Herzen, Aleksandr

Herzen, Aleksandr (Ivanovich)

(born April 6, 1812, Moscow, Russia—died Jan. 21, 1870, Paris, France) Russian writer and political activist. As a student at the University of Moscow, he joined a socialist group, for which he was exiled to work in the provincial bureaucracy (1834–42). Returning to Moscow, he joined the Westernizers but then turned to anarchist socialism. After inheriting a considerable fortune, he left Russia. In Paris he proclaimed Western institutions “dead” and developed the theory of a unique Russian path to socialism known as peasant populism. He moved to London in 1852 and founded the Free Russian Press, as well as the influential newspaper Kolokol (“The Bell”) in 1857; smuggled into Russia, the paper was read by both reformers and revolutionaries. When the Emancipation Act was enacted in 1861, he denounced it as a betrayal of the peasants. He then turned his energies to writing My Past and Thoughts (1861–67), considered one of the greatest works of Russian prose.