A Herzen Reader

The above does not in any way suggest that the literature of the Soviet period should be dismissed or ignored. Over the course of seven decades, a considerable corpus of studies on a wide variety of aspects and angles of Herzen and his works was produced. A number of literary projects were carried out that would have been difficult to orchestrate and finance in the West. The most significant of these is the definitive thirty-volume edition of his collected writings, with extensive notes and critical apparati.³¹ This opus, which took over a decade to complete, remains the standard reference work in the field. Also of note is the five-volume chronology of Herzen's life, which provides a detailed diary-like account of Herzen's movements and activities.³²

There is another intriguing aspect to Soviet Herzen scholarship. Among some writers, the choice of Herzen as a subject may indicate something other than simple endorsement of Leninist doctrine. As the theme of one work, entitled Herzen Against Autocracy,³³ suggests, Herzen set a model for the expression of free thought against the background of a repressive regime—a luxury not easily afforded the Soviet author documenting this very topic.³⁴ The irony of this circumstance could not entirely have been lost among readers. The subversive aspect of Herzen scholarship in Soviet secondary literature is a worthy topic in itself.³⁵

In the resurgence of essays and monographs on Herzen emanating from Russia during the last two decades one can detect new approaches with innovative methods and means of analysis employed to elucidate the man and his doctrine in a fresh light.³⁶

Growing interest in Herzen in the West may be seen in the context of the broader fascination with Russia during the first decades of the twentieth century. This was marked by a spurt of publications that ventured into a creative arena situated somewhere between romance and scholarship, in which a search was conducted for the "soul" or "spirit" of Russia as rep­resented by its great nineteenth-century literary figures and its innovative Silver Age poets and artists. In England, attention turned to Russian art and literature, while Continental studies included T. G. Masaryk's tour de force Russland und Europa (i9i3), a wide-ranging survey of Russian history, literature, and philosophy. Masaryk allocates several important subchapters to Herzen, depicting him with much admiration and empathy. The author, however, worked from the limited corpus of Herzen's texts available before the First World War.

The upheavals of i9i7-i9 and the assumption of power by Lenin, who, as noted above, accorded Herzen a central role as the ideological progenitor of Russian socialism, piqued the curiosity of those wishing to better under­stand the monumental events taking place.

In part a result of Russia's dramatic political and ideological transforma­tion and in part due to the production of Lemke's important reference work, Herzen scholarship began to move forward with quickening pace. In France, Labry produced two in-depth studies in the :920s, with the majority of the research focused on Herzen's ideological development within Russia and the impact of French thought upon his doctrine.³⁷ In the English-speaking world, the publication of Garnett's pocketbook translations of My Past and Thoughts (Byloe i dumy), Herzen's most popular work, helped bolster interest in the man and his thought.³⁸ By the early 1930s, E. H. Carr (i892-i982) was working on the first significant English-language study of Herzen. Based in part on My Past and Thoughts, Carr's work, The Romantic Exiles,³⁹ is largely biographical. It is well written, engaging, and entertaining, but it does not attempt to grapple with the intellectual streams of Herzen's doctrine.

By the end of the Second World War, the Soviet Union had reestablished itself as a major power, and as the Cold War emerged and intensified, the

Eastern bloc became a significant focus of concern in the West. With schol­ars and commentators expressing polarized views on the Soviet regime and communist doctrine, discussion extended to the influences that led to the current situation, one which pitted Western democracies against an ideo­logical system whose antecedents stretched back into the previous century. It was only natural, given Herzen's important role in Russia's intellectual heritage, socialist doctrine, and revolutionary movement, that scholarship in the West on this important figure should launch in earnest.