The career of Aleksandr Nikolaevich Radishchev, whom Soviet critics christened "the first Russian revolutionary," constitutes one of the most perplexing issues in Russian literary history. The fact that his main claim to fame, the Puteshestvie iz Peterburga v Moskvu (Journey from Petersburg to Moscow, 1790)--a sharp denunciation of serfdom and autocratic rule in Russia--was banned and its author exiled to Siberia accorded Radishchev the status of a martyr in later tradition. Yet why should this writer--who took almost no part in Russian literary life and whose main work, which Aleksandr Pushkin and others have declared to be mediocre, was almost completely unknown to the reading public--occupy one of the highest places in the pantheon of Russian letters? The question is whether Radishchev's actual place in Russian literature really corresponds to this estimate, or whether it merely reflects his reputation as a revolutionary and the Russian tendency to equate...