This curious ambivalence, the alternation of indignant championship of revolution and democracy against the smug denundation of them by liberals and conservatives, with no less passionate attacks upon revolutionaries in the name of free individuals ; the defence of the claims of life and art, human decency, equality and dignity, with the advocacy of a society in which human beings shall not exploit or trample on one another even in the name of justice or progress or civilisation or democracy or other abstractions - this war on two, and often more, fronts, wherever and whoever the enemies of freedom might tum out to be - makes Herzen the most realistic, sensitive, penetrating and convincing witness to the sodal life and the social issues of his own time. His greatest gift is that of untrammelled understanding : he understood the value of the so-called 'superfluous' Russian idealists
I N T R O D U C T I O N
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of the 40s because they were exceptionally free, and morally attractive, and formed the most imaginative, spontaneous, gifted, civilised and interesting society which he had ever known. At the same time he understands the protest against it of the exasperated, deeply earnest, revoltes young radicals, repelled by what seemed to them gay and irresponsible chatter among a group of aristo-
. cratic �aneurs, unaware of the mounting resentment of the sullen mass of the oppressed peasants and lower officials that would one day sweep them and their world away in a tidal wave of violent, blind, but justified hatred which it is the business of true revolutionaries to foment and direct. Herzen understood this conflict, and his autobiography conveys the tension between individuals and classes, personalities and opinions both in Russia and in the West, with marvellous vividness and precision.
My Past and Thoughts is dominated by no single clear purpose, it is not committed to a thesis ; its author was not enslaved by any formula or any political doctrine, and for this reason, it remains a profound and living masterpiece, and Herzen's greatest title to immortality. He possesses other claims : his political and social views were arrestingly original, if only because he was among the very few thinkers of his time who in principle rejected all general solutions, and grasped, as very few thinkers have ever done, the crucial distinction between words that are about words, and words that are about persons or things in the real world. Nevertheless it is as a writer that he survives. His autobiography is one of the great monuments to Russian literary and psychological genius, worthy to stand beside the great novels of Turgenev and Tolstoy.
Like War and Peace, like Fathers and Children, it is wonderfully readable, and, save in inferior translation, not dated, not Victorian, still astonishingly contemporary in feeling.
One of the elements in political genius is a sensibility to characteristics and processes in society while they are still in embryo and invisible to the naked eye. Herzen possessed this capacity to a high degree, but he viewed the approaching cataclysm neither with the savage exultation of Marx or Bakunin nor with the pessimistic detachment of Burckhardt or Tocqueville. Like Proudhon he believed the destruction of individual freedom to be neither desirable nor inevitable, but, unlike him, as being highly probable, unless it was averted by deliberate human effort. The strong tradition of libertarian humanism in Russian socialism, defeated only in October
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I S A I A H B E R L I N
1 9 1 7, derives from his writings. His analysis of the forces a t work in his day, of the individuals in whom they were embodied, of the moral presupposition of their creeds and words, and of his own principles, remains to this day one of the most penetrating, moving, and morally formidable indictments of the great evils which have grown to maturity in our own time.
I S A I A H B E R L I N
PART I
N URSERY AND UNIVERSITY
1812-1834
C H A P T E R I
My Nurse and the Grande: Armce - Moscow in Flames -My Father and Napoleon - General Ilovaysky - A Journey with French Prisoners - Patriotism - Calot - Property Managed in Co=on - The Division - The Senator
1
'O H, please, Nurse, tell me again how the French came to Moscow ! ' This was a constant petition of mine, as I stretched myself out in my crib with the cloth border to prevent my falling out, and nestled down under the warm quilt.
My old nurse, Vera Artamonovna, was just as eager to repeat her favourite story as I was to hear it ; but her regular reply was :
'You've heard that old story ever so often before, and besides it's time for you to go to sleep ; you had better rise earlier tomorrow.'
'Oh, but please tell me just a little - how you heard the news, and how it all began.'
'Well, it began this way. You know how your papa puts off always. The packing went on and on till at last it was done. Everyone said it was high time to be off ; there was nothing to keep us and hardly a soul left in Moscow. But no ! He was always discussing with your uncle Pavel 1 about travelling together, and they were never both ready on the same day. But at last our things were packed, the carriage was ready, and the travellers had just sat down to lunch, when the head cook came into the dining-room as white as a sheet and reported that the enemy had entered the city at the Dragomilovsky Gate. Our hearts went down into our boots, and we prayed that the power of the Cross might be on our side. All was confusion, and, while we were bustling to and fro and crying out, suddenly we saw a regiment of dragoons galloping down the street ; they wore strange helmets with horses' tails tied on behind. They had dosed all the city gates ; so there was your papa in a pretty mess, and you with him ! You were still with your fostermother, Darya ; you were very small and weak then.'
And I smiled, with pride and pleasure at the thought that I had taken a part in the Great War.
'At first, all went reasonably well, during the first days at least.
1 . Pavel lvanovich Golokhvastov, who had married my father's youngest sister.
4
C H I L DH O O D, Y O U T H A N D E X I L E
From time to time two or three soldiers would come into the house and ask for something to drink ; of course we gave them a glass apiece, and then they would go away and salute quite politely as well. But then, you see, when the fires began and got worse and worse, there was terrible disorder, and pillage began and every sort of horror. We were living in a wing of the Princess's house, and the house caught fire. Then your uncle Pavel invited us to move to his house, which was built of stone and very strong and stood far back in a courtyard. So we set off, masters and servants together - there was no thought of distinctions at such a time. When we got into the boulevard, the trees on each side were beginning to bum. At last we reached your uncle's house, and it was actually blazing, with the fire spouting out of every window.