A Journey From St Petersburg To Moscow

Primarily an attack on serfdom and an appeal to the serfs voluntarily, Aleksandr Radishchv's Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow has often been described as a Russian Uncle Tom's Cabin. Published in 1790, the book was banned immediately and the author first sentenced to death, then banished to eastern Siberia. On the order of the Empress Catherine II, who read the Journey very carefully, all copies that could be found were collected and burned. The few that escaped were widely circulated and laboriously copied out by hand, but the book was not freely published in Russia until 1905.

Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow is among the most important pieces of writing to come out of Russia in the age of Catherine the Great. Alexander Radishchev's account of a fictional journey blends literature, philosophy, and political economy to expose social and economic injustices and their causes at all levels of Russian society.

Primarily an attack on serfdom and an appeal to the serfs voluntarily, Aleksandr Radishchv's Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow has often been described as a Russian Uncle Tom's Cabin. Published in 1790, the book was banned immediately and the author first sentenced to death, then banished to eastern Siberia. On the order of the Empress Catherine II, who read the Journey very carefully, all copies that could be found were collected and burned. The few that escaped were widely circulated and laboriously copied out by hand, but the book was not freely published in Russia until 1905.

A Brown Man in Russia describes the fantastical travels of a young, colored American traveler as he backpacks across Russia in the middle of winter via the Trans-Siberian. The book is a hybrid between the curmudgeonly travelogues of Paul Theroux and the philosophical works of Robert Pirsig. Styled in the vein of Hofstadter, the author lays out a series of absurd, but true stories followed by a deeper rumination on what they mean and why they matter. Each chapter presents a vivid anecdote from the perspective of the fumbling traveler and concludes with a deeper lesson to be gleaned. For those who recognize the discordant nature of our world in a time ripe for demagoguery and for those who want to make it better, the book is an all too welcome antidote. It explores the current global climate of despair over differences and outputs a very different message – one of hope and shared understanding. At times surreal, at times inappropriate, at times hilarious, and at times deeply human, A Brown Man in Russia is a reminder to those who feel marginalized, hopeless, or endlessly divided that harmony is achievable even in the most unlikely of places.