A Herzen Reader

On the Development of Revolutionary Ideas in Russia was written in 1850, at the dawn of a particularly turbulent period in Herzen's life, so it is fitting that one of the first places it is mentioned is in a letter to the German poet George Herwegh, soon to be revealed as a serious rival for Natalya Herzen's affections. Herzen tells Herwegh that he is writing a "brief note about the development of liberalism and opposition in Russian literature," but a few weeks later admits that it has turned out to be much more politi­cal than literary (Let 2:572-74). After three years abroad, Herzen felt completely cut off from everything Russian; at best, his letters were answered with expressions of passivity and despair, and at worst, they were returned to him (Zhelvakova, Gertsen, 337). Natan Eidelman saw this as the moment when Herzen summed up past Russian thought and sketched the "contours of a new 'program.' " Herzen had not yet seen some of the most important eighteenth-century Russian documents, but as they came to his attention, he published them in London (Eidel'man, Svobodnoe slovo, 450-51). The treatise on revolu­tionary ideas, comprising an introduction, six chapters, an epilogue, and a supplement, was published in German and French in 1851; the translation below is from the French. The appearance of the French edition led to Herzen being thrown out of Nice, which still belonged to the Kingdom of Sardinia, in June of that year. By October 1851, it was on the list of foreign publications that were "absolutely" forbidden in Russia (Let 2:25, 51).

Herzen's analysis of Russia's historical development elicited strong reactions across the political spectrum. The first Russian readers were members of the ruling circles who were permitted to receive foreign publications otherwise banned by the censor­ship committee. Based on rumors emanating from those quarters, and in the wake of the 1849 Petrashevsky trial, Herzen's Moscow acquaintances feared that the pamphlet could provoke additional attacks on progressive circles. Timofey Granovsky, whose friendship Herzen treasured, wrote disapprovingly to the author—before he had read the essay—about the dangers to which Herzen was exposing liberals. In an apologetic letter two years later he admitted that at the time he had been influenced by gossip. Pavel Annenkov believed that Herzen's essay put Granovsky in real peril; the govern­ment saw revolution everywhere and was just waiting for the beloved professor to make a mistake (Annenkov, Extraordinary Decade, 250-51; Annenkov, Literaturnye vospomina- niia, 529-31).

The actor Mikhail Shchepkin was delegated by Moscow acquaintances to ask Herzen in person to stop writing and move to America, at least until things had calmed down in Russia. Petr Chaadaev, on the other hand, sent thanks to Herzen for having mentioned his role in the struggle for freedom. It turns out that Chaadaev had also written to the political police, expressing his indignation at receiving the praise of such a scoundrel; he later explained to his puzzled nephew that he had to save himself (Berlin, Russian Thinkers, 15). Encouraged by Herzen's bold approach, students at Moscow University later illegally printed their own translation.

Nikolay Gogol was frightened by the essay's claim that in his earlier works he de­picted noblemen and officials negatively, and Shchepkin said that when he and Tur- genev met Gogol at the end of October, the latter was torn between feeling offended and questioning his own wisdom in having published Selected Passages from Correspondence with Friends (Let 2:51). The critic Vladimir Botkin, a liberal frightened into conservatism by the 1848 revolutions, labeled Herzen's survey a "denunciation." When the minister of state properties, Kiselev, observed that it could not endanger anyone, since it only spoke of the dead, the Third Department's Count Orlov replied that "if we really wanted to, we could use the dead to reach the living"; another conservative journalist, Nikolay Grech, called Herzen a "swine" who led young people to drink the poison of "unbelief and disrespect for sacred things and state power" (Let 2:45).