Alexander Radishchev wrote A Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow in 1790 — and Catherine II pronounced him "a rebel worse than Pugachev." The book was destroyed; its author was sentenced to death, a sentence later commuted to Siberia.
Born in 1749 into a noble family, he studied in Leipzig, read the French philosophes, and served in the customs office. The Journey pauses at every post station between the two capitals, and everywhere finds the same things: serfdom, poverty, arbitrary power.
Alexander I recalled him from exile in 1801. Radishchev sat on a commission drafting new laws — and saw that nothing was changing. In 1802 he drank poison, presumably by intent.
"I looked around me — and my soul was wounded by the sufferings of mankind." The opening line of the Journey. It is as relevant today as ever.