what serf Russia really is and how it is reflected in the state.

This book has become a very important moment in the life of the writer. It was not only a resounding success, but also the beginning of lengthy proceedings with the authorities. The Empress, of course, did not like Radishchev's work. He was soon arrested and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress. The trial itself was very short and ended with an unequivocal verdict: the death penalty. The Empress, nevertheless, did not put the imperial seal on the verdict; it was decided to send a successful government official and a free-thinker to Siberia, exile for ten years.

Personal life:

In 1775, Radishchev married Anna Vasilyevna Rubanovskaya, who was the niece of friends at the University of Leipzig. She also became the reason for leaving the civil service. His wife gave him 4 children, but died during the next childbirth. The death of his beloved wife caused prolonged depression. For a long time, he and his family were carefully looked after Native sister his wife, Elizavet Vasilievna. Becoming his support in hard years, she was a great substitute for a wife and a reliable friend.

It was she who followed him to hard labor when Radishchev was exiled to Siberia. Secular society was resolutely against such an act and Elizaveta Vasilievna was criticized by friends and relatives. However, this did not become a hindrance to the early marriage and birth of three more children. Unfortunately, upon returning back to the Nemtsovo estate after the end of her exile under Emperor Paul I, she died due to poor health.

Last years:

Radishchev was returned from exile by the decree of Paul I. His correspondence was under control, but he could live in peace on the Nemtsovo estate. Under Alexander I and the beginning of a slightly more liberal state policy, he received complete freedom. Given his extensive experience in jurisprudence and state structure, they invited him to the legislative committee. The career on the commission was short. He drew up a draft on equality before the law, looking back at liberal European views, for which he received the strictest reprimand from his superiors.

Death:

After leaving the commission, Radishchev died. The circumstances of his death are still being discussed by researchers. Some of his friends talked about poor mental health after the loss of two wives and heavy exile. The official version says that his death was the result of suicide. It is believed that the writer drank a glass of poison and died long and painfully. The documents of the Volokolamsk cemetery claim that the writer died of consumption.

An important achievement Radishchev was precisely "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow". The work opened the eyes of many contemporaries to how disgusting and stagnant the system with serfdom itself is and how awful Russia looks from the point of view of contemporary morality. In many ways, it was this work that brought the uprising on the Senate Square closer.

Important milestones life of Nikolai Radishchev:

Born in 1749
- Moving to Petersburg to the Argamakovs in 1756
- Appointment to the page of the Empress in 1762
- Travel to study at the University of Leipzig 1766-1771
- Appointment to the Senate as a recorder in 1771
- Appointment to the headquarters of the St. Petersburg Governor-General in 1773
- Marriage to Anna Rubanovskaya in 1775 and leaving public service
- Appointment to the commercial college in 1778
- Death of his wife Anna Rubanovskaya in 1783
- Appointment to the post of head of the St. Petersburg customs in 1788
- Publication of "The Life of Fyodor Vasilyevich Ushakov" in 1789
- Publication of "Travels from St. Petersburg to Moscow" in a home printing house, arrest, exile to Siberia in 1790
- Return from Siberia in 1796
- Restoration of all rights in 1801 and an invitation to the legislative commission

Interesting facts from the biography of Nikolai Radishchev:

Catherine II wrote in the margins of Travel from St. Petersburg to Moscow: "A rebel, worse than Pugachev."
- The book "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow" was sentenced to public burning; many foresaw this, handwritten copies were made, some of the books were secretly exported abroad
- Pushkin wooed Radishchev's cousin, but was refused.

Radishchev Alexander Nikolaevich was born in 1749 in Moscow, into a wealthy landlord family. He received an excellent education at home, at the age of 13 he entered the Page Corps - the most privileged educational institution in Russia. After graduating from it, he went to Germany to enter the law faculty of the University of Leipzig.

The works of French encyclopedic educators, especially K.A. Helvetius, had a great influence on his worldview. In 1771 Radishchev returned to St. Petersburg and became an employee in the highest administrative institutions of the empire. Collaborated with N.I. Novikov, staying on public service... In 1790 he became the manager of the St. Petersburg customs.

In the philosophical articles "The Word about Lomonosov" (1780), "Letter to a friend who lives in Tobolsk" (1790), Radishchev emphasized the role outstanding personalities in history. In 1783 he wrote the ode "Liberty", and six years later the story "The Life of Fyodor Ushakov" (Fyodor Ushakov - a real man, classmate of Radishchev). On the example of his life, the author reveals his worldview principles.

At the end of 1790 he published main work his life - the philosophical and journalistic story "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow." At the time, it had no equal in terms of the intensity of the social and political system of Russian absolutism. Three weeks after the appearance of "Travel ...", an investigation began, which was led by Empress Catherine herself. The Senate sentenced Radishchev to death, but the empress replaced her with ten years of exile in Siberia.

In 1797, Pavel allowed Radishchev to live on his estate - the village of Nemtsovo, Kaluga province. In 1801, Alexander G called on Radishchev to serve in the Commission for the Drafting of Laws, where he continued to carry out previous ideas in the draft laws he was developing. He died in 1802 in St. Petersburg.

Russian revolutionary, writer, materialist philosopher, born on 20 (31). VIII.1749 in Moscow in a wealthy noble family; died on 12 (24) .IX.1802 in St. Petersburg.

He spent his childhood in the village of Nemtsov, near Moscow, and then in Verkhniy Ablyazov (Penza province).

Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev received his primary education at home, under the guidance of his father. His uncle, serf Peter Mamontov, taught him to read and write. Nanny Praskovya Klementyevna was remembered for life.

Since 1756 he has been living in Moscow, in the family of a relative of MF Argamakov, with whose children he works at home with teachers and professors of the recently opened first Russian university (1755).

In 1762, after a coup, Catherine II ascended the throne. During the coronation festivities in Moscow in the same year, Alexander Nikolaevich, along with other noble youths, was assigned to the Corps of Pages. Until 1766 he lived in the capital, studying in the corps and performing the duties of a page under Catherine, on duty in the royal palace.

Wanting to fill the courts with educated lawyers, Catherine decided to send the most distinguished pages to Leipzig University. Radishchev, along with his friend Alexei Kutuzov, was among them.

From 1766-71 he studied at the University of Leipzig. There, Radishchev studied not only at the Faculty of Law, but studied literature, natural sciences, medicine. The university gave him excellent knowledge, helped him perfectly master several foreign languages.

But Russian students lived in monstrous conditions, under the supervision of the head of the Russian colony, the ignorant, greedy and despotic Major Bokum.

The students, "taken to extremes," started a riot, led by the oldest student Fyodor Ushakov. A hater of slavery, a freedom-lover, Ushakov made a brilliant career in St. Petersburg. But, fascinated by philosophy, he left the service and, together with the young people, left for Leipzig. A man of great original mind and talent, strong will and unyielding feelings, he won the respect and love of his comrades, taking the place of an ideological leader in the Russian colony. The revolt against Bokum gave its results: living conditions improved, students began to feel freer and "from that time they lived ... almost like him (Bokum) beyond his control." Radishchev, however, made an important conclusion for himself: violence, untruth, autocratic oppression must be resisted. Only by resisting, only by fearlessly fighting against despotic power, can a person achieve victory and preserve himself as a person, defend his freedom and dignity.

While living in Leipzig, Russian students did not lose ties with their homeland. They closely followed the work of the Commission for the Compilation of the "New Code" (laws), which had been in session since 1767. The democratic deputies, arguing with the noble ideologists, raised the issue of limiting the rights of landowners and mitigating slavery. They read the works of the first Russian enlighteners - Ya. Kozelsky (Philosophical Proposals), N. Novikov's satirical magazine "Truten", in which the serf landlords were denounced, the serfs defended themselves, N. Novikov's bold polemic with Ekaterina herself, magazines "All sorts of things".

In addition to attending lectures at the university, Russian students acquired wide knowledge in home studies, which were held under the direction of Ushakov. He believed that one should not be limited to the sciences taught at the university. Studying philosophy, he strove "to have an idea about other parts of scholarship." Thus began an acquaintance with the philosophy and literature of the French Enlightenment, with the works of Rousseau and Helvetius, Mably and Diderot. In these classes, according to Radishchev, he began to "learn to think." His life in Leipzig was intense ideological development, in active preparation for the fulfillment of their duty upon returning to their homeland. On the eve of the end of his training period, he was destined to endure a great grief: his friend and "teacher, at least in firmness", F. Ushakov, died.

At the end of November 1771 Radishchev with his friends - Kutuzov and Rubanovsky - returned to Russia. In December, they were already appointed as protocolmen to the Senate. The duties of the recorder included the compilation of extracts (brief extract) of all cases under petition (complaints) that were sorted out there and the preparation of draft decisions.

This work required knowledge of jurisprudence and Russian legislation. At one time he, being in the palace as a page, saw Catherine's reign from its front side. Now the Senate opened serf Russia to him from the back door - without embellishment, as it really was: with the despotism of the landowners, the lack of rights of the peasants, with the unpunished actions of the major state officials who took bribes, robbed the treasury, traded in the interests of the fatherland. Serving in the Senate, an institution designed to enforce laws, convinced him that looking for the truth in an autocratic state was a hopeless task.

First public appearance Radishchev Alexander Nikolaevich was the translation of Mably's book "Reflection on Greek history", In which a French educator, glorifying the civic virtues and the democratic nature of public institutions ancient greece, attacked tyrants. The materials of history echoed with the present, made it possible, under the cover of history, to condemn the monarchist power. This was what Radishchev took advantage of. His intention was manifested with special force and frankness in the notes with which he provided the translated book. So a new figure entered the number of Russian enlighteners.

From May 1773-75 he worked at the headquarters of the Finnish division. Service as chief auditor (divisional prosecutor), familiarity with the affairs of fugitive recruits revealed to Radishchev the life of the serf peasantry, the abuse of landowners in the sale of recruits, the criminal actions of the government. Military service helped him follow the course of the peasant uprising, read the orders of the military collegium, get acquainted with Pugachev's manifestos, in which the hopes and demands of the people were expressed. The uprising of Pugachev was a defining milestone in the ideological development of Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev. Russian reality, the social contradictions of the era, which resulted in a mighty peasant war against their oppressors, completed his education.

For the first time, the hatred of the peasants for their enslavers was revealed to him with such stunning evidence.

For the first time, he saw the great energy of the people in the social movement, his ability to create his own army, he learned about the remarkable leaders of the uprising, military leaders who had emerged "from among the people", led by Pugachev, who had won victories over the famous generals. All this served as a powerful impetus for theoretical work Radishchev, determined the democratism of his convictions.

It was after the peasant uprising of 1773 - 75 that the fundamental questions of social and political development Fatherland became the center of attention of AN Radishchev. He persistently began to study the life of the people, their artistic work, showing particular interest in the numerous and constant "riots in the feudal state, to the reprisals of peasants with their landowners-tormentors.

In 1775, having retired, Radishchev Alexander Nikolaevich married the niece of his university friend - Anna Vasilievna Rubanovskaya.

In 1777 he returned to the service, entering the Commerce Collegium, the head of which was gr. AR Vorontsov, a liberal nobleman, opposed to Catherine II. Radishchev's vast knowledge, his honesty and adherence to principles in the performance of his official duty were noticed and highly appreciated by Vorontsov. He brought Radishchev closer to him, friendly relations arose between them.

Served for ten years Radishchev at customs as Dahl's assistant.

Since the 1780s. a new stage in the development of Radishchev begins - his works are imbued with revolutionary thought. In his writings, he will act as a revolutionary. The years spent in St. Petersburg were years of hard work - official and literary. The family took a lot of time.

In 1780 Radishchev wrote "The Lay of Lomonosov" (published in 1790), in which he praised the remarkable Russian figure - a scientist and poet, "expelled from the people of the people."

In 1782 - "A letter to a friend who lives in Tobolsk due to the duty of his title", dedicated to the opening in St. Petersburg of a monument to Peter I by Falcone (the famous Bronze Horseman). In the guise of Peter, Radishchev saw the mighty personality of the great reformer, the Russian "carpenter" who "renewed Russia." At the same time, he also emphasized the second face of Peter - "the imperious autocrat", who, while strengthening the Russian landlord state, "destroyed the last signs of the wild freedom of his fatherland."

In 1783, after a short illness, Radishchev's wife died, leaving him with four small children - three sons and a daughter. I had to deal with the upbringing of children and all household chores. Fortunately, in the person of his wife's sister, Elizaveta Vasilyevna Rubanovskaya, a selfless girl, he found a faithful and kind helper.

In the same decade, the attention of the whole world was attracted by events overseas - there thirteen English colonies revolted against the colonial rule of royal England and formed a new republic - the United States of America: A.N. Radishchev. followed with great interest the armed struggle of the people for their freedom.

The American Revolution won out in 1783. Her experience confirmed the correctness of Radishchev's theory that slavery and oppression can only be abolished by the people themselves, who are also characterized by the highest creativity - the revolution.

Service at the Commerce Collegium, and then at customs, could not satisfy him. He strove for activities for the benefit of the suffering people in chains. What could be this activity? The work of French and Russian educators helped Radishchev determine his path.

He decides to act as a united front with educators and leading writers, choosing for this writing, considering free speech as a powerful weapon in the fight. It was necessary to write the truth about the political system of Russia, about the position of the people, about the despotism of Catherine's rule, about the revolution, which alone can transform the fatherland on the basis of liberty. Radishchev A.N. defined his understanding of the role of the writer: he is not only a patriot (as Lomonosov and Derzhavin were), but also a revolutionary, a "diviner of liberty" and therefore an active political figure, the leader of the liberation movement.

In 1783 Radishchev finished the ode "Liberty" - the first revolutionary poem in Russia. In it, Radishchev greeted the victorious American people, glorified their revolution. Oda is a work of enormous philosophical and political content, it set forth the theory of the people's revolution. Creating an ode, trying his hand at poetry, the writer had to "delve into the unknown," pave the way for Russian revolutionary poetry. He chose the genre of ode, which became widespread in European and Russian classicism. The odes revealed a lofty, solemn theme, and, as a rule, the lofty was determined by what was dedicated to God and the king. Radishchev, on the other hand, wrote a revolutionary ode in which, singing the praises of freedom, he defended the right of the people to judge and execute the villainous Tsar. Alexander Nikolaevich creates a new idea of ​​what is high - this is a person's striving for freedom, for everything beautiful. The ode begins with a hymn to liberty.

She is a "priceless gift" of man, "the source of all great deeds." What is the “obstacle to freedom”? The laws created by the autocracy and sanctified by the church, according to which the liberty was taken away from the people and slavery was established. This means that the people have the right to return the freedom taken from them, to oppose the monarch.

The ode ends with an inspired prophecy about the future victory of the Russian revolution.

Historicism helped him understand that in the conditions of his day, victory is still impossible.

Radishchev's ode "Liberty" is deeply lyrical, it recreates the spiritual image of the author - the first Russian revolutionary. Appeared unprecedented moral world a person who has chosen for himself the lot of the “diviner of liberty”. A hater of slavery, he dreamed - and it was a dream of a revolution in Russia, of "the day chosen of all days."

In 1784, the Society of Friends of Verbal Sciences was created in St. Petersburg from the former pupils of Moscow University who had decided to serve in the capital after graduation. In addition to former students, it included young officials, and later - young officers. AN Radishchev entered this society, wishing to establish close ties with the progressive youth and dreaming of subordinating the society magazine - "The Talking Citizen" to the goals of revolutionary propaganda. The magazine published articles that received the general approval of all its members. At one of the meetings, he read the article "A Conversation about the Son of the Fatherland", imbued with "the liberty of the spirit" (published in 1789). The writer argued that it is criminal to turn a person free by birth into a "heavy cattle". Only a free person can be a true son of the fatherland, a patriot.

Therefore, it cannot be a serf peasant turned into a slave.

In 1787 Radishchev finished his autobiographical novel The Life of FV Ushakov (published in 1789), dedicated to the memories of the years spent at Leipzig University. The story painted the image positive hero- a person and a citizen who is ready to fight for the freedom of his people.

Since the mid-80s. Radishchev A.N. began work on his main work - "A Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow", in which the courageous writer posed the fundamental problems of the Russian revolution. The book was distinguished by an extraordinary breadth of coverage of the phenomena of Russian reality in the 18th century. and the depth of penetration into the social contradictions of the era. The genre of travel, in which it is possible to describe the most diverse aspects of life, Alexander Nikolaevich used to highlight issues of economics and law, politics and religion, war and peace, morality, family relations, the position of women, raising children, cultural issues (school, censorship, printing) and another.

The entire book is permeated, on the one hand, with the author's passionate love for the Russian enslaved peasant and, on the other hand, with the revolutionary's hatred for the serf landowners, “greedy beasts and insatiable drinkers”, for the entire autocratic serf system. The main characters of the book are the people driving force of the future revolution, and the progressive nobleman, on whose behalf the story is being told, breaking with his class and becoming in the ranks of "prophetic liberties", leaders of the revolution. The book was supposed to "take away the veil from the eyes" of those who "looked indirectly at the objects around him", was supposed to reveal the truth, reveal delusions, teach to understand "true bliss."

In the spring of 1789, The Journey was censored. The censor negligently gave permission to print the book without having read it. In order to publish a revolutionary essay, Radishchev had to start a small printing house in his house, where, with the help of his friends, he printed it in an amount of 650 copies.

In April 1790, he was officially appointed director of the metropolitan customs.

And in May 1790 it was already on sale in Zotov's bookstore in Gostiny Dvor "Travel". The rumor about the release of the revolutionary composition quickly spread throughout the capital. He also reached Catherine II. The Empress's secretary Khrapovitsky wrote in his diary: “It is said about the book“ Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow ”...

Suspicion of Radishchev is revealed ... They were pleased to say that he is a rebel, worse than Pugachev. " After the arrest of the bookseller Zotov, the writer destroyed unsold copies of the book. On June 30, 1790, Radishchev was arrested on the orders of Catherine and imprisoned in the Peter and Paul Fortress.

In July 1790 the Senate sentenced him to death "by beheading." Catherine - perhaps out of fear of losing her reputation as an enlightened empress in Europe - ordered him to be sent "to a desperate ten-year stay" in a distant Siberian prison - Ilimsk.

On September 8, shackled, he was sent to Siberia. The Empress, showing "mercy", was sure that he could not bear the difficult path and would die before reaching the place of exile. So it would have happened if the grandee Vorontsov had not intervened. He demanded from Catherine to order to remove the shackles from the convict.

Then, using his connections with the governors and his influence, he sent special couriers after Radishchev with letters to those governors through whose provinces the exiled was supposed to go. In letters, he asked to provide him with a personal service and to ease the conditions of a difficult road for convicted Alexander Nikolayevich Radishchev. Wanting to enlist the support of a powerful nobleman, the governors complied with his requests, provided Radishchev with everything necessary for a distant and hard way... In distant Tobolsk, he stayed for six months. Elizaveta Vasilievna Rubanovskaya with his two youngest children arrived there.

The courageous girl, having fallen in love with Alexander Nikolaevich, decided to follow her dear person to Siberia in order to be with him, in order to alleviate his fate and brighten up his life in exile.

Neither the investigation, nor the trial, nor the exile broke the mighty spirit of the revolutionary. Living in Ilimsk, he seeks and finds ways and means to various activities. At the center of all Radishchev's studies in Ilimsk was work on the philosophical essay "On Man, His Mortality and Immortality," which he began on the twelfth day of his Ilim life. In it, the main philosophical question - about the relationship of consciousness to nature - A.N. Radishchev. decided as a materialist. He pointed out that the brain is a material organ of thought.

Here he developed the thesis about the cognizability of the world by man, categorically rejecting the doctrine of innate ideas. Developing the idea of ​​changing nature, revealing the influence the environment on the development of the organism, Radishchev, however, remained a metaphysical materialist. He wrote: "The procession of nature is quiet, imperceptible and gradual."

He not only mastered the achievements of materialism and natural Sciences XVIII century, but also introduced a revolutionary idea into the theoretical development of the problems of materialism, which distinguishes it from the materialism of the French encyclopedists, who were supporters of peaceful methods of social transformations.

The death of Catherine in November 1796 saved Alexander Nikolaevich from Siberian exile. The new emperor Pavel allowed him to leave Ilimsk and settle in the estate of his father Nemtsov near Moscow, where he had to live under the strictest police surveillance. The joy of returning to his native land was overshadowed by a new misfortune: on the way she caught a cold and after a serious illness, her friend Elizaveta Vasilyevna died. He arrived in Nemtsovo with small children.

Only in 1801 did he receive complete freedom when Alexander I ascended the throne. Returning to St. Petersburg, Radishchev works a lot, writes poetic and prose works, meets new public figures - educators, writers. By decree of the new tsar, he is appointed to the Law Drafting Commission and is actively involved in drafting legislative reforms. Three legal works of Radishchev have come down to us:

"On the statute",

"Civil Code Project".

"Project for the division of the Russian code."

Radishchev's program, formulated by him in 1802 in legislative writings, included the demand for the abolition of serfdom and estate privileges, the abolition of the monstrous arbitrariness of the authorities, and the abolition of corporal punishment. And during the period of the liberal promises of Alexander I, the writer was persecuted in the Commission for the Drafting of Laws for freedom-loving "dissenting opinions" on odd (controversial) cases ("On the prices for people killed", "On the right of the defendants to remove judges and choose their own defender"). Chairman of the Commission gr. P.V. Zavadovsky told Radishchev that if he did not accept, then a new Siberian exile awaited him. Realizing the impossibility of realizing his ideals, A.N. Radishchev. in response to threats and persecution, he committed suicide.

The main book of Radishchev, the work of his life, revolutionary encyclopedia Russian Enlightenment, was "A Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow." Pushkin called it "a satirical appeal to indignation." Putting forward the idea of ​​a people's revolution, R. portrayed the people in his "Journey" in a way that he had never been portrayed in either Russian or world literature. Before Radishchev, the people were not a hero of art. For classicism, the life of the serf peasantry is a "low" topic, therefore classicist writers portrayed not the people, but an individual peasant, and even then as a satirical character - in a comedy or a fable. The new art - sentimentalism - destroyed the class principle and taught to value any person, regardless of his origin and position.

But it made its hero not the people, but a representative of the third estate, most often a petty bourgeois, a person making a career or defending his family happiness. In Russian literature, we find the first image of a serf in Novikov's "Drone" (1769). In accordance with his enlightenment convictions, he protested against serfdom, showed a life humiliated by slavery and terrible poverty, appealed to feeling, to philanthropy, to the pity of the nobles. Hence the nature of the image of a serf: the unfortunate Filatka only weeps mournfully for his fate, he does not protest, but begs the master to be the merciful father of his serfs.

Radishchev, a revolutionary writer, made the people the hero of his book, thereby making a revolution in literature. His discovery consisted in the fact that, portraying the Russian peasants, people weighed down by slavery, reduced by serfdom to the position of "captives in their fatherland", he heroized them, seeing in every peasant a dormant force that would make him true son fatherland, patriot, leader of the revolution. We feel in "Journey" in every Russian serf of the future liberator of Russia. Potential destiny shines through the individual appearance of everyone free man... Radishchev wrote this about the Russian people because he believed and understood that it was he who was to decide the fate of the Russian state, to renew the fatherland.

The image of a barge haule opens the "Travel" gallery of peasants. Asserting his faith in the people, Radishchev boldly challenges the nobility and the autocrat, declaring: "A burlak who goes to a tavern with his head hanging and returning covered in blood from a slap in the face, can solve a lot hitherto conjectural in Russian history." In Lyuban there is a meeting with a plowing peasant. The writer emphasizes: no matter how monstrous the position of a serf is, his work, even immensely hard, saves him both from starvation and moral death. Despite his poverty, he is full of dignity and therefore does not cry, but judges his cruel master. There is not a drop of humility and humiliation in him.

Even more characteristic is the meeting of a traveler with a peasant girl Anyuta in the village of Edrovo. Despite poverty, orphanhood and slavery, she is independent, proud, full of dignity. The basis of her life behavior, like that of a peasant from Lyuban, is work. Glory about her in the village: “What an artisan to dance! He will shut everyone up in the belt, at least someone ... And when he goes to the field to reap ... feast for the eyes. " A peasant from Lyuban, Anyuta from Edrova - serfs who, despite the oppression of slavery, managed to preserve in themselves "the majestic advantages of man."

The recruit he met in Gorodnya was a serf intellectual; by the will of the "philanthropic landowner" he received an education, and dormant forces, talents and abilities were awakened in him. The main thing in the moral character of an educated serf is the growth of self-consciousness; he says about himself: “I am a man who is equal to others”.

He is "firm in thought" and hates "timidity of spirit." The human dignity awakened in him makes him active and courageous. As a truly Russian person, he is patient, but to the limit. He threateningly warns his tormentor: "do not bring your soul to despair", "be afraid!" Next to the image of a serf intellectual is the image of Lomonosov, the son of a Kholmogory fisherman ("The Lay of Lomonosov"). The serf intellectual is only an opportunity, Lomonosov is an accomplishment. Lomonosov is a great leader of the Russian national culture- irrefutable evidence of the talent of the Russian working people, his enormous potential forces, his ability to the greatest creative creativity.

With even greater power to innovate Alexandra Nikolaevich Radischeva manifested itself in the collective image people. The peasants are given R. in action, at the highest moment of their lives - at the moment when they performed just revenge on their tormentors and enslavers. For the first time we encounter the people in action in the chapter "Zaitsevo", where the peasants, driven to the extreme by the landowner, unleashed their vengeance on them. The chapter "Khotilov" directly speaks of the Pugachev uprising, which aroused tens of thousands of peasants and made them courageous warriors, inspired by the desire to "free themselves from their rulers." In creating the image of the Russian people, the writer used folk poetic motives, especially the Russian song. He was convinced that the song, revealing "the formation of the soul of our people," reveals his character. Herzen understood this very well, saying that in the song the author of The Journey found "the key to the mysteries of the people." Radishchev's innovation as a writer is closely linked to his revolutionary convictions.

Having created the first revolutionary ode - "Liberty", he affirmed the pathos of the struggle for human freedom as the main content of civic poetry, thereby defining for a long time the poetic vocabulary of Russian freedom-loving lyrics - the Decembrists, Pushkin, Lermontov, Ogarev. At external similarity books by A.N. Radishchev with the genre of sentimental travel, it cannot be attributed to literary direction sentimentalism. The pathos of Radishchev's "Travels" is not in the image of the author's inner world, but in the creation real picture reality, truthful, socially pointed portraits of peasants and serf-owners.

A historical approach to society, an understanding of the social conditioning of a person allowed Radishchev to create typical characters. With his work, he contributed to the victory of realism in Russian literature.

Languages. As was customary at that time, the child was taught Russian reading and writing according to the book of hours and the Psalter. By the age of six, a French teacher was assigned to him, but the choice was unsuccessful: the teacher, as they later learned, was a fugitive soldier. Soon after the opening of Moscow University, around 1756, Alexander's father took Alexander to Moscow, to the house of his maternal uncle ( native brother which, A.M. Argamakov, was the director of the university in 1755-1757). Here Radishchev was entrusted with the care of a very good French governor, a former adviser to the Rouen parliament, who fled from the persecution of the government of Louis XV. The children of the Argamakovs had the opportunity to study at home with professors and teachers of the university gymnasium, so it cannot be ruled out that Alexander Radishchev prepared here under their leadership and went through, at least in part, the program of the gymnasium course.

In 1762, after the coronation of Catherine II, Radishchev was granted a page and sent to St. Petersburg to study in the Page Corps. The corps of pages trained not scientists, but courtiers, and pages were obliged to serve the empress at balls, in the theater, at ceremonial dinners.

Four years later, among twelve young nobles, he was sent to Germany, to the University of Leipzig, to study law. During the time spent there, Radishchev expanded his horizons enormously. In addition to solid scientific school, he adopted the ideas of the leading French enlighteners, whose works to a great extent prepared the ground for the bourgeois revolution that broke out twenty years later.

Among Radishchev's comrades, Fyodor Ushakov is especially remarkable for the great influence he had on Radishchev, who wrote his Life and published some of Ushakov's works. Ushakov was a more experienced and mature person than his other associates, who immediately recognized his authority. He served as an example for other students, guided their reading, instilled in them strong moral convictions. Ushakov's health was upset even before his trip abroad, and in Leipzig he still spoiled it, partly by poor nutrition, partly by excessive activities, and fell ill. When the doctor announced to him that “tomorrow he will no longer be involved in life,” he firmly met the death sentence. He said goodbye to his friends, then, summoning one Radishchev to him, handed over all his papers at his disposal and told him: "remember that you need to have rules in life in order to be blessed." The last words of Ushakov "were marked by an indelible mark in the memory" of Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev.

Service in St. Petersburg

Literary and publishing activities

The foundations of Radishchev's worldview were laid in the very early period his activities. Returning to St. Petersburg in 1771, a couple of months later he sent an excerpt from his future book"Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow", where he was published anonymously. Two years later, Radishchev's translation of Mably's book Reflections on Greek History was published. Other works of the writer belong to this period, such as "Officers' Exercises" and "Diary of a Week".

In the 1780s, Radishchev worked on The Journey and wrote other works in prose and poetry. By this time there was a huge social upsurge throughout Europe. The victory of the American Revolution and the French Revolution that followed created a favorable climate for promoting the ideas of freedom, which Radishchev took advantage of. In 1789 he opened a printing house at his home, and in May 1790 he published his main work, "".

Arrest and exile 1790 - 1796

The book began to sell out quickly. His bold reflections on serfdom and other sad phenomena of the then social and state life attracted the attention of the empress herself, to whom someone delivered the "Journey" and who called Radishchev - " rebel, worse than Pugachev". A copy of the book has survived, which ended up on Catherine's table, which she covered with her cynical remarks. Where the tragic scene of the sale of serfs at an auction is described, the Empress deigned to write: “ The old story begins about a family sold under the hammer for the lord's debts”. Elsewhere in Radishchev's work, where he tells about a landowner who was killed during the Pugachev riot by his peasants for the fact that “ every night his sent ones brought him to him for the sacrifice of dishonor that he appointed that day, it was known in the village that he had killed 60 girls, depriving them of their integrity", The Empress herself wrote -" almost the history of Alexander Vasilyevich Saltykov” .

Radishchev was arrested, his case was delegated to SI Sheshkovsky. Imprisoned in the fortress, Radishchev led the line of defense during interrogations. He did not name a single name from among his assistants, he saved the children, and also tried to save his life. The Criminal Chamber applied to Radishchev articles of the Code on “ attempt on the sovereign's health", About" conspiracies and treason "and sentenced him to death. The verdict, transmitted to the Senate and then to the Council, was approved in both instances and presented to Catherine.

On September 4, 1790, a personal decree was issued, which found Radishchev guilty of the crime of oath and the position of a subject by publishing a book, "Filled with the most harmful speculations, destroying public peace, belittling the respect due to the authorities, striving to generate indignation among the people against the bosses and superiors, and finally with insulting and violent expressions against the dignity and power of the tsarist"; Radishchev's guilt is such that he fully deserves the death penalty, to which he was sentenced by the court, but "out of mercy and for everyone's joy" the execution was replaced by his ten-year exile to Siberia, to the Ilimsky prison. On the order for the expulsion of Radishchev, the Empress own hand wrote: “ goes to mourn the deplorable fate of the peasant state, although it is indisputable that the best fate of our peasants in good landowner not in the whole universe” .

The treatise "On Man, His Mortality and Immortality" created in exile by Radishchev contains numerous paraphrases of Herder's works "A Study on the Origin of Language" and "On Cognition and Sensation human soul» .

There is a legend about the circumstances of Radishchev's suicide: summoned to the commission to draw up laws, Radishchev drew up a draft of the liberal code, in which he spoke of the equality of all before the law, freedom of the press, etc. a way of thinking, sternly reminding him of his previous hobbies and even mentioning Siberia. Radishchev, a man with severe health problems, was so shocked by Zavadovsky's reprimand and threats that he decided to commit suicide: he drank poison and died in terrible agony.

In the book "Radishchev" by D. S. Babkin, published in 1966, a different version of Radishchev's death is proposed. The sons who were present at his death testified about a serious physical illness that struck Alexander Nikolaevich already during his Siberian exile. The immediate cause of death, according to Babkin, was an accident: Radishchev drank a glass with "strong vodka prepared in it to burn out the old officer's epaulettes of his eldest son" (royal vodka). The burial documents speak of natural death. In the statement of the church of the Volkovskoe cemetery in St. Petersburg on September 13, 1802, the list of those buried included “the collegiate councilor Alexander Radishchev; fifty-three years old, died of consumption ", priest Vasily Nalimov was at the removal.

The grave of Radishchev has not survived to this day. It is assumed that his body was buried near the Resurrection Church, on the wall of which a memorial plaque was installed in 1987.

Perception of Radishchev in the 18th-19th centuries

The idea that Radishchev is not a writer, but public figure, distinguished by striking spiritual qualities, began to take shape immediately after his death and, in fact, determined his further posthumous fate. IM Born in a speech to the Society of Lovers of the Fine, delivered in September 1802 and dedicated to the death of Radishchev, says about him: “He loved truth and virtue. His fiery love of mankind longed to illuminate all his brothers with this flickering ray of eternity. " NM Karamzin described Radishchev as an “honest man” (“honnête homme”) (this oral testimony was given by Pushkin as an epigraph to the article “Alexander Radishchev”). The idea of ​​the superiority of Radishchev's human qualities over his writing talent is expressed especially succinctly by P.A. Vyazemsky, explaining in a letter to A.F. In Radishchev, on the contrary: the writer falls on the shoulder, and the man is taller with his head. "

Obviously, Radishchev's influence on the work of another freethinker writer - A.S. Griboyedov (presumably, both were connected by blood relationship), who, being a career diplomat, often traveled around the country and therefore actively tried his hand at the genre of literary "travel".

A special page in the perception of the personality and work of Radishchev by Russian society was the attitude of A.S. Pushkin towards him. Acquainted with the "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow" in his youth, Pushkin clearly focuses on Radishchev's ode "Liberty" in his eponymous ode (or), and also takes into account in "Ruslan and Lyudmila" the experience of "heroic singing" of Radishchev's son, Nikolai Alexandrovich, " Alyosha Popovich "(Pushkin all his life mistakenly considered Radishchev the father to be the author of this poem). The "Journey" turned out to be consonant with the tyrannical and anti-serfdom sentiments of young Pushkin. Despite the change in political positions, Pushkin remained interested in Radishchev in the 1830s, acquired a copy of Travel, which was in the Secret Chancellery, and sketched Journey from Moscow to St. Petersburg (conceived as a commentary on Radishchev's chapters in reverse order). In 1836, Pushkin tried to publish fragments from Radishchev's "Travel" in his Sovremennik, accompanying them with the article "Alexander Radishchev" - his most detailed statement about Radishchev. In addition to a bold attempt, for the first time after 1790, to acquaint the Russian reader with the forbidden book, here Pushkin gives a very detailed criticism composition and its author.

We have never considered Radishchev a great man. His act always seemed to us a crime, no excuse, and "Journey to Moscow" a very mediocre book; but with all this we cannot but recognize in him a criminal with an extraordinary spirit; a political fanatic, erring, of course, but acting with amazing dedication and with some kind of chivalrous conscience.

Criticism of Pushkin, in addition to auto-censoring reasons (however, the publication was still not allowed by the censorship) reflects "enlightened conservatism" recent years life of the poet. In the drafts of "Monument" in the same 1836, Pushkin wrote: "I followed Radishchev to praise freedom."

In the 1830s-1850s, interest in Radishchev declined significantly, and the number of Voyage lists decreased. A new revival of interest is associated with the publication of "Travel" in London by AI Herzen in 1858 (he puts Radishchev among "our saints, our prophets, our first sowers, first fighters").

The assessment of Radishchev as the forerunner of the revolutionary movement was also adopted by the social democrats of the early 20th century. In 1918, A. V. Lunacharsky called Radishchev "the prophet and forerunner of the revolution." G.V. Plekhanov believed that under the influence of Radishchev's ideas “the most significant social movements took place late XVIII- the first third of XIX centuries ". V. I. Lenin called him "the first Russian revolutionary."

Until the 1970s, opportunities for the general reader to familiarize themselves with The Journey were extremely limited. After in 1790 almost the entire circulation of "Travel from St. Petersburg to Moscow" was destroyed by the author before his arrest, until 1905, when the censorship ban was removed from this work, the total circulation of several of his publications hardly exceeded one and a half thousand copies. Herzen's foreign publication was carried out according to a faulty list, where the language of the 18th century was artificially "modernized" and numerous errors were encountered. In 1905-1907 several editions were published, but after that 30 years "Travel" was not published in Russia. In subsequent years, it was published several times, but mainly for the needs of the school, with banknotes and scanty circulation by Soviet standards. Back in the 1960s, Soviet readers were known to complain that it was impossible to get the Journey from a store or a district library. Only in the 1970s, "Journey" began to be released on a truly massive scale.

In fact, Radishchev's scientific research began only in the 20th century. In 1930-1950, under the editorship of Gr. Gukovsky, a three-volume " Complete collection works of Radishchev ”, where for the first time many new texts, including philosophical and legal ones, were published or attributed to the writer. In the 1950-1960s, romantic hypotheses arose, not supported by sources, about the "secret Radishchev" (G.P. Shtorm and others) - that Radishchev, allegedly after exile, continued to refine the "Journey" and distribute the text in a narrow circle of like-minded people. At the same time, it is planned to abandon the straightforward agitational approach to Radishchev, emphasizing the complexity of his views and the great humanistic significance of the individual (N. Ya. Eidelman and others). In modern literature, the philosophical and journalistic sources of Radishchev are investigated - Masonic, moralizing and educational, and others, the multifaceted problems of his main book are emphasized, which cannot be reduced to the struggle against serfdom.

Philosophical views

The main philosophical work- the treatise "On Man, His Mortality and Immortality", written in Ilim exile.

"Radishchev's philosophical views bear traces of influence different directions European thought of his time. He was guided by the principle of reality and materiality (corporeality) of the world, arguing that "the existence of things, regardless of the power of knowledge about them, exists by itself." According to his epistemological views, "the basis of all natural knowledge is experience." At the same time, sensory experience, being the main source of knowledge, is in unity with “rational experience”. In a world in which there is nothing to “cut corporeality”, a person also takes his place, a being as corporeal as all nature. Man has a special role, he, according to Radishchev, is the highest manifestation of corporeality, but at the same time is inextricably linked with the animal and plant world. “We do not humiliate a person,” said Radishchev, “finding similarities in his constitution with other creatures, showing that he essentially follows the same laws with him. And how could it be otherwise? Isn't he real? "

The fundamental difference between a person and other living beings is the presence of reason in him, thanks to which he “has the power to know about things”. But an even more important difference lies in a person's ability for moral actions and evaluations. “Man is the only creature on earth who knows the bad, the evil,” “a special human property is the unlimited possibility of both perfection and corruption”. As a moralist, Radishchev did not accept the moral concept of "rational egoism", believing that it is not "selfishness" that is the source of moral feelings: "a person is a compassionate being." Being a supporter of the idea of ​​"natural law" and always defending ideas about the natural nature of man ("the rights of nature never run out in man"), Radishchev at the same time did not share the opposition of society and nature, cultural and natural principles in man, outlined by Rousseau. For him, the social being of a person is as natural as natural. In the sense of the matter, there is no fundamental boundary between them: “Nature, people and things are human educators; climate, local situation, government, circumstances are the educators of nations. " Criticizing social vices Russian reality, Radishchev defended the ideal of a normal “natural” life order, seeing in the injustice reigning in society, in the literal sense, a social disease. He found this kind of "illness" not only in Russia. So, assessing the state of affairs in the slave-owning United States of America, he wrote that “a hundred proud citizens are drowning in luxury, and thousands have no reliable food, no shelter of their own from the heat and gloom (frost).” In his treatise On Man, on His Mortality and Immortality, Radishchev, considering metaphysical problems, remained faithful to his naturalistic humanism, recognizing the indissolubility of the connection between the natural and spiritual principles in man, the unity of body and soul: “Is it not with the body that the soul grows, not with it? does it mature and grow strong, does it not wither and grow dull with him? " At the same time, not without sympathy, he quoted thinkers who recognized the immortality of the soul (Johann Herder, Moses Mendelssohn and others). Radishchev's position is not an atheist, but rather an agnostic, which is quite consistent general principles his worldview, which is already quite secularized, oriented towards the “naturalness” of the world order, but alien to theomachy and nihilism. "

A family

Alexander Radishchev was married twice. The first time he married in 1775, Anna Vasilyevna Rubanovskaya (1752-1783), who was the niece of his fellow student in Leipzig, Andrei Kirillovich Rubanovsky, and the daughter of an official of the Main Palace Chancellery, Vasily Kirillovich Rubanovsky. In this marriage, four children were born (not counting two daughters who died in infancy):

• Vasily (1776-1845) - staff captain, lived in Ablyazov, where he married his serf Akulina Savvateevna. His son Aleksey Vasilyevich became a court councilor, leader of the nobility and mayor of Khvalynsk.
• Nikolay (1779-1829) - writer, author of the poem "Alyosha Popovich".
• Catherine (1782)

Anna Vasilievna died at the birth of her son Pavel in 1783. Soon after the expulsion of Radishchev, the younger sister of his first wife Elizaveta Vasilievna Rubanovskaya (1757-1797) came to Ilimsk with his two youngest children (Ekaterina and Pavel). In exile, they soon began to live as husband and wife. Three children were born in this marriage:

• Anna (1792)
• Thekla (1795-1845) - married Pyotr Gavrilovich Bogolyubov and became the mother of the famous Russian marine painter A.P. Bogolyubov.
• Afanasy (1796-1881) - Major General, Podolsk, Vitebsk and Covenian Governor.

Memory

• The village of Radishchevo, Ulyanovsk region, the former Noble Tereshka, the estate of the Kolyubakins nobles
• There is Radishchev street in Kiev
• In Moscow there are Verkhnyaya and Nizhnyaya Radishchevskaya streets, on the Verkhnyaya there is a monument to the writer and poet.
• There is Radishcheva Street in the Central District of St. Petersburg.
• Streets in Kursk, Ust-Kut, Ryazan, Maloyaroslavets, Petrozavodsk, Kaliningrad, Irkutsk, Murmansk, Tula, Tobolsk, Yekaterinburg, Saratov, Kuznetsk, Barnaul, Biysk, Alchevsk, Gatchin, Tambov, Smolensk, Smolensk in Tver, as well as in the city of Togliatti.
• In Irkutsk, one of the city's suburbs is called Radishchevo.
• In the village of Firstovo, Bolsheukovsky district of the Omsk region, an obelisk was erected in 1967, in honor of Radishchev, who passed and visited the village in 1790.
• In the village of Artyn, Muromtsevsky district of the Omsk region, in 1952, an obelisk was erected in memory of his succession to Siberian exile and his return from exile in 1797.
• In honor of A.N. Radishchev's passage, one of the villages was renamed, which received the name - the village of Radishchevo, Nizhneomsky district of the Omsk region.
• In the village of Evgashchino, Bolsherechensky District, Omsk Region, Radishcheva Street is named.
• In the village of Takmyk, Bolsherechensky District, Omsk Region, Radishcheva Street is named.
• In Ulyanovsk, from 1918 to the present, there is a Radishchev street.
• Annual Radishchev Readings are held in Maloyaroslavets and Kuznetsk
• State Art Museum named after Radishchev (Saratov).
• Radishchevo platform of the Oktyabrskaya railway in the Solnechnogorsk district of the Moscow region.
• There is Radishchev street in Rostov-on-Don.
• In Novokuznetsk, Kemerovo region, there is a street. Radishcheva (Ordzhonikidze district).
• In Khabarovsk there is Radishcheva Street (Industrial District).
• In Simferopol there is a street. Radishchev (not far from Vernadsky Ave.)
• In Kryvyi Rih there is a street. Radishcheva (Zhovtnevy district)
• In the city of Ust-Ilimsk, Irkutsk Region, in 1991, an obelisk in memory of A.N. Radishchev was erected.
• There is a school named after V.I. A.N. Radishcheva
• In the Nizhneilimsky district of the Irkutsk region there is the village of Radishchev.

see also

Bibliography

• Radishchev A.N. Travel from St. Petersburg to Moscow - St. Petersburg: b. i., 1790 .-- 453 p.
• Radishchev A.N. Prince M. M. Shcherbatov, "On the Damage of Morals in Russia"; A. N. Radishchev, "Travel from St. Petersburg to Moscow". With a preface by Iskander (A.I. Herzen). - London, Trübner, 1858.
• Radishchev A.N. Compositions. In two volumes. / Ed. P. A. Efremova. - SPb., Ed. Cherkesov, 1872. (the edition was destroyed by the censorship)
• Radishchev A.N. Complete works of A. Radishchev / Ed., Entry. Art. and approx. V. V. Kallash. T. 1. - M .: V. M. Sablin, 1907. - 486 p.: P., The same T. 2. - 632 p.: Ill.
• Radishchev A.N. Full composition of writings. T. 1 - M .; L .: Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1938. - 501 p .: p. The same T. 2 - M .; L .: Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1941 .-- 429 p.
• Radishchev A.N. Poems / Vstup. Art., ed. and note. G.A. Gukovsky. Ed. Collegium: I. A. Gruzdev, V. P. Druzin, A. M. Egolin [and others]. - L .: Sov. writer, 1947 .-- 210 p .: p.
• Radishchev A.N. Selected works / Vstup. Art. G.P. Makogonenko. - M .; L .: Goslitizdat, 1949 .-- 855 p .: P, K.
• Radishchev A.N. Selected Philosophical Works / Under general editorship... and with a foreword. I. Ya.Schipanova. - L .: Gospolitizdat, 1949 .-- 558 p.: P.
• Radishchev A.N. Travel from St. Petersburg to Moscow. 1749-1949 / Joined. article by D. D. Blagoy. - M .; L .: Goslitizdat, 1950 .-- 251 p .: ill.
• Radishchev A.N. Selected philosophical and socio-political works. [To the 150th anniversary of his death. 1802-1952] / Under total. ed. and will enter. article by I. Ya. Shchipanov. - M .: Gospolitizdat, 1952 .-- 676 ​​p.: P.
• Radishchev A.N. Travel from St. Petersburg to Moscow / [Will join. article by D. Blagoy]. - M .: Det. lit., 1970 .-- 239 p. The same - M .: Det. lit., 1971. - 239 p.

Notes (edit)

1. Brief literary encyclopedia - M.: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1962. - T. 6. - P. 143-148.
2. / ed. I. E. Andreevsky, K. K. Arseniev, F. F. Petrushevsky - St. Petersburg. : Brockhaus-Efron, 1907.
3. / ed. A. A. Polovtsov, N. P. Chulkov, N. D. Chechulin and others - St. Petersburg. , M.
4. Radishchev Alexander Nikolaevich // Great Soviet Encyclopedia: [in 30 volumes] / ed. A.M. Prokhorov - 3rd ed. - M.: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1969.
5. Gukovsky G.A.Radishchev // History of Russian Literature: In 10 volumes / Academy of Sciences of the USSR. - M .; L .: Publishing house of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1941-1956. T. IV: Literature of the 18th century. Part 2. - 1947 .-- S. 507-570.
6. Khrabrovitsky A. V. Where was A. N. Radishchev born and where did he spend his childhood? // Russian literature. L., 1974. No. 3. S. 180-181.
7. A. Startsev. Literature Voprosy, No. 2. - M., 1958. - S. 172-175. - 243 p.
8. Lecture by Professor A. B. Zubov on the topic: "Serfdom in Imperial Russia and its lessons today"
9. Complete collection of laws of the Russian Empire. Meeting First. Volume XXIII
10. GERDER
11. A. Lossky. Russian Biographical Dictionary (1910)

Origin

Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev was the firstborn in the family of Nikolai Afanasyevich, the son of the Starodub colonel and large landowner Afanasy Prokopyevich. The first years of the writer's life were spent in Nemtsov (near Maloyaroslavets, Kaluga province).

Education

V initial training Radishchev, apparently, his father, a devout man, who spoke well Latin, Polish, French and German... As was customary at that time, the child was taught Russian reading and writing according to the book of hours and the Psalter. When he was 6 years old, a French teacher was assigned to him, but the choice was unsuccessful: the teacher, as they later learned, was a fugitive soldier. Soon after the opening of Moscow University, around 1756, his father took Alexander to Moscow, to his uncle's house (Radishchev's mother, nee Argamakov, was related to the director of the university, Alexei Mikhailovich Argamakov). Here Radishchev was entrusted with the care of a good French governor, a former adviser to the Rouen parliament, who fled from the persecution of the government of Louis XV. The children of the Argamakovs had the opportunity to study at home with professors and teachers of the university gymnasium, so it cannot be ruled out that Alexander Radishchev prepared here under their leadership and went through, at least in part, the program of the gymnasium course.

In 1762 Radishchev was granted a page and went to St. Petersburg to study in the page corps. The corps of pages trained not scientists, but courtiers, and pages were obliged to serve the empress at balls, in the theater, at ceremonial dinners. Four years later, among a group of students, he was sent to Leipzig to study law. Among Radishchev's comrades, Fyodor Vasilyevich Ushakov is especially remarkable for the tremendous influence he had on Radishchev, who wrote his Life and published some of Ushakov's works.

Service

In 1771 Radishchev returned to St. Petersburg and soon entered the service in the Senate, as a protocol officer, with the rank of titular councilor. He did not serve for long in the Senate: poor knowledge of the Russian language interfered, the comradeship of clerks, and the rude treatment of his superiors weighed down. Radishchev entered the headquarters of General-in-Chief Bruce, who was in command in St. Petersburg, as chief auditor and stood out for his conscientious and courageous attitude to his duties. In 1775 he retired, and in 1778 he again entered the service of the Commerce Collegium, subsequently (in 1788) moving to the St. Petersburg customs.

Literary activity

Studying the Russian language and reading led Radishchev to his own literary experiences... First, he published a translation of Mable's work "Reflections on Greek History" (1773), then he began to compose the history of the Russian Senate, but he destroyed what he had written.

Radishchev's literary career began only in 1789, when he published The Life of Fyodor Vasilyevich Ushakov with the addition of some of his works. Taking advantage of the decree of Catherine II on free printing houses, Radishchev started his own printing house at his home and in 1790 published there his "Letter to a friend who lives in Tobolsk, owing to his title." Following him, Radishchev released his main work, "A Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow." The book begins with a dedication to Comrade Radishchev, A.M. Kutuzov, in which the author writes: "I looked around me - my soul became wounded by human suffering"... He understood that man himself is to blame for this suffering, because “ he does not look directly at the objects around him". To achieve bliss, one must take away the veil that covers natural feelings. Everyone can become an accomplice in the bliss of his own kind, resisting delusions. "This is the thought that prompted me to write what you will read".

The book began to sell out quickly. Her bold arguments about serfdom and other sad phenomena of the then social and state life attracted the attention of the empress herself, to whom someone had delivered the "Journey". Although the book was published with the permission of the established censorship, persecution was raised against the author. Radishchev was arrested, his case was "entrusted" to SI Sheshkovsky. Imprisoned in the fortress, during interrogations, Radishchev declared his repentance, refused his book, but at the same time, in his testimony, he often expressed the same views that were cited in "Travel". The Criminal Chamber applied to Radishchev articles of the Code on “ attempt on the sovereign's health", About" conspiracies and treason "and sentenced him to death. The verdict, transmitted to the Senate and then to the Council, was approved in both instances and presented to Catherine.

Link

On September 4, 1790, a personal decree was issued, which found Radishchev guilty of the crime of oath and the position of a subject by publishing a book, "Filled with the most harmful speculations, destroying public peace, belittling the respect due to the authorities, striving to generate indignation among the people against the bosses and superiors, and finally with insulting and violent expressions against the dignity and power of the tsarist"; Radishchev's guilt is such that he fully deserves the death penalty, to which he was sentenced by the court, but "out of mercy and for everyone's joy" the execution was replaced by him with a ten-year exile to Siberia, to the Ilimsky prison. Emperor Paul I, shortly after his accession (1796), returned Radishchev from Siberia. Radishchev was ordered to live on his estate of the Kaluga province, the village of Nemtsov.

Return and death

After the accession of Alexander I, Radishchev received complete freedom; he was summoned to Petersburg and appointed a member of the commission to draw up laws. There is a legend about the circumstances of Radishchev's suicide: summoned to the commission for drafting laws, Radishchev drew up the "Draft of the Liberal Code", in which he spoke about the equality of all before the law, freedom of the press, etc. The chairman of the commission, Count P.V. Zavadovsky made him a strict suggestion for his way of thinking, sternly reminding him of his previous hobbies and even mentioning Siberia. Radishchev, a man with severe health problems, was so shocked by Zavadovsky's reprimand and threats that he decided to commit suicide, drank poison and died in terrible agony.

Nevertheless, in the book "Radishchev" by DS Babkin, published in 1966, we find an exhaustive explanation of the circumstances of Radishchev's death. The sons who were present at his death testified about a serious physical illness that struck Alexander Nikolaevich already during his Siberian exile. The immediate cause of death was an accident: Radishchev drank a glass with "strong vodka prepared in it to burn out the old officer's epaulettes of his eldest son" (royal vodka). The burial documents speak of natural death. In the statement of the church of the Volkovskoe cemetery in St. Petersburg on September 13, 1802, the list of those buried included “collegiate adviser Alexander Radishchev; fifty-three years old, died of consumption ", priest Vasily Nalimov was at the removal. A.P. Bogolyubov, of course, knew these circumstances, and he gives the name of his grandfather for Orthodox commemoration.

Descendants

Daughters - Anna and Thekla. The latter married Pyotr Gavrilovich Bogolyubov and became the mother of the famous Russian marine painter Alexei Petrovich Bogolyubov.

Son - Afanasy, governor of Podolsk province in 1842, Vitebsk province in 1847-1848, in 1851 he was governor of Kovno.

Address in St. Petersburg

Memory

In Moscow there are Verkhnyaya and Nizhnyaya Radishchevskaya streets, on the Verkhnyaya there is a monument to the writer and poet.

There is Radishcheva Street in the Central District of St. Petersburg.

Streets in Petrozavodsk, Irkutsk, Murmansk, Tula, Tobolsk, Yekaterinburg, Saratov, a boulevard in Tver are also named in honor of Radishchev.

Pushkin about Radishchev

A special page in the perception of Radishchev's personality and work by Russian society was the attitude of A.S. Pushkin. Acquainted with the "Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow" in his youth, Pushkin clearly focuses on Radishchev's ode "Liberty" in his eponymous ode (1817 or 1819), and also takes into account in "Ruslan and Lyudmila" the experience of "heroic song" of Radishchev's son, Nikolai Alexandrovich , "Alosha Popovich" (Pushkin mistakenly considered Radishchev the father to be the author of this poem). The "Journey" turned out to be consonant with the tyrannical and anti-serfdom sentiments of young Pushkin. Despite the change in political positions, Pushkin remained interested in Radishchev in the 1830s, acquired a copy of Travel, which was in the Secret Chancellery, and sketched Journey from Moscow to St. Petersburg (conceived as a commentary on Radishchev's chapters in reverse order). In 1836, Pushkin tried to publish fragments from Radishchev's "Travel" in his Sovremennik, accompanying them with the article "Alexander Radishchev" - his most detailed statement by Fr. In addition to a bold attempt, for the first time after 1790, to acquaint the Russian reader with the forbidden book, here Pushkin also gives a very detailed criticism of the work and its author.

"A petty official, a man without any power, without any support, dares to arm himself against general order, against the autocracy, against Catherine! ... He has neither comrades nor accomplices. In case of failure, what kind of success can he expect? - he alone is responsible for everything, he alone appears to be a victim of the law. We have never considered Radishchev a great man. His act always seemed to us a crime, no excuse, and "Journey to Moscow" a very mediocre book; but with all this we cannot but recognize in him a criminal with an extraordinary spirit; a political fanatic, erring, of course, but acting with amazing dedication and with some kind of chivalrous conscience. ...

"Travel to Moscow", the reason for his misfortune and fame, is, as we have already said, a very mediocre work, not to mention even the barbaric syllable. Complaints about the unhappy state of the people, the violence of the nobles, and so on. exaggerated and vulgar. Gusts of sensitivity, cutesy and puffed up, are sometimes extremely funny. We could confirm our judgment with a multitude of extracts. But the reader should open his book at random in order to make sure of the truth of what we have said. ...

What purpose did Radishchev have? What exactly did he want? It is unlikely that he himself could have answered these questions satisfactorily. His influence was negligible. Everyone read his book and forgot it, despite the fact that it contains a few prudent thoughts, a few well-meaning assumptions that had no need to be clothed in abusive and pompous expressions and illegally embossed in the presses of a secret printing house, with an admixture of vulgar and criminal idle talk. ... They would be of true benefit if presented with greater sincerity and favor; for there is no credibility in reproaches, and there is no truth where there is no love " .

Criticism of Pushkin, in addition to auto-censoring reasons (however, the publication was still not allowed by the censorship) reflects the "enlightened conservatism" of the last years of the poet's life. In the drafts of "Monument" in the same 1836, Pushkin wrote: "Following Radishchev I glorified freedom".

Perception of Radishchev in the XIX-XX centuries.

The idea that Radishchev was not a writer, but a public figure, distinguished by striking spiritual qualities, began to take shape immediately after his death and, in fact, determined his further posthumous fate. I.M.Born in a speech to the Society of Lovers of the Fine, delivered in September 1802 and dedicated to the death of Radishchev, says about him:

« He loved truth and virtue. His fiery love of mankind longed to illuminate all his brothers with this flickering ray of eternity.».

NM Karamzin described Radishchev as an “honest man” (“honnête homme”) (this oral testimony was given by Pushkin as an epigraph to the article “Alexander Radishchev”). The idea of ​​the superiority of Radishchev's human qualities over his writing talent is especially succinctly expressed by P.A.Vyazemsky, explaining in a letter to A.F. Voeikov the desire to study the biography of Radishchev:

« In our country, people are usually invisible behind the writer. In Radishchev, on the contrary: the writer falls on the shoulder, and the man is with his head taller».

Of course, the article by A.S. Pushkin should also correlate with this perception. And the assessment given in 1858 by A. I. Herzen when publishing "Travel" in London (he puts Radishchev among "our saints, our prophets, our first sowers, first fighters"), which resulted in 1918 in the characterization of A. V. Lunacharsky: " prophet and forerunner of the revolution", Undoubtedly goes back to this, formed in the first decade XIX century, the evaluation of "Travel from St. Petersburg to Moscow" is not as artwork, but as a human feat. G.V. Plekhanov noted that under the influence of Radishchev's ideas “ the most significant social movements of the late 18th - first third 19th century ". It should be noted that during the interrogations of the Decembrists, when the Investigative Committee, appointed by Emperor Nicholas I and led by him, raising the question “ since when and where did they borrow the first free-thinking thoughts", I wanted to show the random nature of the Decembrists' performance, allegedly under the influence of borrowed ideas - the Decembrists really named the names of the great French enlighteners, English economists, German philosophers, cited examples from works greatest thinkers of the ancient world, but the overwhelming majority of them called, first of all, the name of Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev - so deeply the freedom-loving, anti-serfdom ideas of Radishchev penetrated so deeply into the consciousness of the advanced Russian society.

Until the 1970s, opportunities for the general reader to familiarize themselves with The Journey were extremely limited. After in 1790 almost the entire circulation of "Travel from St. Petersburg to Moscow" was destroyed by the author before his arrest, until 1905, when the censorship ban was removed from this work, the total circulation of several of his publications hardly exceeded one and a half thousand copies. In 1905-1907 several editions were published, but after that 30 years "Travel" was not published in Russia. In subsequent years, it was published several times, but mainly for the needs of the school, with banknotes and scanty circulation by Soviet standards. Back in the 1960s, Soviet readers were known to complain that it was impossible to get the Journey from a store or a district library. Only in the 1970s, "Journey" began to be released on a truly massive scale. In 1930-1950, under the editorship of Gr. Gukovsky carried out the three-volume "Complete Works of Radishchev", where for the first time many new texts, including philosophical and legal ones, were published or attributed to the writer.

In the 1950s-1960s, romantic hypotheses about the "secret Radishchev" (G.P. Shtrom and others) arose that were not supported by sources - that Radishchev, allegedly, after exile, continued to refine "Journey" and distribute the text in a narrow circle of like-minded people. At the same time, it is planned to abandon the straightforward agitational approach to Radishchev, emphasizing the complexity of his views and the great humanistic significance of the individual (N.I. Eidelman and others). In modern literature, the philosophical and journalistic sources of Radishchev are investigated - Masonic, moralizing and educational, and others, the multifaceted problems of his main book are emphasized, which cannot be reduced to the struggle against serfdom.

Philosophical views

“The philosophical views of Radishchev bear the traces of the influence of various directions of European thought of his time. He was guided by the principle of reality and materiality (corporeality) of the world, arguing that "the existence of things, regardless of the power of knowledge about them, exists by itself." According to his epistemological views, "the basis of all natural knowledge is experience." At the same time, sensory experience, being the main source of knowledge, is in unity with “rational experience”. In a world in which there is nothing to “cut corporeality”, a person also takes his place, a being as corporeal as all nature. Man has a special role, he, according to Radishchev, is the highest manifestation of corporeality, but at the same time is inextricably linked with the animal and plant world. “We do not humiliate a person,” said Radishchev, “finding similarities in his constitution with other creatures, showing that he essentially follows the same laws with him. And how could it be otherwise? Isn't he real? "

The fundamental difference between a person and other living beings is the presence of reason in him, thanks to which he “has the power to know about things”. But an even more important difference lies in a person's ability for moral actions and evaluations. “Man is the only creature on earth who knows the bad, the evil,” “a special human property is the unlimited possibility of both perfection and corruption”. As a moralist, Radishchev did not accept the moral concept of "reasonable egoism", believing that it is not "selfishness" that is the source of moral feelings: "a person is a compassionate being." Being a supporter of the idea of ​​"natural law" and always defending ideas about the natural nature of man ("the rights of nature never run out in man"), Radishchev at the same time did not share the opposition of society and nature, cultural and natural principles in man, outlined by Rousseau. For him, the social being of a person is as natural as natural. In the sense of the matter, there is no fundamental boundary between them: “Nature, people and things are human educators; climate, local situation, government, circumstances are the educators of nations. " Criticizing the social vices of Russian reality, Radishchev defended the ideal of a normal “natural” life order, seeing in the injustice reigning in society in the literal sense of a social disease. He found this kind of "illness" not only in Russia. So, assessing the state of affairs in the slave-owning United States of America, he wrote that “a hundred proud citizens are drowning in luxury, and thousands have no reliable food, no shelter of their own from the heat and gloom (frost).” In his treatise On Man, on His Mortality and Immortality, Radishchev, considering metaphysical problems, remained faithful to his naturalistic humanism, recognizing the indissolubility of the connection between the natural and spiritual principles in man, the unity of body and soul: “Is it not with the body that the soul grows, not with it? does it mature and grow strong, does it not wither and grow dull with him? " At the same time, not without sympathy, he quoted thinkers who recognized the immortality of the soul (Johann Herder, Moses Mendelssohn and others). Radishchev's position is not an atheist, but rather an agnostic, which fully corresponded to the general principles of his worldview, which was already sufficiently secularized, oriented towards the “naturalness” of the world order, but alien to the fight against God and nihilism. "

Bibliography

1. Radishchev A.N. Travel from St. Petersburg to Moscow - St. Petersburg: b. i., 1790 .-- 453 p.
2. Radishchev A.N. Prince M. M. Shcherbatov, "On the Damage of Morals in Russia"; A. N. Radishchev, "Travel from St. Petersburg to Moscow". With a preface by Iskander (A.I. Herzen). - London, Trübner, 1858.
3. Radishchev A.N. Compositions. In two volumes. / Ed. P. A. Efremova. - SPb., 1872. (the edition was destroyed by the censorship)
4. Radishchev A.N. Complete works of A. Radishchev / Ed., Entry. Art. and approx. V. V. Kallash. T. 1. - M .: V. M. Sablin, 1907. - 486 p.: P., The same T. 2. - 632 p.: Ill.
5. Radishchev A.N. Full composition of writings. T. 1 - M .; L .: Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1938. - 501 p .: p. The same T. 2 - M .; L .: Academy of Sciences of the USSR, 1941 .-- 429 p.
6. Radishchev A.N. Poems / Vstup. Art., ed. and note. G.A. Gukovsky. Ed. board: I.A. Gruzdev, V.P. Druzin, A.M. Egolin [and others]. - L .: Sov. writer, 1947 .-- 210 p .: p.
7. Radishchev A.N. Selected works / Vstup. Art. G.P. Makogonenko. - M .; L .: Goslitizdat, 1949 .-- 855 p .: P, K.
8. Radishchev A.N. Selected philosophical works / Ed. and with a foreword. I. Ya.Schipanova. - L .: Gospolitizdat, 1949 .-- 558 p.: P.
9. Radishchev A.N. Travel from St. Petersburg to Moscow. 1749-1949 / Joined. article by D. D. Blagoy. - M .; L .: Goslitizdat, 1950 .-- 251 p .: ill.
10. Radishchev A.N. Selected philosophical and socio-political works. To the 150th anniversary of his death. 1802-1952 / Under total. ed. and will enter. article by I. Ya. Shchipanov. - M .: Gospolitizdat, 1952 .-- 676 ​​p.: P.
11. Radishchev A.N. Travel from St. Petersburg to Moscow / Will enter. article by D. Blagoy. - M .: Det. lit., 1970 .-- 239 p. The same - M .: Det. lit., 1971. - 239 p.
12. Shemetov A.I. Breakthrough: The Story of Alexander Radishchev. - M .: Politizdat, 1974 (Ardent revolutionaries) - 400 p., Ill. Also. - 2nd ed., Rev. and add. - 1978 .-- 511 p., Ill.

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