A Herzen Reader

This theme transcends the Soviet era. A few years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, interest revived in Herzen and Ogaryov's multi-pronged campaign against the "official" version of history presented in Baron Modest Korf's rendition of the Decem­brist revolt and the accession to the throne of Nicholas I. Herzen had refuted what he branded Korf's "servile" and "slavish" account in a notice appearing in The Bell 1, no. 4 (January 10, 1857), in a separate article, and a book: 14 dekabria 1825 i imperator Nikolai (London: Trtibner, 1858). A reprint of the latter, along with introduction, notes, and analysis, appeared as 14 dekabria 1825 goda i ego istolkovateli (Gertsen i Ogarev protiv barona Korfa), ed. E. L. Rudnitskoi, prepared by A. G. Tartakovskii (Moscow: Nauka, 1994).

See, for example, the creative approaches and new directions taken in Elena N. Dryzhakova, Gertsen na zapade: V labirinte nadezhd, slavy i otrechenii (St. Petersburg: Akademicheskii proekt, 1999) (this work devotes only 39 pages to Herzen's 1855-64 period); Vasilii F. Antonov, A. I. Gertsen: Obshchestvennyi ideal (Moscow: Editorial URSS, 2000); and Ruslan Khestanov, Aleksandr Gertsen: Improvizatsiiaprotiv doktriny (Moscow: Dom intellektual'noi knigi, 2001).

Raoul Labry, Herzen et Proudhon (Paris: Bossard, 1928); Raoul Labry, Alexandre Ivanovic Herzen, 1812-1870: Essai sur la formation et le developpement de ses idees (Paris: Editions Bossard, 1928).

Alexander Herzen, My Past and Thoughts: The Memoirs of Alexander Herzen, trans. Constance Garnett, 6 vols. (London: Chatto and Windus, 1924-27).

Edward Hallett Carr, The Romantic Exiles: A Nineteenth-Century Portrait Gallery (London: V. Gollancz, 1933; reprint: Harmondsworth, Eng.: Penguin, 1968).

Originally a restricted document, the report was published in its entirety as "The Arts in Russia Under Stalin," in The Soviet Mind: Russian Culture Under Communism, ed. Henry Hardy (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2004).

"Russia and 1848" highlights Herzen's central role in the development of the Russian intelligentsia as a counterforce to the oppressive regime of Nicholas I. Berlin traces the emergence of a distinct Russian "native social and political outlook" against the backdrop of "the gigantic strait-jacket of bureaucratic and military control." It is this for­mation of a flank of moral opposition, spearheaded by Herzen, that Berlin identifies as a heroic Russian liberal voice in the face of repressive measures. See Isaiah Berlin, "Russia and 1848," Slavonic Review (Slavonic and East European Review) 26 (1948): 341, 359.

Berlin considered Marx to be the most influential of all nineteenth-century think­ers, though he took issue with several of his basic positions and tenets, such as his negative regard for nationalism. A decade after completion of his study on Marx, Berlin can be seen as offering the alternative refrain of Herzen, a socialist of strong national convictions: "In the 1950s Berlin went on to reveal to English and American readers the riches of nineteenth-century Russian populism and liberalism as represented by Herzen . . . and to argue something we need to remember today more than ever, that nationalism can be and has been an ally of liberalism." Alan Ryan, introduction to Isa­iah Berlin, Karl Marx: His Life and Environment (1939), 4th rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), xvi.

See Isaiah Berlin, "The First and the Last: My Intellectual Path," New York Review of Books, May 14, 1998, pp. 10-11.

Berlin's activities stretched far beyond the halls of academia. Regarding Berlin's direct influence on Tom Stoppard's "Coast of Utopia" trilogy, see "The Coast of Utopia," Lincoln Center Theater Review 43 (2006). One critic writes that English Herzenism, led by the Berlin school, projects Herzen as "a post-war liberal in nineteenth-century cloth­ing." Thomas Harlan Campbell, "Restaging the Gercen 'Family Drama': Tom Stop­pard's Shipwreck and the Discourse of English 'Herzenism,' " Russian Literature 61, no. 1-2 (January 1-February 15, 2007): 207-43.