Abstract
Ailing, lightly clad and in chains, Radishchev, forty-one, began the long road to Siberian exile. Had it not been for Count Vorontsov’s efforts to protect his protégé, Radishchev would have suffered severely from the rigors of the long journey to Ilimsk. One highly competent scholar, David S. Babkin, has even contended that Catherine “obviously” did not intend that Radishchev should survive, and counted on his broken health, the poor roads and the cold to cause him to perish somewhere on the journey.1 Such alleged cruelty on her part is not borne out by her acts. She made no attempt to force Radishchev to continue his journey during several periods of sickness. (Radishchev took until January, 1792, to reach his destination — some sixteen months.) She allowed Count Vorontsov to send money to the Governor of Tver to outfit Radishchev with necessities for the trip. When she learned on the second day after Radishchev’s departure that he was in chains, she ordered Count Bruce to send a courier with instructions that the chains be removed. One contemporary believed that she did not even wish Radishchev to be exiled but yielded to the insistence of the magnates, notably Potemkin, her former lover and still her good friend, who was at this time in Iassy.2
You wish to know who I am? Whither I go? I am the same that I was and will be all my life: not cattle, not a tree, not a slave, but a man! To lay down a road, where there was no trace, both by prose and verse, for bold men, for feeling hearts and for the truth, I go in fear to the Ilimsk ostrog.
A. Radishchev, An Answer, unfinished poem written in Tobol’sk.
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References
Babkin, 102.
S. N. Glinka, Byli i nebylitsi v grazhdanskoe nachal’noe uchenie Ekateriny II (Moscow, 1832), page vii
Vorontsov to Osipov, Governor of Tver, 12 September, 1790. A. K. V., V, 399.
Governors Rebinder, Volkov and Pil’. A. K. V., V, 397–400.
P. A. Radishchev, op. cit., 409, 423.
Ibid., 409.
A. K. V., V, 395–6.
P. A. Radishchev, op. cit., 410.
“Iz otklikov sovremennikov na protsess Radishcheva,” Babkin, 324–5.
Letter of the Moscow Freemason, I. V. Lopukhin to Radishchev’s close friend, A. M. Kutozov, October 7, 1790: “I tell you that I have just heard today that, although it is not certain, it is probable, that Radishchev was forgiven and it has been decreed that he be returned from the distant place designated for him to live, but only (on condition) that he not enter the two capitals, and his rank be not restored. If this is true, it is a great pardon.” Ia. L. Barskov, Perepiska moskovskikh masonov, 15.
A. K. V., V, 402.
There are sixty-three letters from Radishchev to Count A. R. Vorontsov in the period of his exile in the original French together with Russian translations in the P. S. S., III (1952), 344–532. Helpful notes are given at the end of the volume. The letters for the most part are reprinted from A. K. V., vols. V, XII.
A. K. V., V, 286.
P. S. S., III, 349.
Letter to Vorontsov, 19 April, 1794, in Literaturnoe Nasledstvo, Nos. 9–10 (1933), 452.
Letter to Vorontsov, 20 November, 1795. P. S. S., III, 478.
Letter of 4 April, 1795. P. S. S., III, 437.
P. S. S., III, 253–266.
Letter of 20 October, 1790. P. S. S., III, 346.
A study of the ethnographical elements in Radishchev’s Siberian travel notes and his Puteshestvie is given in A. N. Lozanova, “K kharakteristike Puteshestviia i sibirskikh putevykh zametok Radishcheva (etnograficheskie elementy),” Uchenye zapiski saratovskogo universiteta (pedagogicheskii fakul’t et), t. VIII, vyp. III (1929), 251–259.
Zapiski puteshestviia v Sibir’ P. S. S., III, 257, 260.
P. S. S., III, 349.
P. S. S., III, 351.
M. Azadovskii, Ocherki literatury i kvl’tury v Sibiri (Irkutsk, 1947), 64.
P. S. S., III, 351, 357, 359, 361, 368.
See Max M. Laserson, “Radishchev, Admirer of the Transatlantic Republic,” The American Impact on Russia, 1784–1917 (New York, 1950), 52–71 and Roderick P. Thaler, “Radushchev, Britain and America,” in Hugh McLean, Martin E. Malia and George Fischer, Jr., eds. Russian Thought and Politics (Cambridge, Mass., 1957), 59–75.
P. A. Radishchev, op. cit., 413.
P. S. S., III, 396. The books he received in Siberia were left at Irkutsk with Larion Timofeevich Nagel, I. A. Pil”s successor as Governor-General of Siberia when Radishchev was allowed to return to his country estates. Radishchev apparently left them for safekeeping or perhaps until they could be transported more easily over snow. Vorontsov asked Nagel in 1798 to send them back to European Russia, but Nagel had left Irkutsk before the letter arrived; he had handed them over to the Irkutsk commissar, Novitskii. Vorontsov in February, 1802 wrote again briefly, this time to the Tobol’sk Vice-Governor, I. O. Selifontov, to send them back. Selifontov agreed to do so the next winter, but shortly after Vorontsov wrote his letter, Radishchev was dead and the subsequent fate of the books remains unknown. See Notes to Letter 42, n. 1, P. S. S., III, 627.
P. S. S., III, 345.
Ibid.
P. S. S., III, 417.
P. S. S., III, 356.
P. S. S., III, 357.
P. S. S., III, 448, 450, 451, 485.
P. S. S., III, 364, 358.
P. S. S., III, 601 n. ii.
P. S. S., III, 364.
Ibid.
“Khotilov,” Journey, 144.
Semennikov, Radishchev, 60.
The description bears no title; I have used the title placed on the work by the editors: “Opisanie Tobol’skogo namestnichestva.” P. S. S., III, 133–142. Although this is included n Radishchev’s works, A. Startsev has shown that he merely translated this work of Ianov’s from the French. See Startsev, Universitetskie gody, 180–185.
P. S. S., III, 386.
P. S. S., III, 394. I. F. Herman had written a statistical description of the Russian state, published in German in St. Petersburg and Leipzig in 1790. P. S. S., 631 n. 2.
Radishchev letter of 14 October, 1791, P. S. S., III, 393. Pil’ letter 19 October, 1791 excerpted, P. S. S., III, 630–631.
P. S. S., III, 395.
P. A. Radishchev, op. cit., 412.
P. S. S., III, 400.
Documents relating to Shelekhov’s bold plans are given in A. I. Andreev, Russkie otkrytiia v Tikhom Okeane i Sevemoi Amerike v XVIII veke. Sbomik materialov (Moscow, 1948), 265–289, cited in A. Shmakov, Radishchev v Sibiri (Irkutsk, 1962), 41–43. Andreev’s book was not available to me.
Dnevnik A. V. Khrapovitskago (Moscow, 1901), 45.
Azadovskii, op. cit., 18.
Ia. Koreisha, Istoricheskii ocherk Irkutskoi gubemskoi gimnazii, vypusk l-i, (Irkutsk, 1910), 25–6, cited in Shmakov, op. cit., 41.
Azadovskii, op. cit., 47.
Kashin, “Novy spisok biografii Radishcheva,” 18.
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© 1964 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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McConnell, A. (1964). Journey to Ilimsk. In: A Russian Philosophe Alexander Radishchev 1749–1802. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-3375-1_9
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