My Past and Thoughts: The Memoirs of Alexander Herzen, Volume 1

My Past and Thoughts #1

by Alexander Herzen, Constance Garnett, Humphrey Higgins

The memoirs of Aleksandr Herzen, the Russian intellectual and revolutionary.

Genres: Russia, Politics, Memoir, Russian Literature

385 pages

First published January 21, 2013

About the author

Alexander Ivanovich Herzen (Russian: Александр Иванович Герцен) was a Russian pro-Western writer and thinker known as the "father of Russian socialism", and one of the main fathers of agrarian populism (being an ideological ancestor of the Narodniki, Socialist-Revolutionaries, Trudoviks and the agrarian American Populist Party). He is held responsible for creating a political climate leading to the emancipation of the serfs in 1861. His autobiography My Past and Thoughts, written with grace, energy, and ease, is often considered the best specimen of that genre in Russian literature. He also published the important social novel Who is to Blame? (1845–46).

Reviews

[Account_account · Rating 5 out of 5]

The first part of Herzen's memoirs has a lot to offer in terms of painting the picrure of life in Russia in the first half of the XIX century: a slice of life of idle Russian nobility (represented by the generation of Herzen's father) and their serfs, a romantic portrayal of the formative period of Herzen's youth and his contemporaries, a passionate diatribe against the rule of Nicolas I. Besides, in some regard Herzen's writings are (sadly) still relevant: his persevering idealism shows us the necessity of counteracting indifference, inertia and embitterment, which are to this day the main characteristics of life in Russia.
His passion for the subject makes reading highly enjoyable.

[Brigid · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was really enjoyable, but I wouldn't recommend it if you're depressed: Herzen glories in detailing the appalling abuses, hypocrisy and ironies of Russian life under Nicholas I (and everyone else, but he loathes Nicholas in particular). These incidents are amusing in the way that horrible things can be, given enough distance, but if you're sad already, they'll probably get under your skin.

It's fascinating reading this because his real life is just like a Russian novel. Reading the catalog of horrors, one wonders how Russia has endured it all. It's sad, too, to think that once the revolution that Herzen and his friends so longed for finally happened, it just traded one system of repression for another. I'm looking forward to reading the rest.