("Herzen's novel played a significant part in the intellec...)
"Herzen's novel played a significant part in the intellectual ferment of the 1840s. It is an important book in social and moral terms, and wonderfully expressive of Herzen's personality."?Isaiah BerlinAlexander Herzen was one of the major figures in Russian intellectual life in the nineteenth century. Who Is to Blame? was his first novel. A revealing document and a noteworthy contribution to Russian literature in its own right, it establishes the origins of Herzen's spiritual quest and the outlines of his emerging social and political beliefs, and it foreshadows his mature philosophical views.
Aleksandr Ivanovich Herzen was a Russian writer and thinker known as the "father of Russian socialism" and one of the main fathers of agrarian populism.
Background
Herzen was born on April 6, 1812, in Moscow, Russia. He was born out of wedlock to a rich Russian landowner, Ivan Yakovlev, and a young German Protestant woman, Henriette Wilhelmina Luisa Haag from Stuttgart. Herzen was born shortly before Napoleon's invasion of Russia and brief occupation of the city. His father, after a personal interview with Napoleon, was allowed to leave Moscow after agreeing to bear a letter from the French to the Russian emperor in St. Petersburg. His family accompanied him to the Russian lines.
Education
Herzen completed his studies at Moscow University.
Career
In 1834, Herzen and his lifelong friend Nikolay Ogarev were arrested and tried on charges of having attended a festival during which verses by Sokolovsky that were uncomplimentary to the tsar, were sung. He was found guilty, and in 1835 banished to Vyatka, now Kirov, in north-eastern Russia. He remained there until 1837, when the tsar's son, Grand Duke Alexander (later to become tsar Alexander II), accompanied by the poet Zhukovsky, visited the city and intervened on his behalf. Herzen was allowed to leave Vyatka for Vladimir, where he was appointed editor of the city's official gazette. In 1839 he was set free and returned to Moscow in 1840, where he met literary critic Vissarion Belinsky, who was strongly influenced by him. Upon arrival he was appointed as secretary to Count Strogonoff in the ministry of the interior at St Petersburg; but as a consequence of complaining about a death caused by a police officer, was sent to Novgorod, where he was a state councillor until 1842. In 1846, his father died, leaving him a large amount of property. In 1847, Herzen emigrated with his wife, mother and children, never to return to Russia. From Italy, on hearing of the revolution of 1848, he hastened to Paris and then to Switzerland. He supported the revolutions of 1848, but was bitterly disillusioned with European socialist movements after their failure. It was as a political writer that Herzen gained his reputation. His assets in Russia were frozen because of his emigration, however Baron Rothschild with whom his family had a business relationship negotiated the release of the assets, which were nominally transferred to Rothschild. In 1852 Herzen left Geneva for London, where he settled for many years. He hired Malwida von Meysenbug to educate his daughters. With the publications of his Free Russian Press, which he founded in London in 1853, he attempted to influence the situation in Russia and improve the situation of the Russian peasantry he idolized. In 1856 he was joined in London by his old friend Nikolay Ogarev. The two worked together on their Russian periodical Kolokol ("Bell"). Herzen spent time in London organising with the International Workingmen's Association, becoming well acquainted with revolutionary circles including the likes of Bakunin and Marx. It was during his time in London that Herzen began to make a name for himself for "scandal-mongering" when he told Bakunin, freshly arrived having escaped imprisonment in Siberia, that Marx had accused him of being a Russian agent; in reality, the two were on very good terms. In 1864, Herzen returned to Geneva, and after some time went to Paris, where he died in 1870 of tuberculosis complications. Originally buried in Paris, his remains were taken to Nice.
Herzen was disillusioned with the Revolutions of 1848 but not disillusioned with revolutionary thought. He became critical of those 1848 revolutionaries who were "so revolted by the Reaction after 1848, so exasperated by everything European, that they hastened on to Kansas or California". Herzen had always admired the French Revolution and broadly adopted its values. In his early writings, he viewed the French Revolution as the end of history, the final stage in social development of a society based on humanism and harmony. Throughout his early life, Herzen saw himself as a revolutionary radical called to fight the political oppression of Nicholas I of Russia. Essentially, Herzen fought against the ruling elites in Europe, against Christian hypocrisy and for individual freedom and self-expression. He promoted both socialism and individualism and argued that the full flowering of the individual could best be realized in a socialist order. He would however always reject grand narratives such as a predestined position for a society to arrive at, and his writings in exile promoted small-scale communal living with the protection of individual liberty by a noninterventionist government.
Connections
In 1837, he eloped with his cousin Natalia Zakharina, secretly marrying her. They had four children together. His mother and one of his sons died in a shipwreck in 1851. His wife carried on an affair with the German poet Georg Herwegh and died from tuberculosis in 1852. Herzen began an affair with Ogarev's wife Natalia Tuchkova, daughter of the war hero general Tuchkov. Tuchkova bore Herzen three more children.