HERZEN, ALEKSANDR IVANOVIČ (Gercen in the Russian spelling). — Russian political figure and writer, b. in Moscow on 25 March (6 April) 1812, d. in Paris on 3 February 1870. Influenced by Saint-Simon and other socialist currents, he resided in the West, from where he directed the struggle against Russian autocracy.
His journal Kolokol (which was smuggled clandestinely into Russia) and the almanac Poljarnaja Zvezda are well known. He was in contact with figures of the Italian Risorgimento, in particular with Mazzini and Garibaldi. Apart from its literary merit, his autobiography entitled Byloe i dumy (Past and Thoughts) is of great historical interest.
A typical “gentleman” of 19th-century Russia, he was drawn toward an individualistic socialism (closer to Proudhon and Bakunin than to Marx); his “anti-bourgeois” spirit remained offended by the West (which he had extolled in his youth) and he then took refuge in the idealization of the “future Russia,” which, owing to its primitive “pre-capitalist” residues, seemed to him closer to collectivism than bourgeois Europe. A tormented spirit, he was influenced by positivism and materialism, though this was contradicted by frequent doubts of an idealistic stamp and was always dominated by a humanitarianism not devoid of a religious and national background.