Alexander I. Herzen Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Alexander I. Herzen (1812–1870) was a Russian writer, philosopher, and political activist. Considered by some to be the “father of Russian socialism,” Herzen spent much of his life in exile, agitating for political change in tsarist and autocratic Russia. Born in Moscow as the illegitimate son of a rich Russian landowner and a German woman, he completed his studies at Moscow University. In 1834, he was arrested for attending an event upholding views against the tsar. He was found guilty and exiled to a small town outside of Russia.

Herzen returned to Moscow in 1840 and was drawn into socialist literary circles. He worked as a state official in St. Petersburg and in Novgorod, sent to the latter as punishment for a critical remark about police violence. In 1846 his father died, leaving him a large fortune. In 1847 he left Russia, never to return. In the same year, his first major literary work, Whose Fault?, appeared, examining the emergence of new ideas in Russia through fictional characters.

In Europe, Herzen became a supporter for socialist causes, despite his disillusion with many in the socialist movement, including Karl Marx. Settling in London, he began publishing works critical of the system of government in Russia. In addition to his essays, the periodical The Bell (Kolokol; 1857–1867), which he edited with assistance from the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, gained a wide following and established Herzen as a leading voice for reform in Russia. In particular, Herzen attacked the institution of serfdom, the stifling Russian bureaucracy, and the lack of individual freedoms. It was said that the tsar himself read Herzen’s works.

As a socialist, Herzen is usually assumed to be one of the earliest of the Russian Westernizers, a group opposed by more traditional Slavophiles. While it is true that Herzen advocated individual freedom and did admire the French Revolution (1789–1799), after witnessing the failed revolutions in Europe in 1848, he became skeptical about violent uprisings, the subject of his work From the Other Shore (1850). Despite entreaties from more radical figures in Russia and in exile, Herzen did not use his writings to call for violence. Instead, his vision of Russia tilted toward peasant-based socialism, in which rural communes would live free of obtrusive government interference. In this respect, by putting faith in the peasantry, he shared much in common with the Slavophiles.

Herzen’s full agenda—including creation of a national parliament—was not realized in his lifetime. His decision in 1863 to support the demands of the Polish rebellion led many Russian liberals, who patriotically lined up with the tsar, to make a break with him. The Bell ceased publishing in 1868, and by the time of his death in Paris in 1870, Herzen had lost much of his earlier importance.

Herzen would, however, influence later Russian figures, particularly populists in the 1880s and 1890s who attempted to rally the peasants for political change. Although Herzen was a socialist, his humanistic ideas were not adopted by more revolutionary figures such as Lenin. Herzen did not, as the British philosopher Isaiah Berlin noted with admiration, seek to sacrifice individuals on the altar of abstractions—a charge sometimes levied at Lenin and his followers. The famous Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy praised Herzen as an extraordinary individual, and Herzen’s autobiography, My Past and Thoughts (1867), is considered a classic in Russian literature.

Bibliography:

Acton, Edward. Alexander Herzen and the Role of the Intellectual Revolutionary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.
Berlin, Isaiah. Russian Thinkers. New York: Penguin, 1979.
Herzen, Alexander. From the Other Shore and the Russian People and Socialism. Translated by Moura Budberg and Richard Wollheim. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979.
My Past and Thoughts:The Memoirs of Alexander Herzen. Translated by Constance Garnett. London: Chatto and Windus, 1979.
Malia, Martin. Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism, 1817–1855.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961.

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