Alexander Herzen (1812-70) was the most outstanding figure in the early
period of the Russian revolutionary movement. Lenin claimed him as a
forerunner of the Bolsheviks, and Soviet scholars have sought to
establish his latent sympathy with Marxism. In the west on the other
hand, he has been seen as a precursor of Solzhenitsyn, the
personification of protest against all forms of oppression. Dr Acton
provides a compelling intellectual biography. The focus is on the years
between 1847 and 1863. Herzen's ideas are set in the context of those
political developments and dramatic private experiences that affected
his outlook. His profound faith in human nature and in the inevitable
triumph of socialism was undermined not only by the failure of the
revolutions of 1848, but even more deeply by personal catastrophe - the
discovery of the infidelity of his beautiful wife Natalie. This dual
blow, Dr Acton shows, had a decisive impact upon Herzen's approach to
Russian problems. It lay at the root of the ambivalent attitude he
adopted towards peasant revolution in the critical period of
Emancipation.
