DOC My Past and Thoughts by Alexander Herzen in History

Review

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful. Herzen in BriefBy Philip BrantinghamThere is no question that it is good to have this edition of Alexander Herzen's autobiography; "My Past and Thoughts;" though it is considerably abridged. The work is deservedly praised as one of the great autobiographies of the West. Well written and colorful; it acquaints us with the mind and spirit of one of the most important political figures of the nineteenth century. Herzen; darling of radicals and nemesis of conservatives (wrongly; I believe); is a seminal thinker and activist of his time.Herzen; a Russian by birth but an internationalist in spirit; knew most of the radicals of the era; Bakunin; Mazzini; Garibaldi; Louis Blanc. Yet he was in a way not one of them. He was too hardheaded and too reasonable--he knew what worked and what didn't. Raised in autocratic Russia; he had experienced prison; exile--and fame as a writer.This edition has been abridged by Dwight MacDonald; unfortunately leaving out some crucial parts; for example his relations with his wife; Natalie; and other more domestic issues. However; the original appeared in five volumes; and something had to be excised to make this edition manageable. Those who wish to read the complete autobiography should look up the Knopf four-volume edition of 1968. Nonetheless; this edition will do for most of us. It's a gem.Philip BrantinghamChicago; IL0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Five StarsBy Cornelia SeckelExcellent gave me much to think about42 of 46 people found the following review helpful. Herzen is the Culmination of Russian Romantic ThoughtBy A reader in Tucson; AZIn the years before Lenin and the harsh; bleak application of socialist thought to autocracy there existed a group of philosophers who believed in the beauty of the commune and its cooperation with a Republican government. Britain had Robert Owen and his factory town; the French had Fourier (the phalanstery) and Proudhon among others; and the Russians had Herzen. Here existed a time where the leading academics saw folly in violent revolution; and Herzen was by no means a demogogue willing to mobilize the Russian peasants in a siege of Moscow like a simple Pugachev or a Decembrist.This perhaps explains Herzen's stern dislike of Marx and Engels; for he saw too much of the Robespierre in them and their ideas.Herzen believed in democracy almost in a modern American sense. Indeed; much of the work is laced with arguments in disfavor to the flowering of socialism in Europe; citing particularly the cruelty of the police in France during 1848: "The Latin world does not like freedom; it only likes to sue for it." Certainly the tendencies of the Germans were no more progressive either. Instead at one point in the text the author suggests that those who "can put off from himself the old Adam of Europe and be born again a new Jonathan had better take the first steamer to some place in Wisconsin or Kansas."The selections and abridgement of the text emphasize Herzen's basic belief about reform: revolution is gradual. One has to breed engrained stupidity out of the ruling class and make laws that better everyone; like the English and Americans. Laws make a better society; not people: "The Englishman's liberty is more in his institutions than in himself or his conscience. His freedom is the 'common law.'"The text covers the demise of Herzen; culminating in his rejection on his deathbed by the new revolutionary ("terrorist") camps in Russia; headed ideologically by Chernyshevsky and best seen in the widespread incendiary and murderous practices of Sergei Nechaev. These are all topics of the years after Herzen's death; the tragic history of the latter half of the nineteenth century and the prelude to the pall of 1917.