1st Edition

The First Russian Radical Alexander Radishchev 1749-1802

By David Marshall Lang Copyright 1959
    310 Pages
    by Routledge

    310 Pages
    by Routledge

    When this was originally published in 1959 it was the first full-length biography of Alexander Radishchev published outside Russia and was based on hitherto unpublished material, memoir literature and Radishchev’s own writings. Radishchev occupies a notable position in the history of European social thought, as the first writer to apply the criteria of the Western Age of Reason to conditions in Tsarist Russia. Sentenced to death on the orders of Catherine the Great and subsequently exiled in Siberia, Radishchev stands out as the first great figure of the Russian radical intelligentsia and the first literary victim of Tsarist official intolerance.

    1. Childhood Days and Early Impressions 2. Student Years in Leipzig 3. Among the Senators 4. Lost Illusions 5. At the Receipt of Custom 6. Before the Storm 7. A Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow Part 1 8. A Journey From St. Petersburg to Moscow Part 2 9. A Journey From St. Petersburg to Moscow Part 3 10. The Reckoning 11. The Road to Exile 12. In Siberia 13. Home and Ruin 14. The Last Months: Radishchev and Alexander I 15. The Legacy of Radishchev.

    Biography

    David Marshall Lang was appointed Acting British Vice-Consul in Tabriz in 1945. In 1946 he became a fellow of St John’s College, Cambridge and lecturing in Georgian at SOAS London from 1949-52. From 1952-1953 he was senior fellow at the Russian Institute of Columbia University in New York. In 1958 he was appointed Reader in Caucasian Studies at SOAS. Visiting Professor of Caucasian Studies at UCLA from 1964-5, in 1965 he became Professor of Caucasian Studies at London University. He was Honorary Secretary of the Royal Asiatic Society from 1962-64 and held an Honorary Doctorate from Tbilisi University.