Journey from Petersburg to Moscow (World Classics Literature, Russian Language Edition) [Mass Market Paperback]

Radishchev (Author)

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 159 pages
• Publisher: Distribooks Inc (June 1995)
• Language: Russian
• ISBN-10: 2877142582
• ISBN-13: 978-2877142588
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 4.1 x 0.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,614,088 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Braking a false mirror, March 31, 2000

By 

Andrey A. Kostin - See all my reviews

This review is from: Journey from Petersburg to Moscow (World Classics Literature, Russian Language Edition) (Mass Market Paperback)

The book was written in 1789-1790 and is the most popular ofRadishchev's works. The cause is not only it's content but as wellthat for writing it Radishchev was sent to Siberia. In this book in a form of a journey, rather popular in XVIII century (for example - Stern's "Sentimental Journey"), which lets one include in a description any narrative fragments, is widely described the situation in Russia in the end of the XVIII century (political, economical, moral). The book starts with epigraph "A fat huge beast, barking with its 100 maws", which is a contamination of 2 lines from Trediakovsky's "Tilemachida", concerning the description of the place in Hell where suffer the bad monarchs. They see two mirrors, in one of which they see them as they were told they looked like when they were alive, and in the other one - their real views, among which there are Cerber and Hydra. Radichev tries to make a similar mirror of his book - he tries to show both the imaginative and the real condition of the russian reality, parts of which he tries to describe. As I said, a journey con include easily any narrative fragment, so in Radishchev's text one can see anything - bright stories, philosophy, economical projects etc. Certainly, it would be difficult to read this book, but not only cause of the difficulty of the language, which is much easier in the translation, but because of a difficulty with which one can get familiar with the realities of other culture of a difficult epoch. But the one who would read it would get a good idea of what is russian prose of the 2nd part of the XVIII century and what was Russia at that time.