Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow Irina Reyfman (snow like ashes .TXT) 📖

Successors … (Letopis’ Nesterova s prodolzhateliami …). For a description of Radishchev’s sources, see Reyfman, “Zametki A. N. Radishcheva po russkoi istorii,” 227–34.

49. The merchant class was not hereditary but was defined by voluntary membership of one of the three guilds. Beginning in 1785, a qualification for joining the third was declaring a capital sum of one thousand to five thousand rubles; the second, five thousand to ten thousand rubles; and the first, ten thousand to fifty thousand rubles. Those who declared capital of more than fifty thousand rubles received the status of eminent citizens (imenitye grazhdane). There were other ways to achieve this status.

50. Johann Kaspar Lavater (1741–1801): a Swiss writer, philosopher, physiognomist, and theologian best known for his Physiognomische Fragmente zur Beförderung der Menschenkenntnis und Menschenliebe (4 vols., 1775–78), in which he propagated the theory that human character was expressed in the structure of skull and face. His work was very popular in the late eighteenth century and was translated into English by Thomas Holcroft as Essays on Physiognomy for the Promotion of the Knowledge and the Love of Mankind (London: G. G. J. & J. Robinson, 1789).

51. Blackening one’s teeth was fashionable in Russia up to the early nineteenth century.

9. BRONNITSY

52. Perun: God of sky, thunder, and storms in Slavic mythology.

53. Radishchev has adapted the lines from Joseph Addison, Cato, a Tragedy (1712), act V, scene 1, verses 26–30:

The stars shall fade away, the sun himself

Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years,

But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,

Unhurt amidst the wars of elements,

The wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds.

10. ZAITSOVO

54. The future assessor’s service record is questioned by Krestyankin. According to the Table of Ranks regulations, the military service accorded hereditary nobility to commoners beginning with the lowest fourteenth class (this changed under Nicholas I, in 1846). In contrast, in civil and court service a commoner had to achieve the rank of the eighth class to receive hereditary nobility. Radishchev’s Krestyankin excludes court service from this rule, given that the lower ranks in the court service, in his exaggerated presentation, were occupied by stokers, lackeys, and butlers. Cf. “Vydropusk,” where Radishchev includes the argument against treating the court service as equal to civil service.

55. Lavater: see note 50.

56. The Zaporozhian Host (Zaporozhskaia Sech’): a military commune founded by the Cossacks in the late sixteenth century to the south of the rapids on the Dnieper. The Cossack society consisted of groups of several hundred men each, who lived and ate together. Corporal punishment was widely used—hence Radishchev’s comparison.

57. Peasants with land (odnodvortsy): in Muscovite Russia, the servitors of the lowest rank who were rewarded for their service by a small parcel of land. In the eighteenth century, their status was ambiguous: like state peasants, they paid taxes and had to serve the military (fifteen years instead of twenty-five); like noblemen, they had the right to own land and serfs and were free from corporal punishment.

58. The Summer Garden (Letnii sad), the Baba: parks in St. Petersburg. The first was imperial; the other belonged to the courtier A. A. Naryshkin. Both parks were open to the public.

59. Officials in the ranks of first to fourth class as were there wives and widows, were to be addressed “Your Excellency”; fifth to eighth, “Your High Ancestry”; ninth to fourteenth, “Your Honor.”

11. KRESTTSY

60. Boyar: a member of the feudal aristocracy, a group that by the late eighteenth century had declined, making the term old-fashioned.

61. Knowledge of English, unlike French and German, was unusual in the eighteenth century. Radishchev had at least a good reading knowledge.

13. VALDAI

62. Lada: Slavic goddess of love, most likely invented in the late eighteenth century; see Mikhail Chulkov, Dictionary of Russian Superstitions (Slovar’ russkikh sueverii) (St. Petersburg: 1782), 189.

63. Leander: in Greek mythology, a lover of Hero (see the following note). He had to swim the Hellespont at night to visit her and drowned one stormy night.

64. Hero: in Greek mythology, a priestess of Aphrodite, a beloved of Leander (see the previous note). Distraught, Hero drowned herself as well.

14. EDROVO

65. Annushka, Anyutushka, Anyuta, and Anyutka are all diminutives of Anna.

66. Pretender: Emelyan Pugachev (1742–1775), leader of the 1773–75 peasant rebellion executed in 1775, styled himself as the Emperor Peter III and was therefore a Pretender to the throne.

67. “You already know how to love”: cf. Nikolai Karamzin, “Poor Liza” (“Bednaia Liza,” 1792): “Peasant women too know how to love” (“I krest’ianki liubit’ umeiut”), a line that became proverbial. While it is likely that Karamzin had read the Journey when he wrote his famous story, there is no proof he had.

68. Vanya, Vanka, and Vanyukha are all diminutives of Ivan.

69. Piter: see note 11.

15. KHOTILOV

70. “And we, the sons of glory, we, glorious by name and deeds among the peoples of the Earth”: the original plays on the similarity of the words slava (glory) and slovuty (known, glorious) and slaviane (Slavs). This false etymology was popular in the eighteenth century. See, for example, the beginning of Vasily Trediakovsky’s “Discourse on the Primacy of the Slavic Language Over Teutonic” (“Rassuzhdenie o pervenstve slavenskogo iazyka pred tevtonicheskim,” published in 1773).

71. “Change your name and the story talks about you”: a quotation from Horace, Satires, I.1. 69–70: “Mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur” (“With the name changed, the same tale / Is told of you”).

72. A reference to the Pugachev rebellion; see note 66.

73. Table of Ranks: see note 9.

16. VYSHNY VOLOCHOK

74. “Cursed is the ground in its needs” (Prokliata zemlia v delakh svoikh): a slightly changed quotation from Genesis 3:17: “Cursed is the ground for thy sake.”

75. Monthly allocation (mesiachina) of food, normally dispensed to house serfs.

76. In Christian traditions, including Eastern Orthodox tradition, Easter week (Svyataya nedelya) is the period of seven days from Easter Sunday through to the following Saturday. Lent ends on Easter Sunday, and the following week is the time when food containing meat or milk is allowed.