February 29, 2012

Alexander Ivanovich Herzen


Alexander Ivanovich Herzen

The Russian writer Alexander Ivanovich Herzen was born in Moscow on March 25, 1812 (April 6, New Style). Thanks to a famous phrase from Lenin’s “In Memory of Herzen” – “The Decembrists awakened Herzen. Herzen began the task of revolutionary agitation.” – everyone who grew up in the Soviet Union knew Herzen’s name, whether or not they had ever read a line of his work.

Lenins’ phrase inspired the contemporary poet Naum Korzhavin to write the humorous, “In Memory of Herzen or Ballad of a Historic Lack of Sleep,” which explains all of Russia’s historical woes in terms of the crankiness a series of the country’s revolutionary heroes felt after being awakened before they had gotten a good night’s sleep.

But actually, the common conception of Herzen as a revolutionary is rather one-sided. Dostoevsky wrote about this after Herzen’s death, expressing the opinion that his revolutionary activities represented a departure from his true calling as a writer:

“Whenever and wherever, Herzen was a writer first and foremost. The poet prevails in every action he took. The agitator was a poet, the political figure was a poet, the socialist was a poet, and the philosopher was a poet to the utmost! This quality explains much of what he did, even his flippancy and inclination to make puns when weighty matters were being discussed.”

Herzen was born to Muscovite Ivan Yakovlev and a German named Luisa Haag. The couple was not legally wed, so their illegitimate child was brought up as his father’s ward. Although Herzen did not grow up deprived of attention, his status as someone born out of wedlock left him with a sense of estrangement. In his memoirs, the writer referred to the house where he was born and grew up as a “strange abbey,” and the only pleasure of childhood he recalled was playing with the serf boys. Memoirs by witnesses to the war with Napoleon, the poetry of Pushkin and Ryleyev, the writings of Voltaire and Schiller – these provided the main milestones in the development of Herzen’s young mind. But of all the influences that shaped Herzen, certainly the Decembrist uprising was the most important. After many of the Decembrists were executed, Herzen and his friend Nikolai Ogaryov pledged to avenge them, taking a famous oath on Moscow’s Sparrow Hills.

In 1829, Herzen was admitted into Moscow University's School of Physics and Mathematics, where he joined a discussion circle of progressive students dedicated to the burning issues of the day. He graduated in 1833 with a silver medal and was arrested the following year, along with other members of the circle. After interrogating him, the Investigative Commission reached the conclusion that Herzen’s convictions made him a danger to the Russian state. He was exiled, first to Perm, and then to Vyatka, where he was assigned to work in the governor’s office. A few years later, in 1837, Vyatka was visited by the future emperor, Alexander II, who was accompanied by Vasily Zhukovsky. The renowned poet interceded on Herzen’s behalf and arranged to have him transferred to Vladimir that same year. Once there, Herzen managed to make secret trips to Moscow to visit his fiancée. They were soon married. Four children were born to the couple between 1839 and 1850.

Herzen’s years of being under political surveillance finally came to an end in July 1839, and he was able to freely visit Moscow and St. Petersburg. His freedom was short-lived, however: the following year, a letter he sent complaining about the “murder” committed by a St. Petersburg policeman was intercepted by the censors. Nicholas I ordered that he be exiled to Novgorod and deprived of the right to visit the capitals. He was not able to return to Moscow until his friends’ intercessions on his behalf finally bore fruit in July 1842. In the years that followed he wrote two stories, “Doctor Krupov” and “The Thieving Magpie,” and the novel Who Is to Blame?, the title of which is thought to have posed  “one of the two main questions confronting Russia.” The other was posed by Nikolai Chernyshevsky in the title of his novel, What is to Be Done?

In 1847, Herzen and his family left Russia, never to return, as it turned out, and began a voyage across Europe that lasted many years. In 1850-1852, the writer suffered a series of personal tragedies: his wife’s unfaithfulness, the death of his mother and his youngest son, and the death of his wife in childbirth.

In 1852, Herzen settled in London. By now, he was perceived as a key figure in the Russian emigration. Together with Ogaryov, he founded the Free Russian Press, which published the almanac The Polar Star,the newspaper The Bell (sometimes known in English by its Russian name, Kolokol), and the anthology, Voices from Russia. The press also published the memoirs of Decembrists and Russian historical documents, including some containing information about the circumstances surrounding the death of Peter the Great’s son, Tsarevich Alexei, the murder of Pavel I, and the death of Alexander Pushkin, as well as uncensored verse by Pushkin and other poets. In 1858, it republished Alexander Radishchev’s Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow, giving it new life.

The most important work of Herzen’s years in emigration was My Past and Thoughts, a synthesis of the genres of memoir, political essay, literary portraits, autobiographical fiction, and historical chronicle. At first Herzen set out to write about the events of his personal life, but with time he became more ambitious and the book became not only a confession of sorts, but also an outstanding literary testament to the times.

In 1865, Herzen set out again to travel across Europe, in an effort to escape the misfortunes of his personal life (his three-year-old twins had died of diphtheria and his new wife did not get along with his older children). By now, he had drifted apart from revolutionaries, especially Russian radicals. In 1869 the opportunist and murderer Sergei Nechayev turned up in Western Europe and managed to convince Ogaryov that a major revolt was brewing in Russia. Herzen, however, immediately saw Nechayev for the impostor he later proved to be. Before ever meeting him, Herzen developed a strong dislike for Nechayev based on the first in a series of incendiary proclamations he issued. He rejected Ogaryov’s proposal to lend financial support to Nechayev’s activities, which caused one of the worst rifts to roil their years of friendship.

Herzen refused to recognize the young émigrés that surrounded him as his successors and called them the “Sobakeviches and Nozdryovs of nihilism.”* [Referring to two landowners from Gogol’s Dead Souls, the former financially shrewd and crafty and the latter unscrupulous and crude.] He perceived this new generation as indifferent toward education and lacking any knowledge of the people. As Herzen wrote, “They walked off the collapsing stage on which they had already performed their roles… They had almost no experience in scholarship or business at all and no knowledge of Russia.”

A year before meeting Nechayev, Herzen already seemed to have taken an accurate measure of the new generation. Many of them grew up to be Nechayevesque monsters. As Herzen admitted, disillusionment with both the progress Europe was making and “former revolutionary paths” led him “to the brink of moral destruction,” from which the only thing that saved him was his “faith in Russia.”

Now and into the future – including after his death in Paris in 1870 – Herzen’s personality and works were a source of fascination for Dostoevsky (they first met in 1862 and encountered one another on two more occasions). Over many years, the great writer engaged in a sort of dialogue with Herzen in Diary of a Writer and the novels The Devils  and The Adolescent. Although Dostoevsky had little sympathy for Herzen’s Westernism, with time he was increasingly drawn to Herzen the thinker: “Without a doubt, this was an extraordinary man, a great wit, and a remarkable conversation partner.”

[Translation: Nora Favorov]

Like this post? Get a weekly email digest + member-only deals

Some of Our Books

The Moscow Eccentric

The Moscow Eccentric

Advance reviewers are calling this new translation "a coup" and "a remarkable achievement." This rediscovered gem of a novel by one of Russia's finest writers explores some of the thorniest issues of the early twentieth century.
White Magic

White Magic

The thirteen tales in this volume – all written by Russian émigrés, writers who fled their native country in the early twentieth century – contain a fair dose of magic and mysticism, of terror and the supernatural. There are Petersburg revenants, grief-stricken avengers, Lithuanian vampires, flying skeletons, murders and duels, and even a ghostly Edgar Allen Poe.
Dostoyevsky Bilingual

Dostoyevsky Bilingual

Bilingual series of short, lesser known, but highly significant works that show the traditional view of Dostoyevsky as a dour, intense, philosophical writer to be unnecessarily one-sided. 
Murder at the Dacha

Murder at the Dacha

Senior Lieutenant Pavel Matyushkin has a problem. Several, actually. Not the least of them is the fact that a powerful Soviet boss has been murdered, and Matyushkin's surly commander has given him an unreasonably short time frame to close the case.
Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices

Stargorod: A Novel in Many Voices

Stargorod is a mid-sized provincial city that exists only in Russian metaphorical space. It has its roots in Gogol, and Ilf and Petrov, and is a place far from Moscow, but close to Russian hearts. It is a place of mystery and normality, of provincial innocence and Black Earth wisdom. Strange, inexplicable things happen in Stargorod. So do good things. And bad things. A lot like life everywhere, one might say. Only with a heavy dose of vodka, longing and mystery.
Marooned in Moscow

Marooned in Moscow

This gripping autobiography plays out against the backdrop of Russia's bloody Civil War, and was one of the first Western eyewitness accounts of life in post-revolutionary Russia. Marooned in Moscow provides a fascinating account of one woman's entry into war-torn Russia in early 1920, first-person impressions of many in the top Soviet leadership, and accounts of the author's increasingly dangerous work as a journalist and spy, to say nothing of her work on behalf of prisoners, her two arrests, and her eventual ten-month-long imprisonment, including in the infamous Lubyanka prison. It is a veritable encyclopedia of life in Russia in the early 1920s.
Tolstoy Bilingual

Tolstoy Bilingual

This compact, yet surprisingly broad look at the life and work of Tolstoy spans from one of his earliest stories to one of his last, looking at works that made him famous and others that made him notorious. 
Jews in Service to the Tsar

Jews in Service to the Tsar

Benjamin Disraeli advised, “Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.” With Jews in Service to the Tsar, Lev Berdnikov offers us 28 biographies spanning five centuries of Russian Jewish history, and each portrait opens a new window onto the history of Eastern Europe’s Jews, illuminating dark corners and challenging widely-held conceptions about the role of Jews in Russian history.
93 Untranslatable Russian Words

93 Untranslatable Russian Words

Every language has concepts, ideas, words and idioms that are nearly impossible to translate into another language. This book looks at nearly 100 such Russian words and offers paths to their understanding and translation by way of examples from literature and everyday life. Difficult to translate words and concepts are introduced with dictionary definitions, then elucidated with citations from literature, speech and prose, helping the student of Russian comprehend the word/concept in context.
The Little Golden Calf

The Little Golden Calf

Our edition of The Little Golden Calf, one of the greatest Russian satires ever, is the first new translation of this classic novel in nearly fifty years. It is also the first unabridged, uncensored English translation ever, and is 100% true to the original 1931 serial publication in the Russian journal 30 Dnei. Anne O. Fisher’s translation is copiously annotated, and includes an introduction by Alexandra Ilf, the daughter of one of the book’s two co-authors.
Davai! The Russians and Their Vodka

Davai! The Russians and Their Vodka

In this comprehensive, quixotic and addictive book, Edwin Trommelen explores all facets of the Russian obsession with vodka. Peering chiefly through the lenses of history and literature, Trommelen offers up an appropriately complex, rich and bittersweet portrait, based on great respect for Russian culture.
A Taste of Chekhov

A Taste of Chekhov

This compact volume is an introduction to the works of Chekhov the master storyteller, via nine stories spanning the last twenty years of his life.

About Us

Russian Life is a publication of a 30-year-young, award-winning publishing house that creates a bimonthly magazine, books, maps, and other products for Russophiles the world over.

Latest Posts

Our Contacts

Russian Life
73 Main Street, Suite 402
Montpelier VT 05602

802-223-4955