Our source for this translation is the text published in A. N. Radishchev, Puteshestvie iz Peterburga v Moskvu. Vol’nost’, ed. V. A. Zapadov (St. Petersburg: Nauka, 1992). While we have followed this edition’s paragraphing and punctuation, we have departed from its tendency to print certain words (usually religious in meaning, such as “God” and related pronouns) in lowercase and normalized according to standard English practice. In this regard, the first edition as printed by Radishchev has been of somewhat limited use because the book, like many eighteenth-century editions, is typographically inconsistent, although in most instances these words appear in uppercase. While we have also consulted the edition published by Andrei Kostin, generally based on Zapadov’s text, and taken note of his more liberal use of uppercase, we have preferred to follow the usage in the original 1992 publication.
All notes in the backmatter are by the translators. The footnotes in the text are of two kinds: simple translation glosses, indicated by “—Trans.,” and Radishchev’s own footnotes, some of which include lengthy passages from his source documents. The transliteration of Russian words in English follows house style and in most instances omits the soft-sign and other diacritics. Chapters are not numbered in Radishchev’s original; that numbering is added for the readers’ convenience.