Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow by Irina Reyfman (top 10 novels of all time .txt) 📕

(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