A Herzen Reader

From i907 to i920, Ivanov-Razumnik¹² (i878-i946) produced over fifteen major studies, including an eight-part history of Russian social thought that includes a fine chapter on Herzen.¹³ During roughly the same period, he wrote a series of small but valuable essays on Herzen, beginning with his i905 article on Herzen and the Russian populist Mikhailovsky.¹⁴

In On the Meaning of Life, Ivanov-Razumnik describes two "objectivist" doctrines—positivist and religious, both with a fixed historical "aim" or grand vision—and a third doctrine, "immanent subjectivism," of which Herzen is presented as founding father and most exemplary exponent.¹⁵

Despite the burst of essays and monographs on Herzen that appeared during the first two decades of the twentieth century, in his 1918 mono­graph K. Levin complained that this scholarship had generated more mis­understandings than accurate appraisals, and was riddled with conflicting images and portrayals of the man.¹⁶ This assessment can be attributed in part to the relative newness of Herzen research in Russia, and to the fact that a complete critical edition of his writings was still not available.¹⁷ Scholarly efforts were significantly facilitated by the 22-volume edition of Herzen's collected works, edited by Mikhail Konstantinovich Lemke (1872­1923), and issued as a foundation of the revolution's noble heritage and in­tellectual pedigree by the People's Commissariat for Education. This work, completed in 1925, remained the principal point of departure for all Herzen scholarship for the next forty years. Other works appearing in this period include Bogucharsky's running biography, virtually devoid of notes or sup­porting material, which covers the last thirteen years ofHerzen's life in less than forty pages,¹⁸ and a pamphlet-sized popular biography by Steklov first published in 1920.¹⁹

As the new Soviet order was established, Herzen scholarship was forced to take a sharp turn. Formerly the bete noir of the tsarist regime, Herzen was now accorded a central position on the podium of Russian socialist ideologues and elevated to the pantheon of national heroes. While this en­couraged writing on Herzen, it also meant that interpretation was made to conform to strict guidelines and received understanding; a figure of such importance was to be defined within the tight ideological framework that Lenin had imposed.²⁰

The typical Soviet-era study begins with Lenin's famous dictum, his epi- graphic image ofHerzen as dissident voice and peasant advocate.²¹ The main body of such research is replete with quotations from Herzen, frequently laid out in a cut-and-paste fashion,²² interlaced with fact-filled commentary, and thickly cross-referenced with Lenin's writings (it is not unusual to find pages that include more Lenin than Herzen). Analysis is often couched in Soviet ideological terminology, premised on a causal relationship between economic structures and literary and intellectual phenomena, as well as aesthetics and values. Herzen's democratic ethos is reduced to having paved the way for the vanguard of Russian Marxism²³—quite an irony, con­sidering Herzen's profound dislike for much of Marx's writings—and his teaching is viewed as an intermediate stage on the path of Marxist-Leninist aesthetics.²⁴ One author somewhat anachronistically reads this alleged in- termediacy back into Herzen's own understanding, attributing his personal or "spiritual" tragedy to his being caught in the middle of "the revolution­ism of bourgeois democracy, which was already dying in Europe, and the revolutionism of the socialist proletariat, which had not ripened."²⁵ These studies often draw to a close not with the author's considered thoughts or findings, but with several more quotations from Lenin which are seen to sum up all that can (or should) be derived from Herzen's work.

One of the few Russian monographs specifically to treat Herzen's Bell closely follows this formula, quoting Lenin so often that on some pages the author no longer bothers to supply a reference. Indicative of the general gist of such scholarship, the first page of the bibliography guides the reader interested in understanding more about Herzen to two works by Marx and seventeen by Lenin.²⁶ Another monograph expands this list somewhat to include Engels.²⁷

Tatarinova's volume on Herzen, published in a series on "revolution­ary democratic publicists," contains a section on the Free Russian Press, though the interpretation relies heavily not only on Lenin but on Plekha- nov, who views Herzen as an early contributor to the stream of socialist materialism.²⁸ Monographs on Herzen's social philosophy²⁹ and historical views³⁰ follow a similar approach. Overall, much of Soviet scholarship on Herzen tends to be descriptive—often painstakingly so, with great effort on detail and documentation—but with a restrictive or circumscribed analytic or critical range.