In 1852 Herzen moved to London, and the following year, with the aid of Polish exiles, he founded the “Free Russian Press in London,” the first uncensored printing enterprise in Russian history. In 1855 Nicholas I died, and soon thereafter Alexander II proclaimed his intention of emancipating the serfs. Responding to this unprecedented “thaw,” Herzen rapidly launched a series of periodicals that were designed to be smuggled back to Russia: “The Polar Star” in 1855, “Voices from Russia” in 1856, and a newspaper, Kolokol (The Bell), created in 1857 with the aid of his old friend Ogaryov, now also an émigré. Herzen's aim was to influence both the government and the public toward emancipation of the peasants, with generous allotments of land and the liberalization of Russian society. To this end, he moderated his political pronouncements, speaking less of socialist revolution and more of the concrete issues involved in Alexander's reforms. For a time he even believed in enlightened autocracy, hailing Alexander II in 1856 (in words that echoed the famous dying tribute of Julian the Apostate to Christ) with: “you have conquered, oh Galilean!” Kolokol soon became a major force in public life, read by the tsar's ministers and the radical opposition.
Soon, however, the ambiguity of Herzen's position between reform and revolution began to cost him support. After 1858 moderate liberals, such as the writer Ivan Turgenev, attacked Herzen for his utopian recklessness; and after 1859 he quarreled with the political writer N.G. Chernyshevsky (Chernyshevsky, N.G.) and the younger generation of radicals, whose intransigent manner appeared to him as “very dangerous” to reform. He also lost faith in the government; when the Emancipation Act (Emancipation Manifesto) was finally enacted in 1861, he denounced it as a betrayal of the peasants.
He therefore veered again to the left and called on the student youth to “go to the people” directly with the message of Russian socialism. Furthermore, on the urging of the anarchist Mikhail Bakunin (Bakunin, Mikhail Aleksandrovich), he threw the support of Kolokol behind the unsuccessful Polish revolt of 1863. He immediately regretted this rashness, for it cost him the support of all moderate elements in Russia without restoring his credit among the revolutionaries. Kolokol's influence declined sharply. In 1865 Herzen moved his headquarters to Geneva to be near the young generation of Russian exiles, but in 1867 public indifference forced Kolokol to cease publication.
Amidst these political reverses, Herzen turned his energies increasingly to his memoirs, My Past and Thoughts, which were designed to enshrine both his own legend and that of Russian radicalism. A loosely constructed personal narrative, interspersed with sharp vignettes of both Russian and Western political figures and with philosophical and historical digressions, it provides a masterful fresco of contemporary European radicalism. At times witty, irreverent, and playful in style, and at other times lyrical, passionate, and rhapsodical, it is one of the most original and powerful examples of Russian prose. My Past and Thoughts was published principally between 1861 and 1867, and its scope and quality have placed it alongside the great Russian novels of the 19th century in artistic stature.
In 1869 Herzen wrote letters K staromu tovarishchy (“To an Old Comrade”; Bakunin), in which he expressed new reservations about the cost of revolution. Still, he was unable to accept liberal reformism completely, and he expressed interest in the new force of the First International, Karl Marx's federation of working-class organizations. This wavering position between socialism and liberalism, which characterized so much of his career, proved to be his political testament. The ambiguities of his position have made it possible ever since for both Russian liberals and socialists to claim his legacy with equal plausibility.
Martin E. Malia
Additional Reading
Works on Herzen include Martin Malia, Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism, 1812–1855 (1961), exploring his ideology and politics; Edward Hallett Carr, The Romantic Exiles: A Nineteenth-Century Portrait Gallery (1933, reissued 1981), treating his personal life; Edward Acton, Alexander Herzen and the Role of the Intellectual Revolutionary (1979); and N.M. Pirumova, Aleksandr Gertsen: Revoliutsioner, Myslitel', Chelovek (1988). Collected editions of his works are Polnoe sobranie sochineniĭ i pisem, ed. by M.K. Lemke, 21 vol. in 22 (1919–23); and Sobranie sochineniĭ, 30 vol. in 35 (1954–66), published by the Soviet Academy of Sciences
Milyukov, Pavel Nikolayevich
▪ Russian historian and statesman
Introduction
Milyukov also spelled Miliukov
born January 27 [January 15, Old Style], 1859, Moscow, Russian Empire
died March 3, 1943, Aix-les-Bains, France
Russian statesman and historian who played an important role in the events leading to the Russian Revolution of 1917 and served as foreign minister (March–May 1917) in Prince Lvov's provisional government. He remains one of the greatest of Russia's liberal historians.
Early career
Milyukov entered Moscow University in 1877 and soon attained academic distinction as a specialist in Russian history. His three-volume Ocherk po istorii russkoy kultury (1896–1903; Outlines of Russian Culture) brought him nationwide renown. He was, however, to become even better known as a spokesman for imperial Russia's nascent liberal movement.
Milyukov's concern with contemporary political issues led in 1895 to the loss of his teaching post, whereupon he went abroad, traveling widely and developing a deep admiration for the political values of more advanced democratic countries. On two occasions, in 1903 and 1904–05, he visited the United States, where he gave public lectures on Russian history and politics. As a convinced “Westernizer,” Milyukov saw tsarist absolutism as the main obstacle to Russia's progress. He strove to make Russian liberalism a more broadly based movement committed to a radical (but not socialist) transformation of the empire's political and social structure. In particular, he stood for the rule of law, parliamentary government, universal suffrage, a broad range of civil freedoms, the expansion of popular education, and land reform. He was perhaps a better judge of abstract ideas than of human nature and was too inflexible to succeed in practical politics.
Political journalism
As a contributor to a clandestinely circulated journal, Osvobozhdeniye (“Liberation”), founded in 1902, Milyukov did much to swing the moderate members of the zemstvos (local government bodies) to the left. During the revolutionary year 1905 (Russian Revolution of 1905), he was active in forming the Union of Unions, a broad alliance of professional associations, and subsequently the Constitutional Democratic, or Kadet, Party. As editor of the Kadet daily newspaper, Rech (“Speech”), and a member of the party's Central Committee, he directed its tactics in Russia's first nationwide election, which brought the Kadets success at the polls. The gulf between the newly created Duma, or national assembly, and the government could not be bridged, however, and in July 1906 the assembly was prematurely dissolved. Milyukov helped to draft the Vyborg Manifesto, appealing for a campaign of passive resistance to the government; this, technically speaking, was an illegal act. Many moderates thought that his tactics, which involved a measure of cooperation with the revolutionary Socialists, were too radical.
Subsequently Milyukov moved to the right. In the third and fourth Dumas (1907–17), he led the Kadets' depleted parliamentary faction in condemning bureaucratic abuses and championing progressive causes. After the outbreak of World War I, Milyukov adopted a patriotic “defensist” policy, which in 1915 led him to criticize the imperial regime for its inefficiency in organizing Russia's resources for the war effort. He helped to form a Progressive Bloc of moderate Duma leaders, who sought by gentle pressure from public opinion to secure a ministry enjoying the nation's confidence. When these overcautious tactics proved unavailing, Milyukov swung sharply to the left and, on November 14, 1916, delivered a powerful speech in the chamber implying that the government was guilty of treason. His charges had no real substance, but they greatly stimulated revolutionary sentiment, which soon exceeded the bounds that Milyukov had expected or desired.