20. Paphos and Amathus: ancient cult sanctuaries of Aphrodite on Cyprus.
21. Claude-Joseph Vernet (1714–1789): a painter celebrated in the second half of the eighteenth century for his maritime paintings and large canvases depicting shipwrecks as sublime events in which the terrible drama of the disaster contrasts with the still beauty of the moonlit sea; a number of his paintings were in the Hermitage.
22. The last Turkish War in the Archipelago: Russo-Turkish War of 1768–74, in particular the victory of the Russian fleet in Chesme Bay in July of 1770.
23. Subedar: an Indian officer rank in British India. The travails of Clive of India, who established the dominance of the East India Company in Bengal, was discussed in contemporary historical writing by, among others, Abbé Guillaume-Thomas de Raynal, in his Histoire philosophique et politique des établissements et du commerce des Européens dans les deux Indes (1777) and Voltaire in his Fragments historique sur l’Inde (1773). The British were attacked in 1756, leading to the fall of Calcutta and the death of more than one hundred British prisoners stifled in cells (giving rise to the name the Black Hole of Calcutta).
24. Oranienbaum: the oldest of the imperial palaces around St. Petersburg. Located to the west of St. Petersburg on the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland, it features formal gardens and terraces. In 1743, Elizabeth commissioned Giambattista Pittoni to build a palace for her nephew, the future Peter III. In the 1760s, Pittoni built the Chinese Palace for Catherine II as her official country residence.
6. SPASSKAYA POLEST
25. Polkan, Bova: characters in the Russian woodblock print (lubok) The Tale of Bova the King’s Son. Originally, Pulicane (a chimeric character, half-human, half-horse) and Buovo in the Italian version of a fourteenth-century chivalric romance Li Reali di Francia nei quali si contiene la generazione degli imperadori, re, principi, baroni e paladini con la bellissima istoria di Buovo di Antona by Andrea da Barberino. In 1799–1802 (?), Radishchev wrote a long poem, Bova, of which only the introduction and canto 1 survive. Nightingale-Robber: in East Slavic mythology, a monstrous creature that kills with its terrifying whistling.
26. Governor-general (namestnik): according to the 1775 Provincial Reform Law (Uchrezhdenie o guberniiakh), the state’s chief administrator in charge of two or more provinces.
27. Bolshaya Morskaya: a street perpendicular to Nevsky Prospekt in St Petersburg, near the Admiralty. Naval staff lived there (hence its name “Large Maritime Street”).
28. Radishchev plays on the idiom “ne zhit’e, a maslenitsa”: “life is a regular feast (or Shrovetide).”
29. The clerk’s wife refers to payments he takes for the exchange of paper and copper money, which costs less, for silver and gold.
30. The physiological workings of sensibility and the mind, as Radishchev knew, were explored in eighteenth-century thought by various schools (mechanical, chemical, theological).
31. A possible reference to Denis Diderot’s Letter on the Blind for the Use of Those Who Can See (Lettre sur les aveugles à l’usage de ceux qui voient), a discussion of visual perception inspired by success in the surgical removal of cataracts.
32. Captain James Cook (1728–1779): British navigator, cartographer, and explorer in the Pacific, author of an important set of scientific journals. He perished in Hawaii, probably murdered during an uprising, although different accounts circulated.
33. The Goths were East Germanic peoples who toppled the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century AD; the Vandals sacked and looted Rome in the sixth century and made extensive conquests in Southern Europe and North Africa.
34. Castalia and Hippocrene: two of the three creeks favored by the Muses.
7. PODBEREZYE
35. Praskovya (Paraskeva): “Friday” in Greek; St. Paraskeva Pyatnitsa (name day November 10) is a mythological figure in East Slavic tradition that combines Christian and pagan features.
36. Radishchev’s interlocutor lists five of eight subjects (classes) taught in seminaries. Kuteikin, a character in The Minor (Nedorosl’, staged in 1782, published in 1783) by Denis Fonvizin (1744/1745–1792), refers to his unfinished seminary education, informing the other characters that he reached the sixth (“rhetoric”) class of the eight classes that comprised seminary education before leaving the school. Radishchev’s seminarian ironically mentions the next class, “philosophy,” after which seminarians ostensibly leave without taking the last class, “theology.”
37. Hugo Grotius (1583–1645): a Dutch philosopher, political theorist, and jurist. Charles de Montesquieu (1689–1755): a French political philosopher. William Blackstone (1723–1780): an English jurist and politician. The works of all three were in Radishchev’s library.
38. Court almanac (pridvornyi kalendar’): a yearly publication (beginning in 1745) that published the names of courtiers promoted in rank as well as lists of recipients of awards.
39. Louis Claude de Saint-Martin (1743–1803): a French esoteric philosopher and mystic, the founder of Martinism, a form of Christian mysticism focused on the fall of man and the process of his return to grace.
40. Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772): A Swedish theologian and mystic.
41. Frederick the Great (1712–1786): the king of Prussia from 1740 to his death. A proponent of enlightened absolutism, he modernized the Prussian bureaucracy, reformed the judicial system, and encouraged religious tolerance.
42. Akibah (Akiva) ben Yosef (c. 50–135): a prominent Jewish scholar and sage, the author of copious commentaries to the Talmud.
43. Bayle’s Dictionary: Radishchev quotes The Historical and Critical Dictionary (Dictionnaire historique et critique) by Pierre Bayle (1647–1706), one of the most important works of rational skepticism of the European Enlightenment. In editions that contain a chapter on Akibah (and not all do), Bayle gives the dialogue in Latin with an English translation in which parts of the body are omitted and indicated with a long dash. Radishchev is more explicit and ironical.
8. NOVGOROD
44. In the 1780s, Radishchev read various historical sources and made numerous notes. The nature of government in Kiev and, especially, Novgorod was one of his particular interests because he believed that both were republics governed by princes invited and dismissed by the veche, a popular assembly of all residents, proving for Radishchev that medieval Russia practiced direct democracy. For a full publication of Radishchev’s notes, see Irina Reyfman, “Istoricheskie zametki A. N. Radishcheva,” in Filosofskii vek. Al’manakh, vol. 25, Istoriia filosofii kak filosofiia, part 2, ed. T. V. Artem’eva and M. I. Mikeshin (St. Petersburg: Sankt-Peterburgskii Tsentr Istorii Idei, 2003), 235–50.
45. Mayor (posadnik): the head of the civilian government in Novgorod. The military commander (tysiatskii) oversaw the militia troops and the police. Both were elected officials.
46. Veche: see note 44.
47. Ivan Vasilyevich: a composite image of two Ivans, Ivan III (reigned 1462–1505) and Ivan IV the Terrible (reigned 1547–84), both of whom were instrumental in subjugating Novgorod to Moscow. Ivan the Terrible is believed to have personally participated in the so-called massacre of Novgorod in 1570; hence the later mention of the cudgel.
48. What follows comes from the notes Radishchev made while reading various historical sources, including V. N. Tatishchev’s Russian History (Istoriia Rossiiskaia), G. F. Miller’s “Brief Report on the Origins of Novgorod” (“Kratkoe izvestie o nachale Novagoroda”), and Nestor’s Chronicle with His Successors … (Letopis’ Nesterova s prodolzhateliami …). For a description of Radishchev’s sources, see Reyfman, “Zametki A. N. Radishcheva po russkoi istorii,” 227–34.
49. The merchant class was not hereditary but was defined by voluntary membership of one of the three guilds. Beginning in 1785, a qualification for joining the third was declaring a capital sum of one thousand to five thousand rubles; the second, five thousand to ten thousand rubles; and the first, ten thousand to fifty thousand rubles. Those who declared capital of more than fifty thousand r
ubles received the status of eminent citizens (imenitye grazhdane). There were other ways to achieve this status.
50. Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801): a Swiss writer, philosopher, physiognomist, and theologian best known for his Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beförderung der Menschenkenntnis und Menschenliebe (4 vols., 1775–78), in which he propagated the theory that human character was expressed in the structure of skull and face. His work was very popular in the late eighteenth century and was translated into English by Thomas Holcroft as Essays on Physiognomy for the Promotion of the Knowledge and the Love of Mankind (London: G. G. J. & J. Robinson, 1789).
51. Blackening one’s teeth was fashionable in Russia up to the early nineteenth century.
9. BRONNITSY
52. Perun: God of sky, thunder, and storms in Slavic mythology.
53. Radishchev has adapted the lines from Joseph Addison, Cato, a Tragedy (1712), act V, scene 1, verses 26–30:
The stars shall fade away, the sun himself
Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years,
But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,
Unhurt amidst the wars of elements,
The wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds.
10. ZAITSOVO
54. The future assessor’s service record is questioned by Krestyankin. According to the Table of Ranks regulations, the military service accorded hereditary nobility to commoners beginning with the lowest fourteenth class (this changed under Nicholas I, in 1846). In contrast, in civil and court service a commoner had to achieve the rank of the eighth class to receive hereditary nobility. Radishchev’s Krestyankin excludes court service from this rule, given that the lower ranks in the court service, in his exaggerated presentation, were occupied by stokers, lackeys, and butlers. Cf. “Vydropusk,” where Radishchev includes the argument against treating the court service as equal to civil service.
55. Lavater: see note 50.
56. The Zaporozhian Host (Zaporozhskaia Sech’): a military commune founded by the Cossacks in the late sixteenth century to the south of the rapids on the Dnieper. The Cossack society consisted of groups of several hundred men each, who lived and ate together. Corporal punishment was widely used—hence Radishchev’s comparison.
57. Peasants with land (odnodvortsy): in Muscovite Russia, the servitors of the lowest rank who were rewarded for their service by a small parcel of land. In the eighteenth century, their status was ambiguous: like state peasants, they paid taxes and had to serve the military (fifteen years instead of twenty-five); like noblemen, they had the right to own land and serfs and were free from corporal punishment.
58. The Summer Garden (Letnii sad), the Baba: parks in St. Petersburg. The first was imperial; the other belonged to the courtier A. A. Naryshkin. Both parks were open to the public.
59. Officials in the ranks of first to fourth class as were there wives and widows, were to be addressed “Your Excellency”; fifth to eighth, “Your High Ancestry”; ninth to fourteenth, “Your Honor.”
11. KRESTTSY
60. Boyar: a member of the feudal aristocracy, a group that by the late eighteenth century had declined, making the term old-fashioned.
61. Knowledge of English, unlike French and German, was unusual in the eighteenth century. Radishchev had at least a good reading knowledge.
13. VALDAI
62. Lada: Slavic goddess of love, most likely invented in the late eighteenth century; see Mikhail Chulkov, Dictionary of Russian Superstitions (Slovar’ russkikh sueverii) (St. Petersburg: 1782), 189.
63. Leander: in Greek mythology, a lover of Hero (see the following note). He had to swim the Hellespont at night to visit her and drowned one stormy night.
64. Hero: in Greek mythology, a priestess of Aphrodite, a beloved of Leander (see the previous note). Distraught, Hero drowned herself as well.
14. EDROVO
65. Annushka, Anyutushka, Anyuta, and Anyutka are all diminutives of Anna.
66. Pretender: Emelyan Pugachev (1742–1775), leader of the 1773–75 peasant rebellion executed in 1775, styled himself as the Emperor Peter III and was therefore a Pretender to the throne.
67. “You already know how to love”: cf. Nikolai Karamzin, “Poor Liza” (“Bednaia Liza,” 1792): “Peasant women too know how to love” (“I krest’ianki liubit’ umeiut”), a line that became proverbial. While it is likely that Karamzin had read the Journey when he wrote his famous story, there is no proof he had.
68. Vanya, Vanka, and Vanyukha are all diminutives of Ivan.
69. Piter: see note 11.
15. KHOTILOV
70. “And we, the sons of glory, we, glorious by name and deeds among the peoples of the Earth”: the original plays on the similarity of the words slava (glory) and slovuty (known, glorious) and slaviane (Slavs). This false etymology was popular in the eighteenth century. See, for example, the beginning of Vasily Trediakovsky’s “Discourse on the Primacy of the Slavic Language Over Teutonic” (“Rassuzhdenie o pervenstve slavenskogo iazyka pred tevtonicheskim,” published in 1773).
71. “Change your name and the story talks about you”: a quotation from Horace, Satires, I.1. 69–70: “Mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur” (“With the name changed, the same tale / Is told of you”).
72. A reference to the Pugachev rebellion; see note 66.
73. Table of Ranks: see note 9.
16. VYSHNY VOLOCHOK
74. “Cursed is the ground in its needs” (Prokliata zemlia v delakh svoikh): a slightly changed quotation from Genesis 3:17: “Cursed is the ground for thy sake.”
75. Monthly allocation (mesiachina) of food, normally dispensed to house serfs.
76. In Christian traditions, including Eastern Orthodox tradition, Easter week (Svyataya nedelya) is the period of seven days from Easter Sunday through to the following Saturday. Lent ends on Easter Sunday, and the following week is the time when food containing meat or milk is allowed. One can detect irony in the traveler’s tone.
17. VYDROPUSK
77. The nymph Egeria: in Roman legend, a divine consort of Numa Pompilius, Rome’s second king (reigned 715–673 bc) and a figure much written about in the eighteenth century as a legislator; Egeria was said to have counseled Numa on laws and religious rituals.
78. Manco Cápac (died 1107): the first Inca ruler of Peru, the founder of the Inca Empire.
18. TORZHOK
79. Mitrofanushka (Mitrofan): a character in Fonvizin’s comedy The Minor. The minor of the title, he is comically ineducable. For more on this comedy, see note 36.
80. Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744–1803): a German philosopher, poet, and literary critic. Radishchev here translates, with some omissions and additions, a fragment of his 1780 “Vom Einfluss der Regierung auf die Wissenschaften und der Wissenschaften auf die Regierung” (“On the Influence of the Government on the Sciences and the Sciences on the Government”).
81. The word klobuk, the headgear of Orthodox monks (here, a metonymy for ecclesiastical censorship) is absent in Herder’s original and added by Radishchev.
82. Paragraph 480 of Catherine II’s Instruction to the Legislative Commission contains, among other things, this principle: “Words are never to be considered a crime, unless they lead to or are linked to or follow a lawless act.”
83. See notes 14 and 15.
84. Radishchev’s main source for this account is vols. I (part 1) and II (part 2) of Johann Beckmann, Beiträge zur Geschichter der Erfindungen (Leipzig, 1786–1805).
85. Protagoras (c. 490–420 BC): a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, ostensibly the author of the statement “Man is the measure of all things.”
86. Titus Labienus: an historian in the time of Augustus, an opponent of monarchy. He committed suicide after his writings were burned on the order of the Senate. His works were later restored on the order of Caligula.
87. Benito Arias Montano (1527–1598): a Spanish orientalist and theologian. He was accused of heresy but eventually acquitted in 1580. Radishchev’s motivation
in citing him in the context of Roman censorship is unclear.
88. Titus Cassius Severus (d. 32 AD): Roman writer and orator, an advocate of freedom of speech. He was exiled to Crete and his works were banned after his death.
89. Aulus Cremutius Cordus (d. 25 AD): Roman historian, whose works were burned under Tiberius, the Roman emperor who succeeded Augustus, on the order of the Senate.
90. Antiochus IV, Epifanius (215–164 BC): Hellenistic king of the Seleucid Empire from 175 BC until his death; unlike his predecessors, he tried to suppress Judaism by force.
91. Diocletian (Gaius Aurelius Valerius Diocletianus Augustus, 244–311): the Roman emperor from 284 to 305; a persecutor of Christians.
92. Arnobius of Sicca (d. c. 330): an early Christian writer.
93. Radishchev refers to the Council of Nicaea (325) called by Constantine the Great (reigned 306–337), the first Roman emperor converted to Christianity. Arius (256–336), a Libyan presbyter and ascetic, was relegated to anathema by the council as a heretic for his arguing for the supremacy of God the Father.
94. Theodosius II (401–450): Eastern Roman emperor. In 431 he called the Council of Ephesus that condemned as a heretic Nestorius (386–450), the Archbishop of Constantinople (428–431).
95. Eutychus (c. 380–456): denounced as a heretic by the Council of Chalcedon in 451.
96. Pandects of Justinian: a compendium of writings on Roman law compiled by order of the Eastern Roman emperor Justinian I (reigned 527–565) in the sixth century AD.
97. Abelard (Pierre Abélard, 1079–1141 or 1142): a French scholastic philosopher, theologian, and logician. In 1141, Pope Innocent II (1130–1143) excommunicated Abelard, confined him in a monastery, and ordered his books to be burned.
98. Maffeo Ghirardi (or Gherardi, 1406–1492): Patriarch of Venice from 1466 to his death.
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