Radishchev illustrated the effects of serfdom by creating numerous scenes described by “the traveler” as he passed through villages, towns, and staging posts during his journey. He portrayed the abuse of serf labor, the shocking verdicts of corrupt judges, and the defenseless situation of serf women at the mercy of predatory owners. In one episode, three brutal sons of a landlord attack, bind, and gag a beautiful serf maiden on the morning of her wedding day, intending to use her for their “beastly purpose.” The serf bridegroom sees what is happening, charges the three evildoers, routs them, and “breaks the head” of one of them. As punishment, the landlord then orders a merciless flogging of the bridegroom. The young serf accepts this—until he sees the landlord’s three sons dragging his future wife back into their house. He breaks free, saves the girl, and faces his three enemies, whirling a fencepost over his head. At this point, other serfs arrive, and in the ensuing melee, the landlord and his three sons are beaten to death. All of the serfs involved are condemned to penal servitude for life. Radishchev told this story not only as an example of the nature of master-serf relationships but also to warn his readers that many serfs, driven to desperation, were only awaiting a chance to rise in revolt:
Do you know, dear fellow citizens, what destruction threatens us and in what peril we stand? … A stream that is barred in its course becomes more powerful. Once it has burst the dam, nothing can stem its flood. Such are our brothers whom we keep enchained. They are waiting for a favorable chance and time. The alarm bell rings. And the destructive force of bestiality breaks loose with terrifying speed.… Death and fiery desolation will be the answer to our harshness and inhumanity. The more procrastinating and stubborn we have been about the loosening of their fetters, the more violent they will be in their vengefulness. Bring back to your memory the events of former times [Pugachev].… They spared neither sex nor age. They sought more the joy of vengeance than the benefit of broken shackles. This is what awaits us. This is what we must expect.
As a palliative to this grim prospect, Radishchev offered a plan for the gradual emancipation of serfs. All domestic serfs were to be emancipated at once; agricultural serfs would be granted full ownership of private plots and then be allowed to use their profits to buy their own freedom. They would be allowed to marry without asking their masters’ permission. And they would be judged in courts of their peers—that is, by other peasants.
Catherine read the book in June 1790 and filled the margins with notes. She gave Radishchev intellectual credit: “[The author] has learning enough, and has read many books … he has imagination enough, and he is audacious in his writing.” She guessed that he acquired his education in Leipzig, “hence the suspicion falls on M. Radishchev, the more so because he is said to have a printing press in his house.” Had the book been written thirty or even twenty years earlier, Catherine might have recognized some of her own views; now, from her new perspective, she declared that “the purpose of this book is clear on every page. Its author, infected and filled with the French madness, is trying in every possible way to break down respect for authority and the authorities, to stir up in the people’s indignation against their superiors and against the government.” She rejected Radishchev’s portrayal of the behavior of landowners and the condition of serfs and was outraged by his warnings of serf rage and impending revenge. The author, she declared, is “a rabble-rouser, worse than Pugachev … inciting the serfs to bloody rebellion.” And he was inciting not only the peasants but the general population to disregard the authority of all rulers, from empresses down to local officials. In Radishchev’s denunciations of her government and his mingling of the Pugachev horrors with the new “poisons” being concocted in France, she saw an effort to propagate the beliefs of the revolutionaries in Paris and destabilize Russia at a time when the country was fighting two wars. The book, she wrote in a margin, “could not be tolerated.”
