by Gordon M. Hahn
The pattern we have seen of changing images of Russian symbols of dissent and foreign collusion from previous periods such as those of Prince Kurbsky, Hetman Mazepa and Tsarevich Alexei — addressed in previous articles — holds for the not so resonant symbol of Russian republicanism, Aleksandr Radishchev. The dissident’s image varies as a positive or negative symbol over time and by interpreter. As I hypothesized in previous articles, under more hardline Russian rulers the valence of dissidents’ images tends to be negative, symbolizing conspiratorial treachery, the lust for power, and treason against the Russian state and people. Among dissidents and opposition groups that challenge authoritarian leaderships as well as for the state during periods of reformist, liberalizing thaws their valences tend to be more positive. Symbol dissidents from the past are reconstituted as symbols of courageous freedom fighting. The exception to the rule is the totalitarian Soviet regime’s utilization of even pro-democracy dissidents and peasant rebels as positive images of ‘revolutionary’ dissent during the Tsarist period. The image of both Radishchev among others reflects this pattern of semiotic shifting.
For Radishchev this pattern was already evident during his lifetime. Sentenced to Siberian exile by Catherine in her late reactionary vintage, he was released from Siberia but only to Kaluga near Moscow, rather than Petersburg. His ‘liberator’, Catherine’s son and successor Paul I, had Radishchev released from exile not out of any impulse to ‘untighten the screws’ or sympathy for Radishchev’s ideas or person but simply to undo what his mother, whom he hated, had done. Radishchev gains full rehabilitation under the reform-minded Alexander I, who extended him a full, unconditional amnesty as well as appointment the to an official legal reform commission and allowed publication of all his works except Journey,[1] though that was in the offing had Alexander been in power longer and there had been no Napoleon. During Nicholas I’s reactionary era (1825-1855) Radishchev gets mixed reviews. Per our hypothesis, establishment figures denigrated and even banned major writers’ works of the dissident in defense of stability and the reigning ideology of the Nicholaevan era, “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, and Nationality.” Thus, Pushkin’s 1836 article “Alexander Radishchev,” written for the journal Sovremennik and offering a positive assessment of the republican’s life and work, was withheld from publication by the state’s censors. Russia’s ultra-traditionalist Minister of Culture, Count Sergei Uvarov, commented on the censoring of Pushkin’s work, noting that it would be “superfluous to revive memory about a forgotten and deserving to be forgotten writer and book” (Journey).[2] In the wake of Pushkin’s passing during the preparation of a posthumous special volume of Pushkin’s work, Uvarov again banned publication of “Alexander Radishchev,” though he did allow inclusion of another of Pushkin’s works that included excerpts from Radishchev’s Journey. This time he concluded that Pushkin’s article could not be allowed to be published “because of many points in it.”[3]
The reemergence of Pushkin’s article twenty years later sparked an intense discourse on Radishchev in the 1850s and 1860s. ‘Supply’ or access to Radishchev’s work was provided by Alexander II’s now nearly censorship free Russia; ‘demand’ – by the resulting rise in liberationist sentiment and early revolutionary activity in society. With Alexander II’s succession to the throne, the Tsar-Liberator’s extensive relaxing of censorship afilitated a new pluralism, ‘scholarship and realism’ in historiography, literary criticism, and other liberal arts. This permitted a broad discussion that encompassed a broad range of opinion on Radishchev sparked by the ‘reconstitution’ of Journey and Pushkin’s “Alexander Radishchev” in 1858. This was not so much a regime rehabilitation as the radical intelligentsia’s rediscovery of Radishchev, who had been largely forgotten, as Uvarov had wished. Radishchev’s rise from the depths in 1858 was temporary; Journey would not be published again until 1905.[4] Radischev’s disappearance into the sediment was not complete. He was reconstituted again in a less significant way mostly by the rise of socialist and communist revolutionary discourse that expanded in the 1870s. This resulted in his adoption by Soviet power.
Anarchists, socialists such as the Bolsheviks, and the Soviets in power felt compelled to include him in the pantheon of precursors to revolution. The father of Russian socialism, Georgii Plekhanov, wrote that although Radishchev’s ideas differed from those of ‘progressive’ circles in his time, his ideas “provided theoretical material for the development of our ideas of the present day.” Radishchev was linked to late 19th century Russian socialists “by bonds of close kinship.”[5] Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin wrote from Europe in his 1914 article “On the National Pride of Great Russians”: It more painful to see and feel what violence, beatings, and tortures the Tsarist oppressors, aristocracy and capitalists subject our fine Motherland. We take pride by the fact that this violence provoked a backlash from our community, from the community of Great Russians and this community produced Radishchev, the Decembrists, and revolutionary raznochintsy of the 1870s.”[6] With Lenin and the Bolsheviks in power but in the midst of a brutal civil war, they continued what would be a seven decades-long Soviet appropriation of the republican Radishchev’s life, work, and image for their mobilization in support of the ‘Revolution.’ Deploying the religious imagery as the form for the socialist content of its propaganda, the Bolsheviks’ Commissar of Enlightenment A. V. Lunacharskii christened Radishchev “the first prophet and martyr of revolution.”[7] The appropriation continued throughout the Soviet era. In 1938, at the height of Stalin’s Great Terror the publication of Radishchev’s complete works began.[8] His complete poems, complete philosophical works, and Journey were also published separately in other volumes.[9] In honor of Radishchev the Soviets built a Radischev museum in 1945, erected two obelisks, named an asteroid (1984), numerous streets, at least one village, a teplokhod, and an art museum in Saratov after him, and published his complete works and positive biographies of him (1977).[10]
The liberalizing Soviet perestroika-era Gorbachev regime and the post-perestroika Yeltsin and Putin regimes displayed neither a positive nor negative stance towards Radishchev’s legacy. Neither the perestroika-era state nor the post-Soviet Russian state have issued significant publications or other efforts to either promote or denigrate the ‘father of the intelligentsia. He was acceptable, if of less interest to both the reformist and Western-friendly Gorbachev regime and its democratic and hardline communist oppositions as well as to the pro-democratic, pro-Western Yeltsin regime and its communist opponents, whose CPSU successor parties are inheritors of the Marxist-Leninist tradition that held Radishchev in esteem. During the Putin era, I could find no example of a state or state-aligned author or entity offering criticism of Radishchev. However, Radishchev’s works, including Journey, are abundantly available in any online or ‘brick’ bookstore in Putin’s Russia.[11]
It is perhaps indicative of both his dissident’s status and the overall status of dissident in Russian political culture, however, that there is no monument to Radishchev in either Moscow or, where he lived his adult life (save during his exile), St. Petersburg, where there are monuments dedicated to someone or something at almost every turn including to less well-know foreigners like Alfed Nobel.[12] The state’s dominance over democrats in Russian political culture is reflected in the fact that while Radishchev is ignored, there are monuments to two monuments to Cheka chief Feliks Dzerzhinskii, several to Lenin, seven to Peter the Great, and so on. There is one monument to the republican at the Saratov Museum of Art on the southern Volga. To this day, the only dedication to Radishchev in Russia’s ‘two capitols’ consists of a Soviet-era plaque to Radishchev surviving in St. Petersburg on the building on 14 Marat Street that holds the apartment where he wrote Journey. The plaque is inscribed: “In this house from 1775 to 1790 lived the outstanding revolutionary Alexander Nikolaevich Radishchev. Here he printed in his own printing press his book Journey from Petersburg to Moscow.”
The state’s perspective on and utilization of the images of Radishchev (and Pugachev) as symbols warning against the dangers of dissent and/or the Western threat has been identical. Although Radishchev never joined the pantheon of traitors on whom the Church (and by association) the state put anathemas, in all other espects their treatment by the state has been the same. Treated as threats and cast into oblivion by total neglect under Alexander I and by comprehensive censorship under Nicholas I, they were then ignored by the state and became obscure subjects for professorial debates during the late Tsarist era of ‘scholarship and realism.’ The Soviet era lifted from obscurity, reconstituting them to the official discourse as precursors and heroic symbols and of the coming socialist revolution. During the perestroika and post-perestroika eras, both of their images and function as symbols were relegated to the relative obscurity of scholarly consideration, with the state’s approach returning to the late Tsarist one of scholarship and realism.
We can estimate what Radischev’s symbolic value might be if a regime came to power in Russia that is more intolerant of dissent and/or fearful of Western meddling by looking at the place of Radishchev among communist and nationalistic opposition forces. The return of former to power likely would lead to a return of the Soviet approach, reconstituting Radishchev as heroic symbol of the revolution and the revolution reborn. An ultra-nationalist state would likely eschew the aristocratic republican Radishchev as a model, given his Western philosophical and political orientation, but might establish Pugachev as a revolutionary, truly Russian ‘muzhik,’ who sought to rid the fatherland of German interlopers and return the ‘Russian land’ to its proper place, mythologized albeit, as sovereign over the land.
Conclusions
Our symbol of dissent for the last 75 years of the 18th century, Alexander Radishchev, does not offer rich material for analysis. He lacks the stature in Russia’s scholarly and artistic discourse and thus its political and strategic culture to offer a robust confirmation of our hypothesis. Neverthelss, a few observations make clear that my sub-hypothesis holds that symbols of past internal divisions and dissent and/or external threats to national security will be used by an authoritarian Russian state as ‘teachable moments’, given Russia’s cultural value or norm of national security. As a critique of autocracy, Radishchev was a negative symbol that reactionary Nicholas I’s censors sought to bury from Russian’s consciousness. They may have succeeded, and the weakening of his semiotic value seems to have pre-determined his image’s limited utilization under future, non-communist regimes. The subsequent softening and then weakening of the Tsarist regime allowed for his limited rehabilitation and reconstitution within the cultural discourse.
The confluence between the Tsarist regime’s repression of Radishchev and his Journey’s harsh critique of serfdom, on the one hand, and the repression of the Bolsheviks during the revolutionary struggle and their ideological adherence to class struggle of ‘workers and peasants,’ on the other hand, facilitated the Soviets’ acceptance of the aristocrat and intelligent as an icon of Russian revolution. However, his ‘alien class’ background and republican philosophy rendered him one of the lesser icons. The totalitarian Soviets’ panegyrics to Radishchev may have tainted his image among post-Soviet democrats, where he would be most likely to find reconstitution into Russia’s identity and cultural discourse.
More importantly for our hypothesis, the post-Soviet state’s indifference towards Radischchev, if not trepidations have further devalued his already limited symbolic stature; one that seems to lag in comparison to the real significance of his work and to his influence as a political thinker on later generations of Russian opponents to autocracy and authoritarianism. The 1990s’ revolutionaries from above were too entrenched in late Soviet and post-Soviet officialdom, anticommunist and yet insufficiently committed to democratization to undertake a large-scale pro-democracy public propaganda and educational effort that might raise up a rightful icon of the radical democratic intelligentsia like Radishchev. At the same time, they were democratic enough that they eschewed and would hardly even have entertained the idea of deploying Radishchev as a warning against political competition. If the pro-republican elements in the 1990s had paid more attention to myth-building and the legacy of Imperial era republicans such as Radishchev and had remained in power perhaps Radischchev would have gotten his due as the father of Russian republicanism, though certainly Alexei Golitysn, author of the ‘Conditions’ some hoped to place on Empress Anna Ioannovna’s power and leader of the aristocratic constitutionalist movement would certainly contend for that honor.
Under Putin, all this continues to apply. Consequently, matters have come full circle. Today, the Radishchev-regime relationship is non-existent. Putin’s Russian state is indifferent to Radishchev, leaving the fate of his image to the winds of fate within pluralism, scholarship, and democratic opposition silence. Radishchev’s image is unlikely to become the object political appropriation soon if ever either from above or below.
FOOTNOTES
[1] See Alexander Pushkin, “Aleksandr Radishchev” and commentary, Russkaya virtual’naya biblioteka, https://rvb.ru/pushkin/01text/07criticism/01criticism/0536unpubl/0970.htm, last accessed on 11 December 2018.
[2] Ironically, writing in 1823 during his own revolutionary, pro-Decembrist period, Pushkin in preparing a work on Russian literature, wrote: “How can Radishchev be forgotten in an article about Russian literature? Who indeed will we remember?” Pushkin, “Aleksandr Radishchev,” p. 507. For this and Uvarov’s comment, see the footnotes to Pushkin’s “Aleksandr Radishchev,” p. 507, https://rvb.ru/pushkin/02comm/0970.htm#c11, last accessed on 11 December 2018.
[3] Natan Eidelman, “Vosled Radishcheva…”, in A. N. Radishchev, Putesheshestvie iz Peterburga v Moskvu (sbornik) (Moscow: Russkaya klassika, 2007), http://vivovoco.ibmh.msk.su/VV/PAPERS/NYE/RADI2.HTM, last accessed on 12 December 2018.
[4] As cultural historian Natan Eidelman noted, this discussion was sparked indirectly by Russian dissident Alexander Herzen’s article “On the Development of the Revolutionary Ideas in Russia” published in the exile’s London-based journal Kolokol (The Bell) in 1850. The article did not mention Radishchev but rather Novikov, Dmitrii Fonvizin and others. As Uvarov had hoped, Herzen and others of the 1840s generation, had forgotten, indeed did not know who Radishchev was. Prompted by the arrest of Yekaterina Dashkova, Herzen soon published Radishchev’s Journey, and in 1858 Pavel Annenkov published Pushkin’s “Alexander Radishchev.” Eidelman, “Vosled Radishcheva….” A full collection of Radishchev’s works was published in 1907 as well. See A.N. Radishchev, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii A. Radishcheva, v dvukh tomakh, V.V. Kallasha, editor (Moscow: V.M. Sablin, 1907).
[5] Mikhail Iovchuk and Irina Kurbatova, Plekhanov (Moscow: Molodaya gvardiya, 1977), https://biography.wikireading.ru/177365, last accessed on 12 December 2018.
[6] V. I. Lenin, “O natsional’noi gordosti Velikorossov,” Sotsial-demokrat, No. 35, 12 December 1914, http://libelli.ru/works/26-3.htm, last accessed on 12 December 2018.
[7] A.V. Lunacharskii, Aleksandr Radishchev – pervyi prorok i muchenik revolyutsii (Petrograd: Izdanie Petrogradskogo soveta rabochikh i krasnoarmeiskikh deputatov, 1918).
[8] A.N. Radishchev, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, v dvukh tomakh, (Moscow and Leningrad: Akademiya nauk SSSR, 1938 and 1941).
[9] A. N. Radishchev, Stikhotvoreniya, edited and annotated by G.A. Gukovskogo (Leningrad: Sovetskaya pisatel’, 1947); A. N. Radishchev, Izbrannyie sochineniya (Moscow and Leningrad: Goslitizdat, 1949). A. N. Radishchev, Izbrannyie filosofskie sochineniya, edited by I. Ya. Shchipanova (Leningrad: Gospolitizdat, 1949); A. N. Radishchev, Puteshestvia iz Peterburga v Moskvu, 1749-1949 Moscow and Leningrad: Goslitizdat, 1950); A. N. Radishchev, Izbrannyie filosofskie i obshchestvenno-politicheskoe proizvedeniya [K 150-letiyu so dnya smerti, 1802-1952], edited by I. Ya. Shchipanova (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1952); and A. N. Radishchev, Puteshestvie iz Peterburga v Moskvu (Moscow: Detskaya literature, 1971).
[10] See “Radishchev, Aleksandr Nikolaevich,” Wikipedia.ru, https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A0%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%B8%D1%89%D0%B5%D0%B2,_%D0%90%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%81%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B4%D1%80_%D0%9D%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87, last accessed on 12 December 2018; and “Muzei A.N. Radishcheva,” Wikipedia.ru, https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9C%D1%83%D0%B7%D0%B5%D0%B9_%D0%90._%D0%9D._%D0%A0%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%B8%D1%89%D0%B5%D0%B2%D0%B0, last accessed on 12 December 2018. For biographical works, see G.P. Makogonenko, Radishchev i ego vremya (Moscow: Gospolitizdat, 1956) and A.I. Shemetov, Breakthrough: A Story Abaout Alexander Radishchev (Moscow: Politizdat, 1974).
[11] In addition to numerous earlier post-Soviet editions, a 2018 edition of Journey was available for approximately two dollars on the ‘Russian Amazon’ Ozone.ru as of 13 December 2018. A. N. Radishchev, Puteshestvie iz Petersurga v Moskvu (Moscow: Azbuka, 2018), www.ozon.ru/context/detail/id/145565043/, last accessed on 13 December 2018.
[12] There is a small structure similar to a mounument but more akin to a gravestone dedicated to Radishchev, which may be his unkept grave, located at the Labatorskii Mostki in St. Petersburg. See the photograph of the apparent headstone at “Radishchev, Aleksandr Nikolaevich,” Wikipedia.ru.