A Herzen Reader

The fortuitous constellation of man and moment occurred when a rising academician of Russian origin, with a specialty in philosophy and a pen­chant for the history of ideas, was appointed to serve at the British embassy in Moscow for a brief spell in autumn 1945. With his keen interest in Rus­sian thought and literature, and having written a significant monograph on Marx, Isaiah Berlin (1909-1997) was well apprised of the historical pillars on which modern Russia rested. However, in his brief encounter with the grim, stark reality of Stalin's regime, Berlin became acquainted firsthand with a wholly different Russia than that which he had come to admire through its literature. He was deeply touched by his conversations with Russian intellectuals, and these exchanges contributed to his desire to promote an alternative vision of Russia that had strong roots in the past and offered hope for the future.

In a Foreign Office memorandum entitled "A Note on Literature and the Arts in the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic in the Clos­ing Months of 1945,"⁴⁰ Berlin distinguishes between two visions of Russia. One was manifest in revolutionary Leninist doctrine and Stalin's autocratic rule; the other, stifled to a trembling silence, was the underlying "Russian genius" which had long sought to be liberated from the oppressive grip of state control and censorship. While it was the totalitarian image that was gaining hold in the West, Berlin was a devotee of an entirely different vision of Russia, a liberal, humanist current that he would chronicle and examine in some of his most famous essays.

Berlin's Moscow memorandum was confidential, and could offer no suc­cor to its muted subject, Russia's literary intelligentsia. Given the political climate and palpable danger in Stalinist Russia of publicizing links with foreigners, Berlin could not write candidly about Russian contemporaries. It appears, however, that he soon arrived at a solution to this dilemma. In Herzen, Berlin found a perfect surrogate, a homegrown Russian figure, lauded as a hero by the Soviets themselves, who could "speak out" for those who could not, without risk or fear of reprisal. In the following two years Berlin's central motif contrasting two opposing forces in Russian history gestated and crystallized as he crafted his first essay in which Herzen would take center stage.⁴¹

While Berlin was far too sophisticated to invoke the "soul" or "spirit of Russia" phrase that had become popular in previous decades, he devel­oped a thesis that does share some elements with earlier romantic notions which contemplate an indigenous body of thought spawned by a particular national group or people. The Soviet worldview hearkened back to Marx, a product of the West; Berlin, however, indicates that the historical voice of Russia can be heard by turning to its writers, poets, artists, and intelli­gentsia, particularly those of the nineteenth century.⁴² It is this enlightened humanist stream that Berlin uses as a foil against what he perceives to be the perversions of Russian tradition under Stalinist Marxism. At the heart of the freethinking, anti-authoritarian current in Russian intellectual history and political thought was Herzen, who became something of a poster boy, the standard-bearer of a rich and variegated Russian legacy that was being smothered both in ideological and concrete terms. Berlin popularized an image ofHerzen as not only central in the development ofRussia's intellec­tual, socialist, and revolutionary heritage, but also as the most outstanding representative of an authentically Russian brand of liberal thought. More­over, Herzen could serve as a beacon not only for Russia, but for the West, which had succumbed to the "dangerous" and "sinister" notions lurking in the "political ruminations" of German and French romanticism.⁴³

Berlin's flowing, erudite, and supremely crafted essays were instrumen­tal in directing scholarly and popular attention to Herzen and his thought.⁴⁴ In championing Herzen, Berlin offered an alternative view of Russia as he chose to focus on the freedom-loving heritage that was suppressed under the Soviet regime. Berlin regarded Herzen as a remedy to the malaise of Western thought,⁴⁵ the dangerous seed that had grown into Nazi fascism on the one hand, and Marxist-Leninist doctrine and Stalinist repression on the other.⁴⁶ Berlin's portrayal of Herzen deserves close scrutiny, and, arguably, a monograph on this subject alone could be written. E. H. Carr is reported to have suggested that Berlin understood himself in the tradition of Herzen, and this leaves open the possibility that, conversely, Berlin may have been inclined to fashion Herzen to some extent in his own image.⁴⁷ Through his essays and by dint of the scholars he coached, advised, and inspired, Berlin influenced a key group of Herzen scholars in the West, and his particular approach set the tone for further research.⁴⁸