Russia under the Old regime

148

dom with slavery is at least two centuries old. While studying at the University of Leipzig in the 1770s, an impressionable young Russian gentleman, Alexander Radishchev, read Abbe Raynal's Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Commerce of the Europeans in the Indies. In the Eleventh Book of this work there is a harrowing description of slavery in the Caribbean which Radishchev connected with what he had seen in his native land. The allusions to serfdom in his Journey from St Petersburg to Moscow (1790) were among the first in which the analogy between serfdom and slavery was implicitly drawn by stressing those features (e.g. absence of marriage rights) which indeed were common to both. The abolitionist literature of the following decades, written by authors raised in the spirit of western culture, turned the analogy into a commonplace; and from there it entered the mainstream of Russian and western thought. But even when serfdom was in full bloom, the facile identification was rejected by keener observers. Having read Radish-chev's book, Pushkin wrote a parody called Journey from Moscow to St Petersburg in which the following passage occurs:

Fonvizin, who [late in the eighteenth century] travelled in France, writes that in all conscience the condition of the Russian peasant seems to him more fortunate than that of the French farmer. I believe this to be true... Read the complaints of English factory workers; your hair will stand on end. How much repulsive oppression, incomprehensible sufferings! What cold barbarism on the one hand, and what appalling poverty on the other. You will think that we are speaking of the construction of the Egyptian pyramids, of Jews working under Egyptian lashes. Not at all: we are talking about the textiles of Mr Smith or the needles of Mr Jackson. And note that all this are not abuses, not crimes, but occurrences which take place within the strict limits of legality. It seems there is no creature in the world more unfortunate than the English worker... In Russia, there is nothing like it. Obligations are altogether not very onerous. The soul tax is paid by the mir; the corvee is set by law; the obrok is not ruinous (except in the neighbourhood of Moscow and St Petersburg, where the diversity of industry intensifies and stimulates the greed of owners). The landlord, having set the obrok, leaves it up to the peasant to get it whenever and by whatever means he chooses. The peasant engages in whatever enterprises he can think of and sometimes travels two thousand kilometres to earn money... Violations are everywhere numerous; crimes are dreadful everywhere. Take a look at the Russian peasant: is there a trace of slavish degradation in his behaviour and speech? Nothing need be said of his boldness and cleverness. His entrepreneurship is well known. His agility and dexterity are amazing. A traveller journeys from one end of Russia to the other, ignorant of a single word of Russian, and he is everywhere understood, everyone fulfils his requests and enters into agreements with him. You will never find among the Russian people that which the French call un badaut [an idler or loafer]: you