Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
1776. In his best-known work,
Journey from St.
Petersburg to Moscow
(1790), he forcefully por-
trayed the inhumanity of
SERFDOM
and called for
a revolution. As a result, he was charged with
high treason and sentenced to death, but this was
commuted to 10 years' banishment in Siberia
and loss of noble status. He continued to write
while in exile, and after
CATHERINE II
's death in
1796,
PAUL I
allowed him to return to his estates
under police supervision. In 1801
ALEXANDER I
gave him a full amnesty and made him a mem-
ber of the commission for the codification of
laws. But despairing of his efforts on behalf of
the serfs, Radishchev committed suicide on
September 11, 1802. Some have interpreted his
suicide as an act of political defiance, pointing to
a note found among his papers that read, “Pos-
terity will avenge me.” His
Journey
and his tragic
life made a strong impression upon Russian pro-
gressive thought in the 19th century.
whose packed performances in his Leningrad
theater appealed to broad audiences ranging from
celebrities to officials to common citizens. His
repertoire tackled the permissible themes of
shortages, poor service, shoddy products, bureau-
cratism, careerism, and alcohol abuse in a gen-
tle, inclusive way that also relied on faces,
gestures, and odd voices to entertain audiences.
Many of his skits became part of the cultural
canon of Soviet life in the 1960s and 1970s.
Raikin's nationwide popularity was made possi-
ble by the spread of Soviet television in the
1960s and by the ease with which his brand of
variety show adapted to the new medium. He
moved to Moscow in 1981 and was named Hero
of Socialist Labor. In his final years he turned to
long, moralistic monologues that appealed less
to his audiences. After his death, his son Kon-
stantin followed in his footsteps.
Rasputin, Grigorii Efimovich
(1872?-1916)
religious figure
A monk whose reputed healing powers brought
him into the court of
NICHOLAS II
and
ALEXANDRA
,
Rasputin became a symbol of corruption and
decline in the final years of the
ROMANOV
DYNASTY
. Rasputin was born Grigorii Efimovich
Novykh in the Siberian town of Tobolsk. Details
of his early years remain hazy, as he was wont to
embellish them once he left Siberia. He is known,
however, to have been influenced by the Khlysty
(Flagellants), a religious sect. Rasputin arrived in
St. Petersburg in 1903 with the reputation of
being a
starets
(holy man) with healing powers
and gained entrée into the upper reaches of
imperial society. In 1905 he gained the loyalty of
the empress Alexandra when he staunched the
bleeding of the royal couple's heir, Aleksei, who
suffered from hemophilia. A pious woman,
Alexandra regarded Rasputin as a divine mis-
sionary and welcomed him into her circle, while
Nicholas was less enthralled by Rasputin but
respected his wife's gratefulness. Possessed of a
large sexual appetite and advocating a philoso-
Raikin, Arkadi Isaakovich
(1911-1987)
entertainer
A beloved and enormously popular entertainer
and comedian, Raikin was born in Riga and
grew up in provincial Russia before moving to
Leningrad. Abandoning his original intention to
study chemistry for the theater, Raikin gradu-
ated from the Leningrad Theatrical School in
1935. He worked as a dramatic actor for a few
years in the Leningrad Theater for the Working
Youth (TRAM) and the Lenin Komsomol The-
ater before turning to
estrada,
the distinctive Rus-
sian variety genre that combined verbal satire
and comedy routines with music and dance. In
1939 Raikin won the All-Union Estrada Compe-
tition in Moscow, launching a career that would
dominate Soviet
estrada
until his death. In the
early post-World War II period, Raikin, like other
Jewish performers, suffered from the extreme
ANTI
-
SEMITISM
of the late
STALIN
years. Prudently,
he modified his act to include more satire of life
in the capitalist West, as in skits like “Around the
World in Eighty Days” (1951). In the
KHRUSH
-
CHEV
years Raikin emerged as a mature comic
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