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Founder of Russian socialism

Writer and publicist, philosopher and teacher, author of the memoirs “The Past and Thoughts”, founder of Russian free (uncensored) printing, Alexander Herzen was one of the most ardent critics of serfdom, and at the beginning of the 20th century he turned out to be almost a symbol of the revolutionary struggle. Until 1905, Herzen remained a banned writer in Russia, and the complete collection of the author’s works was published only after the October Revolution.

Alexander Herzen was the illegitimate son of a wealthy landowner Ivan Yakovlev and a German woman, Louise Haag, and therefore received the surname that his father came up with for him - Herzen (“son of the heart”). The boy did not have a systematic education, but numerous tutors, teachers and educators instilled in him a taste for literature and knowledge of foreign languages. Herzen was brought up on French novels, the works of Goethe and Schiller, and the comedies of Kotzebue and Beaumarchais. The literature teacher introduced his student to the poems of Pushkin and Ryleev.

“The Decembrists woke up Herzen” (Vladimir Lenin)

The Decembrist uprising made a great impression on 13-year-old Alexander Herzen and his 12-year-old friend Nikolai Ogarev; biographers claim that the first thoughts about freedom, dreams of revolutionary activity in Herzen and Ogarev arose precisely then. Later, as a student at the Faculty of Physics and Technology at Moscow University, Herzen took part in student protests. During this period, Herzen and Ogarev became friends with Vadim Passek and Nikolai Ketcher. A circle of people is forming around Alexander Herzen, just like him, who are keen on the works of European socialists.

This circle did not last long, and already in 1834 its members were arrested. Herzen was exiled to Perm, and then to Vyatka, but, partly at the request of Zhukovsky, our hero was transferred to Vladimir. It is believed that it was in this city that Herzen lived his happiest days. Here he got married, secretly taking his bride from Moscow.

In 1840, after a short stay in St. Petersburg and service in Novgorod, Herzen moved to Moscow, where he met Belinsky. The union of two thinkers gave Russian Westernism its final form.

“Hegel’s philosophy - revolution” (Alexander Herzen)

Herzen's worldview was formed under the influence of left-wing Hegelians, French utopian socialists and Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach. The Russian philosopher saw a revolutionary direction in Hegel’s dialectics; it was Herzen who helped Belinsky and Bakunin overcome the conservative component of Hegelian philosophy.

Having moved to the Mother See, Herzen became the star of Moscow salons; in oratory skills he was second only to Alexei Khomyakov. Publishing under the pseudonym Iskander, Herzen began to acquire a name in literature, publishing both works of art and journalistic articles. In 1841–1846, the writer worked on the novel “Who is to Blame?”

In 1846, he received a large inheritance after the death of his father and a year later he left for Paris, from where he sent four “Letters from Avenue Marigny” to Nekrasov for Sovremennik. They openly promoted socialist ideas. The writer also openly supported the February Revolution in France, which forever deprived him of the opportunity to return to his homeland.

“In the history of Russian social thought, he will always occupy one of the very first places”

Until the end of his days, Alexander Herzen lived and worked abroad. After the victory of General Cavaignac in France, he left for Rome, and the failure of the Roman Revolution of 1848–1849 forced him to move to Switzerland. In 1853, Herzen settled in England and there, for the first time in history, created a free Russian press abroad. The famous memoirs “The Past and Thoughts,” essays and dialogues “From the Other Shore” also appeared there. Gradually, the philosopher's interests moved from the European revolution to Russian reforms. In 1857, Herzen founded the magazine Kolokol, inspired by ideas that appeared in Russia after the Crimean War.

The special political tact of Herzen the publisher, who, without retreating from his socialist theories, was ready to support the reforms of the monarchy as long as he was confident in their effectiveness and necessity, helped “The Bell” become one of the important platforms on which the peasant issue was discussed. The magazine's influence declined when the issue itself was resolved. And Herzen’s pro-Polish position in 1862–1863 pushed him back toward that part of society that was not inclined toward revolutionary ideas. To young people, he seemed backward and outdated.

In his homeland, he was a pioneer in promoting the ideas of socialism and the European positivist and scientific worldview of 19th century Europe. Georgy Plekhanov openly compared his compatriot with Marx and Engels. Speaking about Herzen’s “Letters”, Plekhanov wrote:

“One can easily think that they were written not in the early 40s, but in the second half of the 70s, and, moreover, not by Herzen, but by Engels. To such an extent the thoughts of the first are similar to the thoughts of the second. And this striking similarity shows that Herzen’s mind worked in the same direction in which the mind of Engels, and therefore Marx, worked.”.

In the family of a wealthy Russian landowner I. A. Yakovlev.

Mother - Louise Haag, a native of Stuttgart (Germany). The marriage of Herzen's parents was not formalized, and he bore the surname invented by his father (from Herz - “heart”).

Alexander Ivanovich’s early spiritual development was facilitated by his acquaintance with the best works of Russian and world literature, with the forbidden “free” poems of Russian poets of the 10-20s. The “hidden” poetry of Pushkin and the Decembrists, the revolutionary dramas of Schiller, the romantic poems of Byron, the works of advanced French thinkers of the 18th century. strengthened Herzen's freedom-loving beliefs and his interest in the socio-political problems of life.

Young Alexander Ivanovich witnessed the powerful rise of the social movement in Russia caused by the Patriotic War of 1812. The Decembrist uprising had a huge impact on the formation of his revolutionary worldview. “The execution of Pestel and his comrades,” Herzen later wrote, “finally awakened the childish sleep of my soul” (“The Past and Thoughts”). From childhood, Herzen felt hatred for serfdom, on which the police-autocratic regime in the country was based.

In 1827, together with his friend N.P. Ogarev, on the Sparrow Hills, he took an oath to sacrifice his life to fight for the liberation of the Russian people.

In October 1829, Alexander Ivanovich entered the physics and mathematics department of Moscow University. Here, around him and Ogarev, a revolutionary circle of students formed, who deeply felt the defeat of the December uprising. The members of the circle followed the revolutionary movement in the West, studied the social-utopian theories of Western European socialists, “but most of all they preached hatred of all violence, of all government arbitrariness” (“The Past and Thoughts”). Herzen paid great attention to the study of natural sciences at the university; during his student years he wrote several works on natural science topics

“On the Place of Man in Nature”, 1832;

“Analytical presentation of the solar system of Copernicus”, 1833;

in the journal “Bulletin of Natural Sciences and Medicine” (1829), “Athenaeum” (1830) and others. Herzen A.I. published his translations and abstracts of works by Western European scientists devoted to problems of natural science. In these articles, he sought to overcome idealism and affirmed the idea of ​​the unity of consciousness and matter; at the same time, he could not be satisfied with the limited, metaphysical materialism of the 18th century. Herzen's philosophical quests in the 30-40s. were aimed at creating a materialist system that would meet the revolutionary liberation aspirations of the advanced circles of Russian society.

In July 1833, Alexander Ivanovich graduated from the university with a candidate's degree. Together with his friends, he made broad plans for further literary and political activities, in particular the publication of a magazine that would promote advanced social theories. But the tsarist government, frightened by the Decembrist uprising, mercilessly suppressed any manifestation of freedom-loving thought in Russian society.

In July 1834, Herzen, Ogarev and other members of the circle were arrested.

In April 1835, Herzen was exiled to Perm and then to Vyatka under strict police supervision. Prison and exile exacerbated the writer’s hatred of the autocratic-serf system; the exile enriched him with knowledge of Russian life, the vile feudal reality. Close contact with the life of the people had a particularly profound impact on Herzen.

At the end of 1837, at the request of the poet V. A. Zhukovsky, Alexander Ivanovich was transferred to Vladimir (on the Klyazma).

In May 1838 he married N.A. Zakharyina.

(“First meeting”, 1834-36;

"Legend", 1835-36;

"Second Meeting", 1836;

"From Roman Scenes", 1838;

“William Pen”, 1839, and others) he raised the question that deeply concerned him about the reorganization of society on a reasonable basis. In romantically elevated, sublime images, sometimes in a naive, conventional form, the ideological life, passionate philosophical and political quests of the advanced noble youth of the 30s found their embodiment. Imbued with the liberating ideas of his time, the works of the young Herzen, despite all their artistic immaturity, developed the civic motives of Russian literature of the 20s and affirmed “life for ideas” as “the highest expression of society.”

In the summer of 1839, police supervision was removed from Alexander Ivanovich, at the beginning of 1840 he returned to Moscow, and then moved to St. Petersburg.

In 1840-41, in Otechestvennye zapiski, Herzen published the autobiographical story “Notes of a Young Man.” As far as censorship conditions allowed, the story revealed a wide range of spiritual interests of the advanced Russian intelligentsia; its final chapter, in a sharp satirical form, denounced the “patriarchal mores of the city of Malinov” (meaning Vyatka), the vulgar life of the provincial bureaucratic-landowner environment. The story opened a new period in Herzen's literary activity; it marked the writer's entry onto the path of critical realism.

In 1841, for “spreading unfounded rumors” - a harsh review in a letter to his father about the crimes of the tsarist police - Herzen was again exiled, this time to Novgorod.

In the summer of 1842, Alexander Ivanovich returned to Moscow. He took an active part in the ideological struggle of the 40s, in exposing the ideologists of the landowner-serf reaction and bourgeois-noble liberalism, and showed himself to be a worthy ally of the great revolutionary democrat Belinsky. Relying in all his activities on the traditions of Radishchev, Pushkin, the Decembrists, deeply studying the outstanding works of advanced Russian and foreign literature and social thought, he defended the revolutionary path of development of Russia. He defended his views in the fight against Slavophiles, who idealized the economic and political originality of Tsarist Russia, and Western liberals, who worshiped the bourgeois system in Western Europe. Outstanding philosophical works of Herzen

"Amateurism in Science" (1842-43),

“Letters on the Study of Nature” (1844-46) played a huge role in the justification and development of the materialist tradition in Russian philosophy.

Herzen's materialism had an active, effective character and was permeated with a fighting democratic spirit. Alexander Ivanovich was one of the first thinkers who were able to understand Hegel’s dialectic and evaluate it as the “algebra of revolution,” while at the same time he accused the German idealists and Russian Hegelians of being out of touch with life. Together with Belinsky, Herzen put his philosophical quests at the service of the liberation struggle of the masses.

According to the description of V.I. Lenin, Herzen in serf Russia in the 40s. XIX century “managed to rise to such a height that he stood on a level with the greatest thinkers of his time... Herzen came close to dialectical materialism and stopped before historical materialism” (Poln. sobr. soch., vol. 21, p. 256). Herzen's articles provided a deep justification for the basic principles of materialist philosophy. He characterizes the history of the human world as a continuation of the history of nature; spirit, thought, Herzen proves, are the result of the development of matter. Defending the dialectical doctrine of development, the writer asserted contradiction as the basis of progress in nature and society. His articles contained an exceptionally vivid, polemically sharp presentation of the history of philosophical teachings, the struggle between materialism and idealism. Herzen noted the independence of Russian philosophy and the critical perception by Russian thinkers of the advanced philosophical trends of the West. Herzen's struggle with idealistic philosophy as the ideological bulwark of the feudal reaction had a clearly expressed political character. However, in the conditions of backward, feudal Russia, he was unable to give a materialist explanation of the struggle between ideological and materialist philosophical systems as one of the manifestations of the class struggle in society.

The materialist ideas developed in Herzen's articles had a great influence on the formation of the worldview of Russian revolutionary democracy in the 60s.

Alexander Ivanovich's active participation in the liberation struggle of the Russian people served as a powerful source of the artistic power of his literary creativity.

From 1841-46 he wrote the novel “Who is to Blame?” (full edition - 1847) he raised the most important questions of Russian life in the 40s. Herzen gave a devastating critique of serfdom and the landowner-autocratic system that suppressed the human personality. The severity of his protest against the serfdom acquired a truly revolutionary sound in the novel.

The 1846 story “The Thieving Magpie” (published in 1848) told about the inexhaustible creative powers and talent of the Russian people, about their desire for emancipation, about the consciousness of personal dignity and independence inherent in the common Russian person. With great force, the story revealed the general tragedy of the Russian people under the conditions of the autocratic-serf system.

The 1846 story “Doctor Krupov” (published in 1847), written in the form of a doctor’s notes, painted satirical pictures and images of Russian serfdom reality. The story's deep and penetrating psychological analysis, philosophical generalizations and social acuity make it a masterpiece of Herzen's artistic creativity.

In January 1847, persecuted by the tsarist government and deprived of the opportunity to conduct revolutionary propaganda, Herzen and his family went abroad. He arrived in France on the eve of the revolutionary events of 1848. In a series of articles “Letters from Avenue Marigny” (1847, later included in the book “Letters from France and Italy”, 1850, Russian edition - 1855), Herzen sharply criticized bourgeois society and came to the conclusion that “the bourgeoisie has no great past and no future.” At the same time, he wrote with great sympathy about the Parisian “blouses” - workers and artisans, expressing hope that the impending revolution would bring them victory

In 1848, Herzen witnessed the defeat of the revolution and the bloody rampant reaction. “Letters from France and Italy” and the book “From the Other Shore” (1850, Russian edition - 1855) captured the spiritual drama of the writer. Not understanding the bourgeois-democratic essence of the movement, the writer incorrectly assessed the revolution of 1848 as a failed battle for socialism.

The difficult experiences caused by the defeat of the revolution coincided with Herzen’s personal tragedy: in the fall of 1851, his mother and son died during a shipwreck; in May 1852, his wife died in Nice.

In August 1852, Alexander Ivanovich moved to London. The years of London emigration (1852-65) were a period of Herzen’s active revolutionary and journalistic activity.

In 1853 he founded the Free Russian Printing House.

In 1855 he began publishing the almanac "Polar Star".

In 1857, together with Ogarev, he began publishing the famous newspaper “The Bell”.

In the 60s Alexander Ivanovich Herzen finally came to the camp of Russian revolutionary democracy. Convinced from the experience of the liberation struggle of the Russian peasantry during the revolutionary situation of 1859-61 in the strength of the revolutionary people, he “fearlessly took the side of revolutionary democracy against liberalism” (Poln. sobr. soch., vol. 18, p. 14). Herzen exposed the predatory nature of the “liberation” of peasants in Russia. With great force he called the masses to revolutionary activity and protest (articles in Kolokol: “The Giant is Awakening!”, 1861;

“The Fossil Bishop, the Antediluvian Government and the Deceived People”, 1861, and others).

In the early 60s. Herzen and Ogarev took part in the activities of the secret revolutionary-democratic society “Land and Freedom” and conducted revolutionary propaganda in the army.

In 1863, Alexander Ivanovich strongly supported the national liberation movement in Poland. Herzen's consistent revolutionary-democratic position on the Polish question provoked fierce attacks from reactionary circles and the liberal circles that joined them.

In 1864, Alexander Ivanovich angrily denounced the tsarism’s reprisal against the leader of Russian revolutionary democracy, Chernyshevsky.

Herzen was one of the founders of populism, the author of the so-called theory of “Russian socialism”. Without understanding the actual social nature of the peasant community, he based his teaching on the liberation of peasants with land, on communal land ownership and the peasant idea of ​​“the right to land.” The theory of “Russian socialism” in reality did not contain “not a grain of socialism” (Lenin), but it in a unique form expressed the revolutionary aspirations of the peasantry, its demands for the complete destruction of landownership.

In the first years of emigration and in London, Herzen continued to work hard in the field of artistic creativity. He defended the inextricable connection between art and life and considered literature to be a political platform used to promote and defend progressive ideas and to address revolutionary preaching to a wide range of readers. In the book “On the Development of Revolutionary Ideas in Russia” (in French, 1851), he noted as a characteristic feature of Russian literature its connection with the liberation movement, the expression of the revolutionary, freedom-loving aspirations of the Russian people.

Using the example of the creativity of Russian writers of the 18th - 1st half of the 19th centuries. Herzen showed how literature in Russia became an organic part of the struggle of advanced social circles. Themes and images of Russian serf life continued to occupy a major place in Herzen’s artistic works (the unfinished story “Duty First,” 1847 - 51, published in 1854; “Damaged,” 1851, published in 1854).

At the same time, Herzen, an artist and publicist, was deeply concerned about issues of bourgeois reality in the countries of Western Europe. In his works of the 50-60s. he repeatedly addressed the life of various circles of bourgeois society

(essays “From the letters of a traveler in the interior of England”, “Both are better”, 1856;

cycle “Ends and Beginnings,” 1862-63;

story “Tragedy over a Glass of Grog”, 1863, and others).

From 1852-68 he wrote memoirs “The Past and Thoughts”, which occupy a central place in Herzen’s literary and artistic heritage. Herzen devoted more than 15 years of hard work to creating a work that became an artistic chronicle of social life and revolutionary struggle in Russia and Western Europe - from the Decembrist uprising and Moscow student circles of the 30s. until the eve of the Paris Commune. Among artistic autobiographies of all world literature of the 19th century. “The Past and Thoughts” have no equal work in terms of the breadth of coverage of the reality depicted, the depth and revolutionary courage of thought, the utmost sincerity of the narrative, the brightness and perfection of the images. Alexander Ivanovich appears in this book as a political fighter and a first-class artist of words. The narrative organically combines the events of the author’s personal life with phenomena of a socio-political nature; the memoirs captured the living image of a Russian revolutionary in his struggle against autocracy and serfdom. Having arisen from the writer’s passionate desire to tell the truth about his difficult family drama, “The Past and Thoughts” went beyond the original plan and became an artistic generalization of the era, as Herzen put it, “a reflection of history in a person who accidentally fell on its road.” Herzen's memoirs were one of those books from which Marx and Engels studied the Russian language.

Alexander Ivanovich Herzen was an artist-publicist. Articles, notes and pamphlets in Kolokol, full of revolutionary passion and anger, are classic examples of Russian democratic journalism. The writer's artistic talent was characterized by sharp satire; The writer saw in caustic, destructive irony and sarcasm an effective weapon of social struggle. For a more complete and profound disclosure of the ugly phenomena of reality, Herzen often turned to the grotesque. Drawing images of his contemporaries in his memoirs, the writer used the form of a sharp narrative story.

A great master of portrait sketches, Alexander Ivanovich knew how to laconically and accurately define the very essence of character, outline the image in a few words, capturing the main thing. Unexpected sharp contrasts were the writer’s favorite technique. Bitter irony alternates with a funny anecdote, sarcastic mockery is replaced by angry oratorical pathos, archaism gives way to bold Gallicism, folk Russian dialect is intertwined with an exquisite pun. These contrasts revealed Herzen’s characteristic desire for persuasiveness and clarity of the image, sharp expression of the narrative.

Artistic creativity of Herzen A.I. had a great influence on the formation of the style of critical realism and the development of all subsequent Russian literature.

In 1865, Herzen moved the publication of “The Bell” to Geneva, which in those years became the center of Russian revolutionary emigration. Despite all the differences with the so-called “young emigrants” on a number of significant political and tactical issues, Alexander Ivanovich saw in the heterogeneous intelligentsia “the young navigators of the future storm”, a powerful force of the Russian liberation movement.

The last years of the writer's life were marked by the further development of his worldview in the direction of scientific socialism. Herzen revises his previous understanding of the prospects for the historical development of Europe. In the final chapters of “Past and Thoughts” (1868-69), in his last story “The Doctor, the Dying and the Dead” (1869), he raises the question of “the modern struggle of capital with work,” new forces and people in the revolution. By persistently freeing himself from pessimism and skepticism in matters of social development, Herzen is approaching the correct view of the historical role of the new revolutionary class - the proletariat.

In a series of letters “To an Old Comrade” (1869), the writer turned his attention to the labor movement and the International led by Marx.

Alexander Ivanovich Herzen died in Paris, was buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery, then transported to Nice and buried next to the grave of his wife.

After Herzen's death, a sharp political struggle unfolded around his ideological legacy. Democratic criticism consistently considered Herzen among the great teachers of the revolutionary intelligentsia of the 70-80s. Reactionary ideologists, convinced of the futility of attempts to denigrate Herzen in the eyes of the younger generation, began to resort to falsifying his image. The fight against the writer’s ideological legacy took on a more subtle form of the hypocritical “struggle for Herzen.” At the same time, the works of Alexander Ivanovich continued to be under a strict and unconditional ban in Tsarist Russia.

The first posthumous Collected Works of the writer (in 10 volumes, Geneva, 1875-79) and other foreign publications of A.I. Herzen (“Collection of posthumous articles”, Geneva, 1870, ed. 2 -1874, and others) were poorly available Russian reader.

In 1905, after 10 years of persistent efforts, it was possible to achieve the first Russian edition of the Collected Works (in 7 volumes, St. Petersburg, published by Pavlenkov), but it was disfigured by numerous censorship omissions and gross distortions.

In the bourgeois-noble press of the late 19th century, and especially during the period of reaction after the defeat of the first Russian revolution, endless variations of false interpretations of Herzen’s views, his ideological and creative path were repeated. They found an extremely cynical expression in the “Vekhi” legend about Herzen as an implacable opponent of materialism and all revolutionary actions. Bourgeois ideologists belittled the role of the great thinker and writer in the development of Russian and world science and literature. Having thoroughly emasculated the revolutionary essence of the writer’s activity, the “knights of liberal Russian linguistics,” as Lenin called them, tried to use the distorted image of the democratic writer in their struggle against the revolutionary movement and progressive social thought in Russia.

Much credit for exposing the reactionary and liberal falsifiers of Herzen belongs to G.V. Plekhanov. In a number of articles and speeches (“Philosophical views of A. I. Herzen”, “A. I. Herzen and serfdom”, “Herzen the emigrant”, “About the book of V. Ya. Bogucharsky “A. I. Herzen”, speech at Herzen’s grave on the hundredth anniversary of his birth and others) Plekhanov gave a deep and comprehensive analysis of Herzen’s worldview and activities, showed the victory of materialism over idealism in his views, the closeness of many of Herzen’s philosophical positions to the views of Engels. However, in Plekhanov's assessment of Herzen, there were many serious mistakes that flowed from his Menshevik concept of the driving forces and the nature of the Russian revolution. Plekhanov was unable to reveal Herzen’s connection with the growing revolutionary movement of the broad masses of the peasantry. Disbelief in the revolutionary spirit of the Russian peasantry and misunderstanding of the connection between the peasantry and the raznochintsy revolutionaries of the 60s deprived Plekhanov of the opportunity to see the class roots of Herzen’s worldview and the entire Russian revolutionary democracy.

In the Capri course of lectures on the history of Russian literature (1908-1909), M. Gorky paid much attention to Alexander Ivanovich. Gorky emphasized the importance of Herzen as a writer who posed the most important social problems in his work. At the same time, having singled out the “drama of the Russian nobility” as his leading feature in Herzen’s worldview, Gorky considered him outside the main stages of the development of the Russian revolution and therefore could not determine the true historical place of Herzen the thinker and revolutionary, as well as Herzen the writer.

The articles and speeches of A.V. Lunacharsky played a significant role in the study of the writer’s ideological heritage. Lunacharsky correctly emphasized the interconnection of various aspects of Herzen’s activity and creativity, the organic unity in his works as an artist and publicist. The weak side of Lunacharsky’s works was the underestimation of the continuity of Russian revolutionary traditions, as a result of which he exaggerated the importance of Western influences on Herzen’s ideological development. Erroneously considering Herzen and Belinsky as exponents of a certain single “Westernizing” trend of the Russian intelligentsia of the 40s, Lunacharsky did not reveal the deep meaning of the struggle Russian revolutionary democracy with bourgeois-landowner liberalism. Lunacharsky mistakenly brought the writer’s worldview closer to the anarchist views of Bakunin and the liberal ideology of the later populists.

Only in the articles and statements of V.I. Lenin did Herzen’s revolutionary legacy receive truly scientific comprehension. Lenin's article “In Memory of Herzen” (1912) became the most important historical document in the struggle of the Bolshevik Party for the theoretical arming of the masses on the eve of a new upsurge in the labor movement. Using Herzen as an example, Lenin called for learning “the great significance of revolutionary theory.” Lenin recreates the image of the original Herzen, a revolutionary writer whose historical place, along with Belinsky and Chernyshevsky, is among the glorious predecessors of Russian Social Democracy. In Lenin's article, Lenin's worldview, creativity and historical role are subjected to a specific and comprehensive analysis; Lenin explores the issues of Herzen's ideological evolution in inextricable unity with his revolutionary political activities. Lenin deeply revealed the path of Herzen, a revolutionary, the direct heir of the Decembrists, to revolutionary peasant democracy. The article contained a remarkable description of the global significance of Herzen's philosophical quests.

The Great October Socialist Revolution for the first time opened up the opportunity for an in-depth study of Herzen's life and work. In the difficult conditions of the civil war and economic devastation, the 22-volume edition of the complete collection of his works and letters, edited by M. K. Lemke, was continued and successfully completed. This publication, despite serious shortcomings, became a major event in the life of young Soviet culture. The general upsurge of Marxist-Leninist literary thought, achieved on the basis of the directing and guiding instructions of the party, had a life-giving effect on the further development of Soviet Herzen studies.

The 125th anniversary of the birth of Alexander Ivanovich Herzen, widely celebrated in our country in the spring of 1937, marked the beginning of serious research work in the field of studying the writer’s heritage.

In subsequent years, Soviet Herzen scholars made valuable contributions to literary scholarship. A number of large monographs about Herzen were created; in 1954-65, the USSR Academy of Sciences published a scientific edition of the writer’s works in 30 volumes. Significant work on the study and publication of Herzen’s archival materials stored in Soviet and foreign collections was done by the editors of Literary Heritage.

The Soviet people highly value the rich heritage of Herzen - “a writer who played a great role in the preparation of the Russian revolution” (V.I. Lenin, Complete Works, vol. 21, p. 255).

Died 9(21).I.1870 in Paris.

The boy's first years were sad and lonely, but his unusually richly gifted nature began to unfold very early. He learned German from his mother, and French from conversations with his father and tutors. Yakovlev had a rich library, consisting almost exclusively of works by French writers of the 18th century, and the boy rummaged through it quite freely. Such reading aroused in the boy’s soul many questions that required resolution. It was with them that young Herzen addressed his French teachers, among whom was the old man Buchot, who took part in the French Revolution, and the Russians, especially the seminarian student Protopopov, who, noticing the boy’s curiosity, introduced him to the works of new Russian literature and - how Herzen later wrote - he began to carry him “finely copied and very worn notebooks of Pushkin’s poems - “Ode to Freedom”, “Dagger” - and “Dumas” by Ryleev.” Herzen copied all this and memorized it by heart. The events of December 14, 1825 determined the direction of Herzen’s thoughts and aspirations, likes and dislikes. “The stories about the indignation, about the trial, the horror in Moscow,” Herzen wrote in his memoirs, “struck me greatly; a new world was opening up to me, which became more and more the focus of my entire moral existence; I don’t know how it happened, but, understanding little or very vaguely what was going on, I felt that I was not on the same side from which grapeshot and victories, prisons and chains, the execution of Pestel and his comrades finally awakened the childish sleep of my soul. "... The boy’s loneliness also ended. He met, and soon became close friends with the son of Yakovlev’s distant relative, Ogarev. This closeness then turned into the closest friendship. Kind, gentle, dreamy, ready to give all of himself to serve his neighbors, Ogarev perfectly complemented the lively, energetic Herzen. The friends saw each other very often, read together, took long walks together, during which their thoughts and dreams were directed towards the fight against the injustice that surrounded Russian life. On one of these walks, in 1828, on the Sparrow Hills, Herzen and Ogarev swore eternal friendship and an unchanging decision to devote their entire lives to serving freedom. What was meant by this “freedom” was still unclear to them, but their imagination drew the heroes of the French Revolution, and the Decembrists, and Charles More, and Fiesco, and the Marquis Posa... Having overcome obstacles from the father, who wanted to arrange a military or diplomatic career, Herzen entered Moscow University and plunged into a new, noisy world. Distinguished by his extremely lively temperament, Herzen studies a lot, reads a lot, but speaks, argues, and preaches even more. “Life at the university,” he recalls, “left us with the memory of one long feast of ideas, a feast of science and dreams, sometimes stormy, sometimes gloomy, riotous, but never vicious.” In addition to Ogarev, Herzen became close to N.I. at this time. Sazonov (later a famous emigrant), N.M. Satin (translator of Shakespeare), A.N. Savich (astronomer), N.Kh. Catcher. This circle sometimes gave “heavy feasts,” but the feasts were inspired by deep content. Their participants had conversations and debates about science, literature, art, philosophy, politics; If not the “union of Pestel and Ryleev” that Herzen dreamed of when entering the university, then the embryo of an opposition against the three famous “dogmas” of Russian socio-political life was emerging. The July Revolution, the Polish uprising, political and literary issues that occupied Europe - all of this found a lively response in the student circle of which Herzen became the center. And then they saw in the circle “with inner horror” that “in Europe, especially in France, from where they were waiting for a political password and a slogan, things are not going well.” In 1833, Herzen graduated from the university with a candidate's degree and a silver medal. He, however, clearly understood that he still had a lot to learn, and in one letter, written a few days after finishing the university course, he wrote: “Although I completed the course, I collected so little that it’s embarrassing to look at people.” . While still at the university, he became acquainted with the teachings of Saint-Simonis

Comrade, which made a very strong impression on him. His thought had already turned to the study of socialist writers of the West, but, of course, it cannot be said that from that time Herzen became a socialist. Herzen, not only of the beginning, but also of the end of the 30s, was a man who was passionately searching, and not finally settling on anything, although the direction of his thoughts and sympathies was quite definite and was expressed in the desire for freedom. A year after completing the course, Herzen, Ogarev and several other people were arrested. The reason for the arrest was the very fact of the existence of “non-employees” in Moscow, young people who were always talking about something, worried and fuming, and the reason was a student party at which a song containing “impudent censure” was sung, and a bust of Emperor Nicholas was smashed Pavlovich. The inquiry found that Sokolovsky composed the song, Ogarev knew Sokolovsky, Herzen was friends with Ogarev, and although neither Herzen nor Ogarev were even at the party, nevertheless, on the basis of “indirect evidence” regarding their “way of thinking,” they were involved in the case of “a failed conspiracy of young people devoted to the teachings of Saint-Simonism, which failed due to arrest.” Ogarev was arrested before his friend. In the last days of his free life, Herzen met his relative Natalya Aleksandrovna Zakharyina, a young girl who was very religious and already loved Herzen, although he had not noticed this before. Herzen entered into conversation with her “for the first time after many years of acquaintance.” He was indignant at Ogarev’s arrest and expressed indignation at the living conditions under which such facts were possible. Natalya Alexandrovna pointed out to him the need to endure trials without complaint, remembering Christ and the Apostle Paul. Having then ended up in prison, he writes from there, as well as from exile, letters full of prayerful mood. “No, faith burns in my chest, strong, living,” he wrote in a letter dated December 10, 1834, “There is Providence. I read with delight the Chetyi-Minea, that’s where the divine examples are.” Herzen spent nine months in prison, after which, in his words, “they read to us, like a bad joke, a sentence of death, and then they announced that, driven by the inadmissible kindness so characteristic of him, the emperor ordered only a corrective measure to be applied to us, in the form of a link." Herzen was assigned Perm as his place of exile. “What do I need Perm or Moscow, and Moscow-Perm,” Herzen wrote then. “Our life is decided, the die is cast, the storm carries us away. WhereN I don’t know. But I know that it will be good there, there is rest and reward.” .. It was with this mood that Herzen arrived in exile. He lived with him for a long time, but he also strived for freedom in him. Natalya Alexandrovna brought him the words of the Apostle Paul: “whoever lives in God cannot be shackled,” and in this Herzen saw the path to freedom, internal freedom, attainable for everyone, and through this and as a result of this, to universal freedom. Here begins the second period of Herzen's life. Herzen spent only three weeks in Perm and then, by order of the authorities, was transferred to Vyatka, enlisted as a “clerk” in the service of Governor Tyufyaev, a typical representative of the pre-reform administration. Tyufyaev received Herzen very hostilely, and it is not known how his nagging and persecution would have ended if some circumstances favorable for the exile had not occurred. The Minister of Internal Affairs conceived the idea of ​​establishing provincial statistical committees throughout Russia and demanded that the governors send him their feedback on this matter. To compose a response to such an unheard of “incoming” I had to turn to a “scientific candidate at Moscow University.” Herzen promised not only to draw up the required “review”, but also to take up the actual implementation of the minister’s wishes, so that he would be freed from his useless daily stay in the governor’s office and allowed to work from home. Tyufyaev had to agree to this. Soon a clash between Herzen and Tyufyaev occurred in a more dramatic form, and the exile would probably have had to travel to much more distant places if fate had not once again come to Herzen’s aid. During this time of travel

l across Russia, accompanied by Zhukovsky and Arsenyev, who was then heir to the throne, Alexander Nikolaevich. Tyufyaev received an order from St. Petersburg to organize an exhibition in Vyatka, to familiarize the heir with the natural riches of the region, arranging exhibits “in the three kingdoms of nature.” I had to turn to Herzen again, who also gave explanations to the heir. Surprised by the abundance of knowledge of the young man in the Vyatka wilderness, Zhukovsky and Arsenyev began to ask Herzen in detail who he was and how he got to Vyatka. Having learned what was the matter, they promised to petition for Herzen’s return from exile. This petition was not crowned with complete success, but, thanks to Zhukovsky and Arsenyev, an order was soon issued to transfer Herzen from Vyatka to Vladimir. Meanwhile, an order was made from St. Petersburg to establish “Gubernskie Vedomosti” in all provincial cities, with the so-called appendix to them.

the so-called "unofficial department". Governor Kornilov, who replaced Tyufyaev, offered Herzen the management of this department. Herzen traveled a lot around the province to collect materials for the newspaper, got acquainted with the people's life, and published a number of articles of economic and ethnographic content in the Gubernskiye Vedomosti. With his active participation, the first public library was founded in Vyatka, and he gave a speech, which was later included in the complete collection of his works. In Vyatka, Herzen became close to the famous architect Vitberg, who was in exile there, and experienced his influence very strongly. “Natalie,” wrote Herzen, “barely showed me God, and I began to believe. The fiery soul of the artist crossed boundaries and was lost in dark but majestic mysticism, and I found more life and poetry in mysticism than in philosophy. I bless that time ". At the same time, Herzen began to write “The Legend of St. Feodor” and “Thought and Revelation.” Herzen speaks of the last article as follows: “in it I described my own development in order to reveal how experience led me to a religious view.” Herzen was in the same mood in Vladimir, where the most important fact of his life was his marriage to N.A. Zakharyina. “Today I confessed for the first time since I was a child,” Herzen wrote on March 13, 1838, “with the help of Natasha I achieved such a victory over my soul.” But behind this came a crisis. “Whatever you say, dear friend,” he wrote to the same Natasha, “I just can’t force myself to that heavenly meekness, which is one of the main properties of your character, I’m too fiery.” Herzen’s strong mind, a huge amount of collected information that still lay randomly in his consciousness, a restless spirit and a nature thirsty for activity - all this was still shrouded in a thick veil of Vyatka-Vladimir moods, but it was already eager to tear them apart, it was only waiting for a push to give that Herzen, whose distinguishing feature was not “resignation”, but a thirst for struggle. Such an impetus for Herzen was the study of Hegel, whose works were then read by all Herzen’s friends in Moscow. This study led Herzen to conclusions opposite to those drawn from Hegel by Belinsky and other “Hegelians” of that time. Belinsky preached a well-known “reconciliation”; Herzen found that Hegel's philosophy is the "algebra of revolution." On this basis, a clash between Herzen and Belinsky soon occurred, which ended in their temporary break; Then, when Belinsky admitted his views were wrong, a friendship was established between him and Herzen that lasted throughout their lives. After Vladimir, Herzen was allowed to live in St. Petersburg, but then the “vile Russian reality” again made itself felt to him. In St. Petersburg, a guard killed a passerby; This story was talked about everywhere, and Herzen reported it as one of the St. Petersburg news in a letter to his father. The letter was illustrated, and Herzen was again sent to exile to Vyatka. Only with the help of great efforts was it possible to change the exile in Vyatka to exile in Novgorod, where Herzen was sent to serve as an adviser to the provincial government. There he had to manage cases of abuse of landowner power, cases of schismatics and... cases of persons under police supervision, and among such persons was himself. In parallel with the accumulation of lessons drawn from life itself, Herzen continuously worked on theoretical issues. Soon he managed to get acquainted with the book of the most “left-wing” of the Hegelians: Ogarev was abroad and from there he brought Feuerbach’s “The Essence of Christianity”. Reading this book made a very strong impression on Herzen. In Novgorod, Herzen began to write his famous novel: “Who is to Blame.” Thanks to the efforts of his friends, Herzen managed to escape from Novgorod, retire and move to Moscow. He lived there from 1842 to 1847 - the last period of his life in Russia. This period is filled with the most intense work. Constant communication with Belinsky, Granovsky, Chaadaev and others, disputes with Slavophiles, and literary activity constituted the main content of Herzen’s life. He grew more and more into such an outstanding force that Belinsky predicted a place for him

“not only in the history of Russian literature,” but also “in the history of Karamzin.” As in many other cases, Belinsky was not mistaken. Herzen's literary activity did not place him in the ranks of Russian classic writers, but it was nevertheless highly remarkable. Here are the development of philosophical problems, and questions of ethics, and Russian life of that time, with its oppressive influence on the living forces of the country, and ardent love for the native land, the native people. Like all the best Russian people of the “forties,” Herzen saw very well that the main evil of Russia was serfdom, but to fight in literature precisely this evil, which was recognized, along with autocracy, as a “dogma of political religion” in Russia, was especially difficult. Nevertheless, in the story “The Thieving Magpie” and in the famous novel “Who is to Blame,” Herzen, as far as possible, touched on this forbidden topic. Herzen also looked closely at another question, even more complex - the question of relations between the sexes. This question forms the main theme of the novel "Who is to Blame"; Herzen returned to it more than once in his other works, especially in the article: “About a certain drama.” This article was written under the impression of “the most ordinary play,” but the strength of Herzen’s intellectual and moral personality lies in the fact that his gaze saw in the most “ordinary” things aspects that thousands of people pass by completely indifferently. Herzen looked just as intently at the question of the role of abstract knowledge, theoretical ideas, and abstract philosophy. To this topic he devoted the articles “Amateurs in Science”, “Dilevantl-royantiksh”, “Dshlkhtanty0i0tskhkh0uzeeykh” and “Buddishz in eaukh”, yarshchhm0pyud “science”. Herzen means in general the theoretical work of human thought and in particular - philosophy. Herzen demands from a person both breadth and depth. He demands that a specialist in one field or another respond to all the demands of living life, in other words, to be a citizen. He makes the same demand for “amateurs,” insisting that at least one issue be thoroughly studied. Herzen was also deeply interested in the question of the relationship between the individual and collectivity. In the ancient world the individual was completely sacrificed to the collectivity. “The Middle Ages turned the question around - they made the individual essential, the res publica unimportant. But neither one nor the other solution can satisfy the perfect person.” “One rational, conscious combination of personality and state will lead to a true concept of person in general. This combination is the most difficult task posed by modern thinking "... If we add to this such works of Herzen as "Letters on the Study of Nature", which are essays on the history of philosophy and a presentation of the philosophical views of Herzen himself, then the versatility of the topics that worried him will become clear back in the forties. And over all these themes there hung that living feeling that determined the content of Herzen’s entire life. He himself described this content, already at the end of his days, in the following words: “the dominant axis around which our life went was. this is our attitude towards the Russian people, faith in them, love for them, the desire to actively participate in their destinies." Under the conditions under which Herzen’s life took place in Russia, he could express in print only a small part of those thoughts that he worked hard worked. His intellectual interests and requests were enormous. He closely follows the development of socialist teachings in Europe, studies Fourier, Considerant, Louis-Blanc, pays tribute to them, but retains the independence of his own thoughts. He speaks about them in his diary: “good, extremely good, but not a complete solution to the problem. In the wide, light phalanstery, they are a bit crowded; this is the arrangement of one side of life, it is awkward for others.” This recording dates back to 1844, but in it one hears Herzen from the period of his life in Europe. The most complete impression is made on Herzen by Proudhon, about whose famous work, “Qu” est ce que la proprieteN,” Herzen responded in his diary as follows: “a wonderful work, not only not lower, but higher than what was said and written about it.”

m... The development is excellent, accurate, strong, sharp and imbued with fire." At the same time, Herzen studies the history of Russia, the life of the Russian people, the structure of their mental life. He approaches the question: what force has preserved many of the wonderful qualities of the Russian people, despite to the Tatar yoke, the German drill and the domestic whip. “This is the power of Orthodoxy,” said the Slavophiles: only from it comes, as a derivative, the spirit of the conciliarity of the people, and the external expression of this spirit is the communal life of the Russian peasantry. The educated strata of society broke away from the people in the “St. Petersburg”. period" of Russian history, and this is our whole misfortune. The whole question now comes down to returning "to the people", to merging with them. The Russian people in their everyday life solved the very problem that the "West" posed only in thought. Herzen did not agree with the premises from which the views of the Slavophiles proceeded, but there is no doubt that their views on “especially

The "essentials" of the economic life of Russia were largely assimilated by him and took a place in his later views. He himself admitted this. Despite his vigorous mental life, Herzen felt that there was no work, no permanent work, for his forces in Russia at that time, and this thought sometimes brought him almost to despair. “They argued and argued,” he wrote in his diary, “and, as always, they ended in nothing, cold speeches and witticisms. Our situation is hopeless because it is false, because historical logic indicates that we are beyond the needs of the people, and our business is desperate suffering." Herzen was drawn to Europe, but in response to Herzen's requests for a foreign passport for the treatment of his wife there, Emperor Nicholas put down a resolution: “It’s not necessary.” The conditions of Russian life were terribly pressing on Herzen; meanwhile, Ogarev was already abroad and from there he wrote to his friend: “Herzen! But you can’t live at home. I am convinced that it is impossible. A person who is alien to his family is obliged to break with his family... I’m tired of carrying everything inside, I need an action. I, weak, indecisive, impractical, dem Grubelenden, need action. What after that to you, who are stronger than me? “Herzen himself felt with all his being that “it is impossible to live at home,” but he suffered many difficult days before the desired opportunity came, and the doors of the stuffy Russian prison of the 40s opened before him. The joy of liberation, the novelty of the feeling of being able to breathe freely and the heightened atmosphere that distinguished throughout Europe, and especially in France, on the eve of the storms of 1848 - all this filled Herzen’s soul with joy. Arriving in 1847, straight to Paris. He was completely immersed in the new life that had opened up before him. He quickly became close to the leaders of the French social movement of that time and therefore had the opportunity to observe the unfolding events very closely. , where all the noise of Paris, the slightest movements and unrest that ran on the surface of his street and intellectual life were clearly reflected." But through the external decorations of this life, Herzen soon saw its shadow sides. Already in “Letters from Avenue Marigny” there are lines that clearly indicate the dissatisfaction that he then experienced. “France has never fallen so deeply in moral terms as now,” he wrote on September 15, 1847. The whole structure of French life, the whole way of life in France, which Herzen called “philistine,” excited him more and more in his soul. deeper antipathy. “Debauchery,” he wrote, “has penetrated everywhere: into the family, into the legislative body, literature, the press. It is so ordinary that no one notices it, and no one wants to notice it. And this debauchery is not widespread, not chivalrous, but petty, soulless, stingy. This is the depravity of a huckster." As for the leaders of the movement, here too the first impression from conversations with them, equal, as he jokingly noted, “in some way, rank, promotion,” quickly gave way to a skeptical attitude towards them. “For me, all the experiences of idolatry and idols do not hold up and very soon give way to complete denial.” He was drawn to Italy, where at that time the liberation movement apparently proceeded in a different direction than in France. “I have recovered morally,” Herzen wrote, “having crossed the borders of France; I owe Italy a renewal of faith in my own strengths and in the strengths of others; many hopes were again resurrected in my soul; I saw animated faces, tears, I heard passionate words... All Italy woke up before my eyes. I saw the Neapolitan king, made tame, and the pope, humbly asking for alms of the people's love." The news of the February revolution in France and the proclamation of the Second Republic there again attracted Herzen to Paris, where the fever of events captured him very strongly; but the impression that France made on him on his first visit there has not diminished even now. He saw more and more clearly that the revolution had nothing to rely on and that Paris was irresistibly striving for disaster. It happened in the “June days” that Herzen experienced in Paris. They made a terrible impression

and him. “On the evening of June 26, after the victory over Paris, we heard regular volleys, with small placements... We all looked at each other, everyone’s faces were green. “After all, they are shooting,” we said in one voice and turned away from each other. I pressed my forehead to the glass of the window and was silent..." The scenes that followed were of the same nature: "The arrogant national guard with dull anger on their faces took care of their shops, brandishing their bayonets and butts; jubilant crowds of drunken mobiles walked along the boulevards, singing; For 15 - 17 years they boasted about the blood of their brothers. Cavaignac carried with him some monster who killed a dozen Frenchmen... Doubt laid its heavy foot on the last assets, it shook up not the church sacristy, not the doctor's robes, but the revolutionary banners "... Soon Herzen had to flee from Paris to Geneva to avoid arrest, although on paper a republic continued to exist in France. While still in Paris, Herzen decided not to return to Russia. No matter how terrible everything he experienced in Europe was, Herzen managed to get used to such living conditions, after which returning to his homeland seemed simply beyond human strength. It was possible to fight the conditions of Russian life - and Herzen decided to fight them by directly attacking them in the press in Russian and foreign languages ​​- only by remaining in Europe. In addition, he wanted to acquaint Europe with Russia, the real Russia, and not the one that bribed feathers often portrayed to Europe. But before Herzen’s position as an emigrant was finally determined, some more events took place in his life. Having fled from Paris to Geneva, he met there with many people from different countries and, by the way, with Mazzini, for whom he retained his warmest sympathy throughout his life. There he received a letter from Proudhon, asking him to help him publish the newspaper “La voix du Peuple” and to become its closest collaborator. Herzen sent Proudhon the 24,000 francs needed to pay the deposit and began writing in his newspaper. But this did not last long: a number of fines were imposed on the newspaper, nothing remained of the deposit, and the newspaper ceased to exist. After this, Herzen was finally naturalized in Switzerland. The aggravation of the reaction was accompanied by a number of heavy blows in Herzen’s personal life. All this brought Herzen into the gloomiest mood of spirit, and when the December coup d’etat occurred, Herzen wrote the article “Vive la mort!”... He lived in Nice at the time. At one time it seemed to him that “everything collapsed - the general and private, European revolution and home shelter, freedom of the world and personal happiness." He himself called the state in which he was “the edge of moral ruin,” but he also emerged victorious from it: in his words, “faith in Russia” saved him, and he decided to give all of himself to serving her. While living in Nice, he published a number of his works: these were “Letters from France and Italy”, which appeared first in German, then the pamphlet “On the Development of Revolutionary Ideas in Russia” (originally the same in German in “Deutsche Jahrbucher”, then a separate publication in French "Du developpement des idees revolutionnaires en Russie") and, finally, "Le peuple russe et le socialisme" ("Letter to Michelet"). Both of these pamphlets were banned in France. At the same time, Herzen’s famous work “From the Other Shore” (originally also in German: “Von andern Ufer”) appeared in print. In this famous work, Herzen posed the question: “Where is the need for the future to play out the program we have invented” - in other words, what are the objective guarantees that the ideals of socialism are feasible? Having parted with theologism long ago, Herzen took the same negative position towards any philosophical construction. Having declared back in Moscow to Khomyakov that he could accept “the terrible results of the most ferocious immanence, because the conclusions of reason are independent of whether a person wants to or not,” Herzen called for the judgment of reason and earthly religion, the religion of humanity, the religion of progress. “Please explain to me,” he asked, “why it is funny to believe in God, but not funny to believe in humanity, to believe in the kingdom of heaven.”

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everything is stupid, but believing in earthly utopias is smartN" - The goal of each generation, according to Herzen, is itself. It must live, and live a human life - live in a social environment in which the individual is free, and at the same time society is not destroyed. But the creation of such relations between the individual and society depends only partly on ourselves, and mainly on the conditions already given by previous history. Examining the living conditions of European countries, Herzen comes to very pessimistic conclusions for these countries. He finds that Europe is mired. in the inexorable swamp of “philistinism.” She may get rid of the autocracy of private property by realizing the economic side of the problem of socialism. This will be the best case, but even then she will not be able to wash away her philistinism; her socialism itself will be philistine socialism. this will not happen either, - then Europe will completely stagnate in the terry blossom of philistinism

and will finally decompose in it. With such a turn of events, the possibility cannot be ruled out that she will become a victim of the eastern peoples with fresher blood. Herzen saw objective conditions for other opportunities in Russia with the communal life of its people and the thought, free from prejudices, of the advanced layer of Russian society, what later became known as the intelligentsia. Herzen and his ardent love for Russia were drawn to the same conclusion. He wrote that faith in Russia saved him then “on the brink of moral death.” This faith revived all Herzen’s strength, and in the same work “From the Other Shore” he wanted to speak to Europe about the Russian people, “powerful and incomprehensible, who quietly formed a state of 60 million, which grew so strongly and amazingly without losing the communal principle, and carried him through the initial upheavals of state development; which retained his majestic features, lively mind and wide-ranging rich nature under the yoke of serfdom and to Peter’s order to be formed - responded a hundred years later with the enormous appearance of Pushkin.” This theme completely captivates Herzen, he varies it in different ways, comes to the conclusion about the possibility for Russia of a different path of development, different from the Western European one, considers the community and the artel as the basis for such development, sees in the worldly gathering the embryo from which the broadest possible public, lays the foundation for later Russian populism - in a word, puts the stamp of his personality on the movement of the Russian intelligentsia, which then continued for decades. Living in Nice, Herzen almost never saw Russians. Golovin lived there at the same time, also as an emigrant, and even edited the newspaper “Le Carillon” (Trezvon) there; Perhaps this name gave Herzen the idea to later give his Russian organ the name “Bell”. Herzen did not establish any close relations with Golovin. Engelson (later an employee of Polar Star) was also in Nice; Herzen had a closer relationship with him than with Golovin. Having buried his wife in Nice, Herzen moved to London. There he installed the first press of the free Russian press. Leaflets and brochures were printed on this press ("St. George's Day", "The Poles Pierce Us", "Baptized Property", etc.), then the magazine "Polar Star" and, finally, the famous "Bell", the first issue of which was published on July 1, 1857 d. The "Bells" program contained three specific provisions: 1) liberation of peasants from landowners, 2) liberation of speech from censorship, and 3) liberation of the tax-paying class from beatings. Sketching out this program, Herzen, of course, looked at it as a minimum program and, calling himself in his famous letter to Alexander II an “incorrigible socialist,” he wrote the following lines: “I am ashamed of how little we are ready to be content with. We want things in the justice of which you doubt as little as everyone else. In the first case, this is enough for you.” The breadth of his horizons, combined with the ability to pose questions on practically feasible grounds, attracted the warm sympathies of the best elements of Russia in the late 50s and early 60s to Herzen. Shevchenko wrote in his diary that he wanted to redraw the portrait of Herzen, “honoring the name of this holy man” and that, having seen “The Bell” for the first time, he “reverently kissed it.” Kavelin wrote to Herzen: “When you denounced everything with unheard-of and unprecedented courage, when you threw out in your brilliant articles and pamphlets thoughts that ran centuries ahead, and for the current day you set the most moderate demands, the most immediate ones that were in line, you told me I seemed to be the great man with whom a new Russian history should begin. I cried over your articles, knew them by heart, and chose epigraphs from them for future historical works, political and philosophical studies.” “With tears in our eyes,” says P.A. Kropotkin in his memoirs, “we read Herzen’s famous article: “You have won, Galilean”... A lot of such reviews could be given about Herzen and his journal. “The Bell” and the role that "Bell" played in resolving the peasant question and in general in public

a special article will be devoted to the movement in Russia in the late 50s and early 60s. With the onset of reaction and especially after the Polish uprising, Herzen's influence greatly declined; "The Bell" continued to be published until 1867 inclusive, but it no longer had the same meaning. The last period of Herzen's life was for him a time of isolation from Russia and loneliness. The “fathers” recoiled from him for his “radicalism,” and the “children” for his “moderation.” Herzen's state of mind was, of course, very difficult, but he believed that the truth would triumph, believed in the powerful spiritual forces of the Russian people and firmly endured his situation. Everyone who saw him at that time unanimously testifies that, despite everything he experienced and experienced, he was still the same lively, charming, witty Herzen. He remained interested in the course of events in Russia, and still kept a keen eye on the state of affairs in Europe. How deeply Herzen looked at everything that was happening around him can be seen from such a striking example: while living at the end of 1867 (after the end of the Bell) in Genoa, Herzen wrote an article about Napoleonic France that can be called prophetic. “Holy Father, now it’s your business” - these words from Schiller’s “Don Carlos” (Philip II transfers the life of his son into the hands of the great inquisitor), taken by Herzen as an epigraph to the article, Herzen “just wants to repeat Bismarck. The pear is ripe, and It won’t be possible without his Excellency. Don’t stand on ceremony, Count. I’m sorry that I’m right; I’m as if I had foreseen it in general terms. . Count Bismarck, now it's up to you!" These were the words of a seer. A year after Herzen wrote this article (it appeared in the last book of the Polar Star), he arrived in Paris, where on January 9/21, 1870 he died. He was buried first in the Pere Lachaise cemetery, and then his ashes were transported to Nice, where he rests to this day. Above the grave stands a beautiful monument depicting Herzen standing at full height, with his face turned towards Russia, a monument by Zabello. On March 25, 1912, all of cultural Russia celebrated the centenary of Herzen’s birth. On this day, many newspapers dedicated hot articles to the memory of the glorious citizen of the Russian land, which were read by hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of readers, and thus the beginning of Herzen’s “spiritual return” to his homeland was laid. With the change in the existing conditions of political life in Russia, such a “return” will, without a doubt, be carried out in a much more complete manner. Then not only the spirit of Herzen, in the form of a complete collection of his works and letters, but, hopefully, the ashes of the great exile will be returned to Russia and laid to rest in his beloved native land. Literature. The main source for studying Herzen is primarily his own works, available in two editions, foreign and Russian. Both editions are far from complete. They did not include many of Herzen’s works, not to mention his correspondence with various individuals, which is of great importance for the study of Herzen’s life and work. Biographies of Herzen: Smirnova (Ev. Solovyova; 1897); Vetrinsky (1908) and Bogucharsky (1912). Also dedicated to Herzen: an article by Ovsyaniko-Kulikovsky (characteristic); Baturinsky's book "Herzen, his friends and acquaintances"; Gershenzon "Social and political views of Herzen"; Plekhanov, an article in the 13th issue of “History of Russian Literature of the 19th Century,” etc. A detailed bibliography of Herzen and about Herzen, compiled by A.G., is attached to the biography of Herzen written by Vetrinsky. Fomin (brought to 1908). V. Bogucharsky.

KLASSNIE
KLASSNIE 05.11.2016 07:19:46

April 6 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of the Russian prose writer, publicist and philosopher Alexander Ivanovich Herzen.

Alexander Ivanovich Herzen - Russian revolutionary, writer, philosopher.
The illegitimate son of a wealthy Russian landowner I. Yakovlev and a young German bourgeois woman Louise Haag from Stuttgart. Received the fictitious surname Herzen - son of the heart (from German Herz).
He was brought up in Yakovlev's house, received a good education, became acquainted with the works of French educators, and read the forbidden poems of Pushkin and Ryleev. Herzen was deeply influenced by his friendship with his talented peer, the future poet N.P. Ogarev, which lasted throughout their lives. According to his memoirs, the news of the Decembrist uprising made a strong impression on the boys (Herzen was 13, Ogarev was 12 years old). Under his impression, their first, still vague dreams of revolutionary activity arise; During a walk on the Sparrow Hills, the boys vowed to fight for freedom.
In 1829, Herzen entered the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University, where he soon formed a group of progressively thinking students. His attempts to present his own vision of the social order date back to this time. Already in his first articles, Herzen showed himself not only as a philosopher, but also as a brilliant writer.
Already in 1829-1830, Herzen wrote a philosophical article about Wallenstein by F. Schiller. During this youthful period of Herzen’s life, his ideal was Karl Moor, the hero of F. Schiller’s tragedy “The Robbers” (1782).
In 1833, Herzen graduated from the university with a silver medal. In 1834, he was arrested for allegedly singing songs discrediting the royal family in the company of friends. In 1835, he was sent first to Perm, then to Vyatka, where he was assigned to serve in the governor’s office. For organizing an exhibition of local works and the explanations given to the heir (the future Alexander II) during its inspection, Herzen, at the request of Zhukovsky, was transferred to serve as an adviser to the board in Vladimir, where he got married, having secretly taken his bride from Moscow, and where he spent the happiest and bright days of your life.
In 1840, Herzen was allowed to return to Moscow. Turning to literary prose, Herzen wrote the novel “Who is to Blame?” (1847), the stories “Doctor Krupov” (1847) and “The Thieving Magpie” (1848), in which he considered his main goal to expose Russian slavery.
In 1847, Herzen and his family left Russia, going to Europe. Observing the life of Western countries, he interspersed personal impressions with historical and philosophical research (Letters from France and Italy, 1847–1852; From the Other Shore, 1847–1850, etc.)
In 1850–1852, a series of Herzen’s personal dramas took place: the death of his mother and youngest son in a shipwreck, the death of his wife from childbirth. In 1852, Herzen settled in London.
By this time he was perceived as the first figure of the Russian emigration. Together with Ogarev, he began to publish revolutionary publications - the almanac "Polar Star" (1855-1868) and the newspaper "Bell" (1857-1867), the influence of which on the revolutionary movement in Russia was enormous. But his main creation of the emigrant years is “The Past and Thoughts.”
“The Past and Thoughts” by genre is a synthesis of memoirs, journalism, literary portraits, autobiographical novel, historical chronicle, and short stories. The author himself called this book a confession, “about which stopped thoughts from thoughts were collected here and there.” The first five parts describe Herzen's life from childhood until the events of 1850–1852, when the author suffered difficult mental trials associated with the collapse of his family. The sixth part, as a continuation of the first five, is devoted to life in England. The seventh and eighth parts, even more free in chronology and theme, reflect the life and thoughts of the author in the 1860s.
All other works and articles by Herzen, such as “The Old World and Russia”, “Le peuple Russe et le socialisme”, “Ends and Beginnings”, etc. represent a simple development of ideas and sentiments that were fully defined in the period 1847-1852 years in the works mentioned above.
In 1865, Herzen left England and went on a long trip to Europe. At this time he distanced himself from the revolutionaries, especially from the Russian radicals. Arguing with Bakunin, who called for the destruction of the state, Herzen wrote: “People cannot be liberated in external life more than they are liberated internally.” These words are perceived as Herzen’s spiritual testament.
Like most Russian Westernized radicals, Herzen went through a period of deep fascination with Hegelianism in his spiritual development. Hegel's influence can be clearly seen in the series of articles “Amateurism in Science” (1842–1843). Their pathos lies in the approval and interpretation of Hegelian dialectics as an instrument of knowledge and revolutionary transformation of the world (“algebra of revolution”). Herzen severely condemned abstract idealism in philosophy and science for its isolation from real life, for “apriorism” and “spiritism.”
These ideas were further developed in Herzen’s main philosophical work, “Letters on the Study of Nature” (1845–1846). Continuing his criticism of philosophical idealism, Herzen defined nature as “the genealogy of thinking,” and saw only an illusion in the idea of ​​pure being. For a materialistically minded thinker, nature is an ever-living, “fermenting substance”, primary in relation to the dialectics of knowledge. In the Letters, Herzen, quite in the spirit of Hegelianism, substantiated consistent historiocentrism: “neither humanity nor nature can be understood without historical existence,” and in understanding the meaning of history he adhered to the principles of historical determinism. However, in the thoughts of the late Herzen, the old progressivism gives way to much more pessimistic and critical assessments.
On January 21, 1870, Alexander Ivanovich Herzen died. He was buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery. His ashes were later transported to Nice and buried next to his wife's grave.

Bibliography
1846 - Who is to blame?
1846 - Passing by
1847 - Doctor Krupov
1848 - Thieving Magpie
1851 - Damaged
1864 - Tragedy over a glass of grog
1868 - Past and thoughts
1869 - For the sake of boredom

Film adaptations
1920 - Thieving Magpie
1958 - Thieving Magpie

Interesting Facts
Elizaveta Herzen, the 17-year-old daughter of A.I. Herzen and N.A. Tuchkova-Ogareva, committed suicide because of unrequited love for a 44-year-old Frenchman in Florence in December 1875. The suicide had a resonance; Dostoevsky wrote about it in his essay “Two Suicides.”

April 6 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of the Russian prose writer, publicist and philosopher Alexander Ivanovich Herzen.

Russian prose writer, publicist and philosopher Alexander Ivanovich Herzen was born on April 6 (March 25, old style) 1812 in Moscow in the family of a wealthy Russian landowner Ivan Yakovlev and a German woman, Louise Haag. The parents' marriage was not officially registered, so the child was illegitimate and was considered a pupil of his father, who gave him the surname Herzen, derived from the German word Herz and meaning “child of the heart.”

The future writer spent his childhood in the house of his uncle, Alexander Yakovlev, on Tverskoy Boulevard (now building 25, which houses the A.M. Gorky Literary Institute). Since childhood, Herzen was not deprived of attention, but the position of an illegitimate child gave him a feeling of orphanhood.

From an early age, Alexander Herzen read the works of the philosopher Voltaire, the playwright Beaumarchais, the poet Goethe and the novelist Kotzebue, so he early adopted a free-thinking skepticism, which he retained until the end of his life.

In 1829, Herzen entered the physics and mathematics department of Moscow University, where soon, together with Nikolai Ogarev (who entered a year later), he formed a circle of like-minded people, among whom the most famous were the future writer, historian and ethnographer Vadim Passek, and translator Nikolai Ketcher. Young people discussed the socio-political problems of our time - the French Revolution of 1830, the Polish Uprising (1830-1831), were carried away by the ideas of Saint-Simonism (the teaching of the French philosopher Saint-Simon - building an ideal society through the destruction of private property, inheritance, estates, equality of men and women ).

In 1833, Herzen graduated from the university with a silver medal and went to work in the Moscow Kremlin Expedition. His service left him enough free time to engage in creative work. Herzen was going to publish a magazine that was supposed to unite literature, social issues and natural science with the idea of ​​Saint-Simonism, but in July 1834 he was arrested for singing songs discrediting the royal family at a party where a bust of Emperor Nikolai Pavlovich was broken. During interrogations, the Investigative Commission, without proving Herzen’s direct guilt, considered that his beliefs posed a danger to the state. In April 1835, Herzen was exiled first to Perm, then to Vyatka, with the obligation to remain in public service under the supervision of local authorities.

Since 1836, Herzen published under the pseudonym Iskander.

At the end of 1837, he was transferred to Vladimir and was given the opportunity to visit Moscow and St. Petersburg, where he was accepted into the circle of critic Vissarion Belinsky, historian Timofey Granovsky and fiction writer Ivan Panaev.

In 1840, the gendarmerie intercepted a letter from Herzen to his father, where he wrote about the murder of a St. Petersburg guard - a street guard who killed a passerby. For spreading unfounded rumors, he was exiled to Novgorod without the right to enter the capital. The Minister of Internal Affairs, Stroganov, appointed Herzen as an adviser to the provincial government, which was a promotion.

In July 1842, having retired with the rank of court councilor, after the petition of his friends, Herzen returned to Moscow. In 1843-1846 he lived in Sivtsev Vrazhek Lane (now a branch of the Literary Museum - the Herzen Museum), where he wrote the stories “The Thieving Magpie”, “Doctor Krupov”, the novel “Who is to Blame?”, and the articles “Amateurism in Science” , “Letters on the Study of Nature”, political feuilletons “Moscow and St. Petersburg” and other works. Here Herzen, who led the left wing of Westerners, was visited by history professor Timofey Granovsky, critic Pavel Annenkov, artists Mikhail Shchepkin, Prov Sadovsky, memoirist Vasily Botkin, journalist Evgeny Korsh, critic Vissarion Belinsky, poet Nikolai Nekrasov, writer Ivan Turgenev, forming the Moscow epicenter of the Slavophile polemics and Westerners. Herzen visited the Moscow literary salons of Avdotya Elagina, Karolina Pavlova, Dmitry Sverbeev, and Pyotr Chaadaev.

In May 1846, Herzen's father died, and the writer became the heir to a significant fortune, which provided the means to travel abroad. In 1847, Herzen left Russia and began his many-year journey through Europe. Observing the life of Western countries, he interspersed personal impressions with historical and philosophical research, the most famous of which are “Letters from France and Italy” (1847-1852), “From the Other Shore” (1847-1850). After the defeat of the European revolutions (1848-1849), Herzen became disillusioned with the revolutionary capabilities of the West and developed the theory of “Russian socialism”, becoming one of the founders of populism.

In 1852, Alexander Herzen settled in London. By this time he was perceived as the first figure of the Russian emigration. In 1853 he. Together with Ogarev, he published revolutionary publications - the almanac "Polar Star" (1855-1868) and the newspaper "Bell" (1857-1867). The newspaper's motto was the beginning of the epigraph to the "Bell" of the German poet Schiller "Vivos voso!" (Calling the living!). At the first stage, the "Bells" program contained democratic demands: the liberation of peasants from serfdom, the abolition of censorship and corporal punishment. It was based on the theory of Russian peasant socialism developed by Alexander Herzen. In addition to articles by Herzen and Ogarev, Kolokol published various materials about the situation of the people, social struggle in Russia, information about abuses and secret plans of the authorities. The newspapers Pod Sud (1859-1862) and General Assembly (1862-1864) were published as supplements to the Bell. Sheets of "Bell" printed on thin paper were illegally transported across the border to Russia. At first, Kolokol's employees included the writer Ivan Turgenev and the Decembrist Nikolai Turgenev, the historian and publicist Konstantin Kavelin, the publicist and poet Ivan Aksakov, the philosopher Yuri Samarin, Alexander Koshelev, the writer Vasily Botkin and others. After the reform of 1861, articles sharply condemning the reform and texts of proclamations appeared in the newspaper. Communication with the editorial office of Kolokol contributed to the formation of the revolutionary organization Land and Freedom in Russia. To strengthen ties with the “young emigration” concentrated in Switzerland, the publication of “The Bell” was moved to Geneva in 1865, and in 1867 it practically ceased to exist.

In the 1850s, Herzen began to write the main work of his life, “The Past and Thoughts” (1852-1868) - a synthesis of memoirs, journalism, literary portraits, an autobiographical novel, historical chronicles, and short stories. The author himself called this book a confession, “about which the stopped thoughts from thoughts gathered here and there.”

In 1865, Herzen left England and went on a long trip to Europe. At this time he distanced himself from the revolutionaries, especially from the Russian radicals.

In the autumn of 1869, he settled in Paris with new plans for literary and publishing activities. In Paris, Alexander Herzen died on January 21 (9 old style) 1870. He was buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery, and his ashes were subsequently transported to Nice.

Herzen was married to his cousin Natalya Zakharyina, the illegitimate daughter of his uncle, Alexander Yakovlev, whom he married in May 1838, taking him secretly from Moscow. The couple had many children, but three survived - the eldest son Alexander, who became a professor of physiology, and daughters Natalya and Olga.

The grandson of Alexander Herzen, Peter Herzen, was a famous scientist-surgeon, founder of the Moscow School of Oncologists, director of the Moscow Institute for the Treatment of Tumors, which currently bears his name (Moscow Research Oncology Institute named after P.A. Herzen).
After the death of Natalya Zakharyina in 1852, Alexander Herzen was married in a civil marriage to Natalya Tuchkova-Ogareva, the official wife of Nikolai Ogarev, from 1857. The relationship had to be kept secret from the family. The children of Tuchkova and Herzen - Lisa, who committed suicide at the age of 17, the twins Elena and Alexei, who died at a young age, were considered Ogarev's children.

Tuchkova-Ogareva carried out the proofreading of The Bell, and after Herzen’s death she was involved in the publication of his works abroad. From the late 1870s she wrote “Memoirs” (published as a separate edition in 1903).

The material was prepared based on information from RIA Novosti and open sources.

Alexander Ivanovich Herzen(March 25 (April 6), Moscow - January 9 (21), Paris) - Russian publicist, writer, philosopher, teacher, one of the most prominent critics of the official ideology and policies of the Russian Empire in the 19th century, supporter of revolutionary bourgeois-democratic transformations .

Encyclopedic YouTube

✪ Lecture I. Alexander Herzen. Childhood and youth. Prison and exile

✪ Lecture III. Herzen in the West. "Past and Thoughts"

✪ Herzen Alexander Ivanovich “Who is to blame? (ONLINE AUDIOBOOKS) Listen

✪ Herzen and the Rothschilds

✪ Lecture II. Westerners and Slavophiles. Small prose of Herzen

Subtitles

Biography

Childhood

Herzen was born into the family of a wealthy landowner Ivan Alekseevich Yakovlev (1767-1846), descended from Andrei Kobyla (like the Romanovs). Mother - 16-year-old German Henrietta-Wilhelmina-Louise Haag (German). Henriette Wilhelmina Luisa Haag), the daughter of a minor official, a clerk in the treasury chamber. The parents' marriage was not formalized, and Herzen bore the surname invented by his father: Herzen - “son of the heart” (from German Herz).

In his youth, Herzen received the usual noble education at home, based on reading works of foreign literature, mainly from the late 18th century. French novels, comedies by Beaumarchais, Kotzebue, works by Goethe and Schiller from an early age set the boy in an enthusiastic, sentimental-romantic tone. There were no systematic classes, but the tutors - French and Germans - gave the boy a solid knowledge of foreign languages. Thanks to his acquaintance with Schiller’s work, Herzen became imbued with freedom-loving aspirations, the development of which was greatly facilitated by the teacher of Russian literature I. E. Protopopov, who brought Herzen notebooks of Pushkin’s poems: “Odes to Freedom”, “Dagger”, “Dumas” by Ryleev, etc., as well as Bouchot, a participant in the Great French Revolution, who left France when the “depraved and rogues” took over. Added to this was the influence of Tanya Kuchina, Herzen’s young aunt, “Korchevskaya cousin” (married Tatyana Passek), who supported the childish pride of the young dreamer, prophesying an extraordinary future for him.

Already in childhood, Herzen met and became friends with Nikolai Ogarev. According to his memoirs, the news of the Decembrist uprising on December 14, 1825 made a strong impression on the boys (Herzen was 13, Ogarev was 12 years old). Under his impression, their first, still vague dreams of revolutionary activity arise; During a walk on Vorobyovy Gory, the boys vowed to fight for freedom.

University (1829−1833)

Herzen dreamed of friendship, dreamed of struggle and suffering for freedom. In this mood, Herzen entered Moscow University in the physics and mathematics department, and here this mood intensified even more. At the university, Herzen took part in the so-called “Malov story” (student protest against an unloved teacher), but got off relatively lightly - with a short imprisonment, along with many of his comrades, in a punishment cell. Of the teachers, only Kachenovsky, with his skepticism, and Pavlov, who managed to introduce listeners to German philosophy at agricultural lectures, awakened young thought. The youth were, however, quite stormy; she welcomed the July Revolution (as can be seen from Lermontov’s poems) and other popular movements (the cholera that appeared in Moscow greatly contributed to the revival and excitement of students, in the fight against which all university youth took an active and selfless part). This was the time of Herzen’s meeting with Vadim Passek, which later turned into friendship, the establishment of a friendly connection with Ketcher and others. The group of young friends grew, made noise, seethed; from time to time she allowed small revelries, of a completely innocent nature, however; She read diligently, being carried away mainly by social issues, studying Russian history, assimilating the ideas of Saint-Simon (whose utopian socialism Herzen then considered the most outstanding achievement of contemporary Western philosophy) and other socialists.

Link

Despite mutual bitterness and disputes, both sides had much in common in their views and, above all, according to Herzen himself, the common thing was “a feeling of boundless, all-existence love for the Russian people, for the Russian mentality.” The opponents, “like a two-faced Janus, looked in different directions, while the heart beat alone.” “With tears in our eyes”, hugging each other, recent friends, and now principled opponents, went in different directions.

In the Moscow house where Herzen lived from 1847 to 1847, the A. I. Herzen House Museum has been operating since 1976.

In exile

Herzen arrived in Europe more radically republican than socialist, although the publication he began in Otechestvennye Zapiski of a series of articles entitled “Letters from Avenue Marigny” (subsequently published in revised form in “Letters from France and Italy”) shocked him friends - Western liberals - with their anti-bourgeois pathos. The February Revolution of 1848 seemed to Herzen the fulfillment of all his hopes. The subsequent June workers' uprising, its bloody suppression and the ensuing reaction shocked Herzen, who decisively turned to socialism. He became close to Proudhon and other prominent figures of the revolution and European radicalism; Together with Proudhon, he published the newspaper “The Voice of the People” (“La Voix du Peuple”), which he financed. The beginning of his wife's passion for the German poet Herwegh dates back to the Parisian period. In 1849, after the defeat of the radical opposition by President Louis Napoleon, Herzen was forced to leave France and moved to Switzerland, and from there to Nice, which then belonged to the Kingdom of Sardinia.

During this period, Herzen moved among the circles of radical European emigration that gathered in Switzerland after the defeat of the revolution in Europe, and, in particular, became acquainted with Giuseppe Garibaldi. He became famous for his book of essays “From the Other Shore,” in which he reckoned with his past liberal convictions. Under the influence of the collapse of old ideals and the reaction that occurred throughout Europe, Herzen formed a specific system of views about the doom, the “dying” of old Europe and the prospects for Russia and the Slavic world, which are called upon to realize the socialist ideal.

After a series of family tragedies that befell Herzen in Nice (his wife’s infidelity with Herwegh, the death of a mother and son in a shipwreck, the death of his wife and newborn child), Herzen moved to London, where he founded the Free Russian Printing House to print prohibited publications and, from 1857, published a weekly newspaper "Bell".

The peak of the influence of the Bell occurs in the years preceding the liberation of the peasants; then the newspaper was regularly read in the Winter Palace. After the peasant reform, its influence begins to decline; support for the Polish uprising of 1863 sharply undermined circulation. At that time, Herzen was already too revolutionary for the liberal public, and too moderate for the radical one. On March 15, 1865, under the persistent demand of the Russian government to the British government, the editorial board of Kolokol, headed by Herzen, left London forever and moved to Switzerland, of which Herzen had by that time become a citizen. In April of the same 1865, the “Free Russian Printing House” was also transferred there. Soon people from Herzen’s circle began to move to Switzerland, for example, in 1865 Nikolai Ogarev moved there.

On January 9 (21), 1870, Alexander Ivanovich Herzen died of pneumonia in Paris, where he had recently arrived on family business. He was buried in Nice (the ashes were transferred from the Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris).

Literary and journalistic activities

Herzen's literary activity began in the 1830s. In the Athenaeum for 1831 (II volume) his name is found under one translation from French. The first article signed by a pseudonym Iskander, was published in the Telescope for 1836 (“Hoffmann”). The “Speech Delivered at the Opening of the Vyatka Public Library” and “Diary” (1842) date back to the same time. In Vladimir the following were written: “Notes of a young man” and “More from the notes of a young man” (“Otechestvennye zapiski”, 1840-1841; in this story Chaadaev is depicted in the person of Trenzinsky). From 1842 to 1847, he published articles in “Domestic Notes” and “Contemporary”: “Amateurism in Science”, “Romantic Amateurs”, “Workshop of Scientists”, “Buddhism in Science”, “Letters on the Study of Nature”. Here Herzen rebelled against learned pedants and formalists, against their scholastic science, alienated from life, against their quietism. In the article “On the Study of Nature” we find a philosophical analysis of various methods of knowledge. At the same time, Herzen wrote: “About one drama”, “On various occasions”, “New variations on old themes”, “A few notes on the historical development of honor”, ​​“From the notes of Dr. Krupov”, “Who is to blame? "", "The Thieving Magpie", "Moscow and St. Petersburg", "Novgorod and Vladimir", "Edrovo Station", "Interrupted Conversations". Of all these works, the most notable are the story “The Thieving Magpie,” which depicts the terrible situation of the “serf intelligentsia,” and the novel “Who is to Blame?”, which deals with the issue of freedom of feeling, family relationships, and the position of women in marriage. The main idea of ​​the novel is that people who base their well-being solely on the basis of family happiness and feelings, alien to the interests of social and universal humanity, cannot ensure lasting happiness for themselves, and in their lives it will always depend on chance.

Of the works written by Herzen abroad, the following are especially important: letters from “Avenue Marigny” (the first published in Sovremennik, all fourteen under the general title: “Letters from France and Italy”, edition of 1855), representing a remarkable description and analysis of events and the moods that worried Europe in 1847-1852. Here we encounter a completely negative attitude towards the Western European bourgeoisie, its morality and social principles, and the author’s ardent faith in the future significance of the fourth estate. A particularly strong impression both in Russia and in Europe was made by Herzen’s work “From the Other Shore” (originally in German “Vom anderen Ufer”, Hamburg,; in Russian, London, 1855; in French, Geneva, 1870), in in which Herzen expresses complete disappointment with the West and Western civilization - the result of that mental revolution that determined Herzen’s worldview in 1848-1851. It is also worth noting the letter to Michelet: “The Russian people and socialism” - a passionate and ardent defense of the Russian people against the attacks and prejudices that Michelet expressed in one of his articles. “The Past and Thoughts” is a series of memoirs that are partly autobiographical in nature, but also provide a whole series of highly artistic pictures, dazzlingly brilliant characteristics, and observations of Herzen from what he experienced and saw in Russia and abroad.

All other works and articles of Herzen, such as: “The Old World and Russia”, “Russian People and Socialism”, “Ends and Beginnings”, etc., represent a simple development of ideas and sentiments that were fully defined in the period 1847-1852 in his writings mentioned above.

Philosophical views of Herzen during the years of emigration

The attraction to freedom of thought, “freethinking,” in the best sense of the word, was especially strongly developed in Herzen. He did not belong to any one party, either open or secret. The one-sidedness of “men of action” alienated him from many revolutionary and radical figures in Europe. His mind quickly comprehended the imperfections and shortcomings of those forms of Western life to which Herzen was initially drawn from his ugly, distant Russian reality of the 1840s. With amazing consistency, Herzen abandoned his passions for the West when it turned out in his eyes to be lower than the previously drawn up ideal.

Herzen's philosophical and historical concept emphasizes the active role of man in history. At the same time, it implies that reason cannot realize its ideals without taking into account the existing facts of history, that its results constitute the “necessary basis” for the operations of reason.

Quotes

“Let’s not invent a God if he doesn’t exist, because this still won’t exist.”

“At every age and under various circumstances I returned to reading the Gospel, and each time its content brought peace and meekness to my soul.”

Pedagogical ideas

There are no special theoretical works on education in Herzen's legacy. However, throughout his life Herzen was interested in pedagogical problems and was one of the first Russian thinkers and public figures of the mid-19th century to address the problems of education in his works. His statements on issues of upbringing and education indicate the presence thoughtful pedagogical concept.

Herzen's pedagogical views were determined by philosophical (atheism and materialism), ethical (humanism) and political (revolutionary democracy) convictions.

Criticism of the education system under Nicholas I

Herzen called the reign of Nicholas I a thirty-year persecution of schools and universities and showed how the Nicholas Ministry of Education stifled public education. The tsarist government, according to Herzen, “laid in wait for the child at the first step in life and corrupted the cadet-child, the schoolboy-adolescent, the student-boy. Mercilessly, systematically, it eradicated the human embryos in them, weaning them, as if from a vice, from all human feelings except obedience. It punished minors for violation of discipline in a way that hardened criminals are not punished in other countries.”

He resolutely opposed the introduction of religion into education, against the transformation of schools and universities into a tool for strengthening serfdom and autocracy.

Folk pedagogy

Herzen believed that the simplest people have the most positive influence on children, that it is the people who bear the best Russian national qualities. Young generations learn from the people respect for work, selfless love for their homeland, and aversion to idleness.

Upbringing

Herzen considered the main task of education to be the formation of a humane, free personality who lives in the interests of his people and strives to transform society on a reasonable basis. Children must be provided with conditions for free development. “Reasonable recognition of self-will is the highest and moral recognition of human dignity.” In everyday educational activities, an important role is played by the “talent of patient love,” the teacher’s disposition towards the child, respect for him, and knowledge of his needs. A healthy family environment and correct relationships between children and educators are a necessary condition for moral education.

Education

Herzen passionately sought the spread of education and knowledge among the people, called on scientists to take science out of the classroom walls and make its achievements public domain. Emphasizing the enormous educational importance of the natural sciences, Herzen was at the same time in favor of a system of comprehensive general education. He wanted secondary school students, along with natural science and mathematics, to study literature (including the literature of ancient peoples), foreign languages, and history. A. I. Herzen noted that without reading there is and cannot be either taste, style, or multifaceted breadth of understanding. Thanks to reading, a person survives centuries. Books influence the deepest areas of the human psyche. Herzen emphasized in every possible way that education should contribute to the development of independent thinking in students. Educators should, based on children’s innate inclinations to communicate, develop social aspirations and inclinations in them. This is achieved through communication with peers, collective children's games, and general activities. Herzen fought against the suppression of children's will, but at the same time attached great importance to discipline, and considered the establishment of discipline a necessary condition for proper upbringing. “Without discipline,” he said, “there is no calm confidence, no obedience, no way to protect health and prevent danger.”

Herzen wrote two special works in which he explained natural phenomena to the younger generation: “The Experience of Conversations with Young People” and “Conversations with Children.” These works are wonderful examples of talented, popular presentation of complex ideological problems. The author simply and vividly explains to children the origin of the universe from a materialistic point of view. He convincingly proves the important role of science in the fight against incorrect views, prejudices and superstitions and refutes the idealistic fabrication that a soul also exists in a person, separate from his body.

Family

In 1838, in Vladimir, Herzen married his cousin Natalya Alexandrovna Zakharyina; before leaving Russia, they had 6 children, two of whom lived to adulthood:

• Alexander(1839-1906), famous physiologist, lived in Switzerland.
• Natalya (b. and d. 1841), died 2 days after birth.
• Ivan (b. and d. 1842), died 5 days after birth.
• Nikolai (1843-1851), was deaf from birth, with the help of the Swiss teacher I. Shpilman learned to speak and write, died in a shipwreck (see below).
• Natalia(Tata, 1844-1936), family historiographer and keeper of the Herzen archive.
• Elizabeth (1845-1846), died 11 months after birth.

While emigrating to Paris, Herzen's wife fell in love with Herzen's friend Georg Herweg. She admitted to Herzen that “dissatisfaction, something left unoccupied, abandoned, was looking for another sympathy and found it in friendship with Herwegh” and that she dreams of a “marriage of three,” and more spiritual than purely carnal. In Nice, Herzen and his wife and Herwegh and his wife Emma, ​​as well as their children, lived in the same house, forming a “commune” that did not involve intimate relationships outside of couples. Nevertheless, Natalya Herzen became Herwegh’s mistress, which she hid from her husband (although Herwegh revealed himself to his wife). Then Herzen, having learned the truth, demanded the Herwegs' departure from Nice, and Herwegh blackmailed Herzen with the threat of suicide. The Herwegs left anyway. In the international revolutionary community, Herzen was condemned for subjecting his wife to “moral coercion” and preventing her from uniting with her lover.

In 1850, Herzen's wife gave birth to a daughter Olga(1850-1953), who in 1873 married the French historian Gabriel Monod (1844-1912). According to some reports, Herzen doubted his paternity, but never stated this publicly and recognized the child as his own.

In the summer of 1851, the Herzen couple reconciled, but a new tragedy awaited the family. On November 16, 1851, near the Giera archipelago, as a result of a collision with another ship, the steamship “City of Grasse” sank, on which Herzen’s mother Louise Ivanovna and his son Nikolai, deaf from birth, with their teacher Johann Spielmann sailed to Nice; they died and their bodies were never found.

In 1852, Herzen’s wife gave birth to a son, Vladimir, and died two days later; the son also died soon after.

Since 1857, Herzen began to cohabit with Nikolai Ogarev’s wife, Natalya Alekseevna Ogareva-Tuchkova, she raised his children. They had a daughter Elizabeth(1858-1875) and twins Elena and Alexey (1861-1864, died of diphtheria). Officially, they were considered Ogarev’s children.

In 1869, Natalya Tuchkova received the surname Herzen, which she bore until her return to Russia in 1876, after Herzen’s death.

Elizaveta Ogareva-Herzen, the 17-year-old daughter of A.I. Herzen and N.A. Tuchkova-Ogareva, committed suicide because of unrequited love for a 44-year-old Frenchman in Florence in December 1875. The suicide had a resonance, he wrote about it

Russian revolutionary, writer and publicist. The founder of the Russian political emigration, publisher of the first Russian revolutionary newspaper “The Bell” (1857-1867).

Alexander Ivanovich Herzen was the illegitimate son of a wealthy landowner Ivan Alekseevich Yakovlev (1767-1846). He received an artificial surname invented by his father (from the German Herz - heart). He was brought up in the house of I. A. Yakovlev and received a good education.

The event that determined the entire future fate of A. I. Herzen was the Decembrist uprising (1825) and the subsequent execution of five of its leaders (1826). They forever remained for him patriotic heroes who sacrificed themselves in order to awaken a new generation of revolutionaries. In his youth, A.I. Herzen vowed to avenge those executed and continue their work.

In 1829-1833, A. I. Herzen was a student at the physics and mathematics department of Moscow University. At this time, a friendly circle of free-thinking youth formed around him and his friend N.P. Ogarev, in which they “preached hatred of all violence, of all government tyranny.” In 1834, A. I. Herzen and some circle members were arrested on false charges of singing anti-monarchist songs, but in fact for freethinking.

In April 1835, A.I. Herzen was expelled to, from there to, where he served in the provincial chancellery. During a visit by Tsarevich Alexander Nikolaevich (future Emperor Alexander II) in 1837, he was responsible for organizing an exhibition of local works and gave explanations to the heir to the throne during its inspection. At the request of A. I. Herzen at the end of 1837, he was transferred to serve as an adviser to the provincial government.

At the beginning of 1840, A.I. Herzen returned to, and in May of the same year he moved to, where, at the insistence of his father, he entered service in the office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. In July 1841, for a harsh review of the police in a letter to his father, A. I. Herzen was expelled to, where he served in the provincial government.

Returning from exile in July 1842, A. I. Herzen retired and settled in. He took an active part in the struggle between the main directions of social thought - Slavophiles and Westerners, sharing the positions of the latter. The brilliant abilities of a polemicist, erudition, and talent as a thinker and artist gave A. I. Herzen the opportunity to become one of the key figures in Russian public life.

Since 1836, A. I. Herzen began his journalistic activity, publishing his works under the pseudonym Iskander. In the 1840s, he published a number of philosophical works: a series of articles “Amateurism in Science” (1842-1843), “Letters on the Study of Nature” (1844-1845), etc., in which he asserted the union of philosophy with the natural sciences. Considering literature as a reflection of social life and an effective means of combating autocratic reality, A. I. Herzen came up with a number of fictional works imbued with anti-serfdom pathos: “Doctor Krupov” (1847), “The Thieving Magpie” (1848), etc. Roman A . I. Herzen “Who is to blame?” (1841-1846) became one of the first Russian socio-psychological novels.

In 1847, A.I. Herzen and his family went abroad. Having witnessed the defeat of the European revolutions of 1848-1849, he became disillusioned with the revolutionary capabilities of the West and developed the theory of “Russian socialism”, becoming one of the founders of populism.

In 1849, in Geneva (Switzerland), he participated in the publication of P. J. Proudhon’s newspaper “The Voice of the People.” In 1850, A. I. Herzen settled in Nice, where he became close to the leaders of the Italian national liberation movement. That same year, he refused the government's demand

HERTEN ALEXANDER IVANOVICH

(b. 1812 – d. 1870)

Famous Russian revolutionary democrat, publicist and writer.

The illegitimate son of a wealthy landowner Ivan Yakovlev and a German woman, Louise Haag, Alexander Herzen was born on March 25, 1812 in Moscow. The boy received a surname invented by his father (from German. Herz- heart). He received a good upbringing and education, his life was spent in contentment, but the stigma of being an illegitimate child always poisoned Herzen’s life.

The Decembrist uprising on December 14, 1825 captured the teenager’s imagination and determined his future interests. He became a passionate champion of freedom and justice. In his dreams of revolution and “people's happiness,” young Herzen found a like-minded person who would become his friend from the age of 12 until his death - Nikolai Ogarev. An entire era of the Russian democratic liberation movement of the 1840s–1850s is associated with Herzen and Ogarev. In 1829–1833, Herzen studied at the physics and mathematics department of Moscow University. There he and Ogarev organize a student revolutionary circle.

Herzen graduated from the University with a candidate's degree and a silver medal, but a year later he and Ogarev were arrested for participating in a student party at which a bust of Emperor Nicholas I was broken. What is interesting: neither Herzen nor Ogarev were even present at this party, nevertheless, on the basis of “circumstantial evidence” and “way of thinking,” they were brought into the case of “a conspiracy of young people devoted to the teachings of Saint-Simonism.”

Herzen spent 9 months in prison, at the end of which he received a death sentence and a personal pardon from the emperor, who ordered a corrective measure to be applied to the prisoner - exile to Perm, and three weeks later - to Vyatka. In exile, Herzen worked as a clerical clerk in the civil service.

Only in 1837, thanks to the petition of the poet and educator of the heir to the throne, Vasily Zhukovsky, who visited Vyatka, Herzen was allowed to settle in Vladimir. There he serves in the governor’s office and edits the official newspaper “Additions to the Vladimir Provincial News.” In 1840, Herzen was allowed to return to Moscow. While still in Vyatka, Herzen published his first literary works under the pseudonym Iskander, and upon returning to Moscow, he rightfully began to dream of fame as a writer.

Here Herzen finds himself in the society of young frondeurs, becomes closely acquainted with Belinsky and Bakunin, and is imbued with their ideas of criticism of the monarchical regime. At the insistence of his father, Alexander enters service in the office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, moves to St. Petersburg, but does not break off his “suspicious” connections. In 1841, for a harsh comment in a private letter about the morals of the Russian police, Herzen was sent to Novgorod, and there he served on the provincial government. Thanks to the efforts of friends and relatives, in 1842 Alexander managed to escape from Novgorod and, after retiring, moved to Moscow.

Herzen lived in Moscow for five years; these were years of literary creativity and ideological quest for him. By the mid-1840s, Herzen was not only a convinced “Westernizer,” but also the leader of young democrats who dreamed of a “Western model” of Russian development. Back in 1841, he wrote the story “Notes of a Young Man”; in subsequent years, the novel “Who is to blame?”, the stories “Doctor Krupov” and “The Thieving Magpie” came out from his pen.

In 1847, Herzen and his family went abroad. He will never see his homeland again. He settles in Paris, where the revolution of 1848 takes place before his eyes, of which he becomes a participant. In 1849, Herzen moved to Geneva, where, together with Proudhon, he published the anarchist newspaper “Voice of the People.”

However, after the defeat of the revolution, Herzen became disillusioned with the revolutionary capabilities of the West and abandoned “Westernism,” criticizing Western social utopias and romantic illusions. He was the first to formulate the theory of “Russian socialism”, becoming one of the founders of the populism movement. In his book “On the Development of Revolutionary Ideas in Russia,” written in 1850, Herzen highlighted the history of the development of the Russian liberation movement, emphasizing that Russia has a special revolutionary path. In 1850 he moved to Nice, where he became close to the leaders of the Italian liberation movement. In the same year, when the tsarist government demanded that he immediately return to Russia, Herzen refused.

The years 1851–1852 became a time of sorrow and terrible losses for him - his mother and son died during a shipwreck, and his wife died.

Left alone, Herzen moved to London, where he founded the Free Russian Printing House. For the first two years of its existence, without receiving materials from Russia, he printed leaflets and proclamations, and since 1855 he published the revolutionary almanac “Polar Star”. In 1856, Herzen's friend Nikolai Ogarev moved to London. At this time, Herzen wrote “Letters from France and Italy”, “From the Other Shore”, gradually becoming an iconic figure in the liberation movement.

Since 1857, Herzen and Ogarev published the first Russian revolutionary newspaper, Kolokol. Its wide distribution in Russia contributed to the unification of democratic and revolutionary forces and the creation of the organization “Land and Freedom”. Fighting against the Russian monarchy, the newspaper supported the Polish uprising of 1863–1864. The support of the “rebellious Poles” became fatal for “The Bell”: Herzen is gradually losing readers - patriots accuse him of betraying Russia, moderates recoil because of “radicalism,” and radicals because of “moderation.”

Herzen begins to publish “The Bell” in Geneva, but this cannot improve the situation, and in 1867 the publication of the newspaper was discontinued. Oblivion, lonely old age and squabbles with old friends - this was Herzen’s lot in exile.

In the last years of his life, he often changes his place of residence: he lives in Geneva, then in Cannes, Nice, Florence, Lausanne, Brussels, but his rebellious spirit finds peace nowhere. He continues to work on the autobiographical novel “The Past and Thoughts,” writes the essay “For the Sake of Boredom” and the story “The Doctor, the Dying and the Dead.”

And by this time new figures had already appeared in the revolutionary movement - Marx, Lassalle, Bakunin, Tkachev, Lavrov... Herzen remained a lone propagandist who “launched revolutionary agitation.”

January 9, 1870 Alexander Ivanovich dies in Paris; his ashes are buried in the Père Lachaise cemetery.

From the book In the Name of the Motherland. Stories about Chelyabinsk residents - Heroes and twice Heroes of the Soviet Union author Ushakov Alexander Prokopyevich

CHUKHAREV Alexander Ivanovich Alexander Ivanovich Chukharev was born in 1915 in the village of Lemazy, Duvansky district of the Bashkir Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, into a peasant family. Russian. In 1928 he came to the construction of the Magnitogorsk Iron and Steel Works. Graduated from FZU (now GPTU-19), became