Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow

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The Journey From St. Petersburg to Moscow (in Russian: Путешествие из Петербурга в Москву), published in 1790, was the most famous work by the Russian writer Aleksandr Nikolayevich Radishchev.

The work, often described as a Russian Uncle Tom's Cabin, is a polemical study of the problems in the Russia of Catherine the Great - serfdom, the powers of the nobility, the issues in government and governance, social structure and personal freedom and liberty.

The book was immediately banned and Radishchev sentenced, first to death, then to banishment in eastern Siberia. It was not freely published in Russia until 1905.

In the book Radishchev takes an imaginary journey between Russia's two principal cities; each stop along the way reveals particular problems for the traveller through the medium of story telling.

The book itself represented a challenge to Catherina in Russia, despite the fact that Radishchev was no revolutionary - merely an observer of the ills he saw within Russian society and government at the time.

Published during the period of the French Revolution, the book borrows ideas and principles from the great philosophes of the day relating to an enlightened outlook and the concept of Natural Law.