라지쉐프의 개혁사상

A.N. Radishchev’s Reform Idea

Radishchev' s anti-despotism and anti-selfdom were evident and consistent in his life. Of the many things to be criticized in Russia selfdom loomed largest. Yet that institution was both so well accepted and so fundamental to Russian life that few in the eighteenth century dared challenge it. At the time of Catherine the Great. selfdom placed nearly half the population beyond the reach of state and law. It proved impossible in practice to enforce through the courts a consistent conception of who was entitled to serf whom. and of how serfs should be treated. Numerous writers criticized certain individual excess of selfdom such as cruelty of one master or the wastefulness of another . but they did not assail the system itself. Radishchev made the condemnation of selfdom total and unmistakably clear. It was Radishchev' s attack on selfdom that broke through the veneer of cultural progressivism and well-being. typical of the reign of Catherine the Great. and served as the occasion for a sharp break between the government and the radical or even just liberal intellectuals. The most intense and anguished cry of protest was raised by Radishchev. his 'Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow' around a further on its appearance in 1790. In the form of a travelogue he remorselessly stripped away the mantle of enlightened absolutism to uncover the glaring evils at the core of Catherine's Russia. With high emotion. he evoked the bitter realities of selfdom. Radishchev. dogged by a relentless sense of guilt towards the people and despair with the state. took his life. Radishchev was emboldened by his conscience to write his 'Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow'. condemning selfdom as the equal of slavery and warning his erstwhile patroness of the wrath to come if nothing were done about it His Journey meant the appearance of a radical intellectual protest in russia a foretaste of the radical intelligentsia. His work did not much to launch the peculiarly Russian nineteenth century literary tradition. That the Russian aristocracy did not display social virtues he showed at length in his didactic travelogue a Journey. in which he fleshed out his indictment of Russian society. He assailed russian deism and administration corruption and suggested instead a republic with full liberties for the individual. And he actually drew up a plan for self emancipation and an accompanying land settlement. He thought of despotism as a state most repugnant to human nature and contrary to the social contrast and natural law. Along with the condemnation of selfdom and autocracy was an equally unprecedented moderate and sensible proposal for selfdom' abolition. Radishchev was a reformer, not a revolutionary. He appealed to the consciences and the fears of his fellow nobles. When Alexander I acceded to the throne, he pardoned him, and soon called upon him to serve on a commission for the composit ion of it . But by the time Radishchev took up his duties, Alexander I was already drawing back from his earlier liberal initiatives . Radishchev's works composed for the commission were apparently not consulted, perhaps not even submitted. Despair over Alexander's absolutism caused Radishchev to kill himself.