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Title: My Past and Thoughts: The Memoirs of Alexander Herzen by Alexander Herzen, Dwight MacDonald, Constance Garnett, Isaiah Berlin ISBN: 0-520-04210-7 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: June, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $17.59 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.33 (3 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Herzen is the Culmination of Russian Romantic Thought
Comment: In 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.
Rating: 5
Summary: Another great writer than Americans never get exposed to....
Comment: Herzen is one of the many authors whom Americans never are exposed to and rightfully should be. He was a great thinker; he writes lucidly (although tending toward personal speculation.... you've got to remember-- he was living at a similar time to Tolstoy who does the same thing....) and CAN BE surprisingly contemporary for someone so long dead....
It's understandable why Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and Solzenitzen (sp?) are much more widely read than he is: they are better novellists and never got cursed by the fact that they were socialists (such a dirty word in the US!) BUT, Herzen is definately someone whom anyone trying to pawn themselves off as a psuedo-intellectual should read.
One problem with this book: some of his best stuff is obviously just not in here (as it is his memoirs....) His philosophy is brilliant; some of his letters to his son are as moving as any I can think of (excepting perhaps Rilke's to the young poet...)
His memoirs are a definate must-read.... for whomever is reading this review.... Just buy the book!
Rating: 4
Summary: It's lucid and evokes an era
Comment: A worthwile read for anyone with an interest in 19th century history - or Russian thought. Herzen's narrative begins with Napoleon's retreat from Moscow and winds on through Nichlos II's reign to the larger events of Napoleon the III's Europe. At times a witty and fascinating account of both Russia and Europe during a crucial era, Herzen occasionally drifts off into somewhat tedious personal speculation.
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Title: Russian Thinkers by Isaiah Berlin ISBN: 0140136258 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: April, 1995 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: Fathers and Sons (Oxford World's Classics) by Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev, Richard Freeborn ISBN: 0192833928 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: June, 1998 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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Title: The Romantic Exiles by E. H. Carr ISBN: 1897959354 Publisher: Serif Pub. Date: January, 1999 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: What Is to Be Done? by Nokolai Chernyshevsky, Michael R. Katz, Nikolai Chernyshevsky ISBN: 0801495474 Publisher: Cornell Univ Pr Pub. Date: March, 1989 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Natasha's Dance : A Cultural History of Russia by Orlando Figes ISBN: 0312421958 Publisher: Picador USA Pub. Date: 17 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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