affected Russian life, namely by paving the way for the development of political secret societies. These had at first unmistakable resemblances to lodges, and among the decabrists were a number of ear-members of lodges and sons of freemasons.
It was inevitable that the spread of the ideals of enlightenment and humanitarianism, as preached not by the freemasons alone but by eighteenth-century philosophy and literature in general, should lead in Russia to the question of serfdom becoming foremost in all theoretical and practical thought. It was impossible that Pugačev's revolt should pass without notice. Catherine said that it would be better to grant freedom to the serfs than to leave them to secure freedom by force.
In Russia as in the west there were practical no less than humanitarian grounds for the liberation of the peasantry. Russia needed more intensive agriculture; for the enhanced national expenditure and for the more refined tastes of the Gallicised nobility, more and more money was requisite. For fiscal reasons, therefore, the peasants must be freed, and must be trained so that their labours might be more productive. Europe set the example to Russia. In Austria, serfdom was abolished in the royal domains under Maria Theresa and Joseph II; Frederick the Great aimed at similar reforms in Prussia, though with little result; in France, enfranchisement was effected in 1789 (the work was actually begun in 1779) by an extremely radical measure, the landowners being dispossessed without compensation.
Radiščev was a typical representative of advanced Russian thought in the days of the French revolution. His education had been mainly German, for he was at Leipzig university from 1766 to 1771, but his political ideals were derived from those of French thinkers. In addition to Herder and Leibnitz, his teachers had been Rousseau, Mably, Raynal, the encyclopædists, and Voltaire. The form of his most notable work, Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow, was borrowed from Sterne. The contents are thoroughly Russian, splendid realistic descriptions of men and things, with enthusiastic propaganda on behalf of French ideals of freedom. The book was published in 1790. Catherine promptly had the author haled before the courts and sentenced to death—the same Catherine whose Book of Instructions of the year 1766 had been interdicted in the France of Louis XV. Radiščev's sentence was commuted to banishment, and he remained in Siberia until the accession of Paul I.
