Alexander Herzen - Life

Life

Herzen was an illegitimate child of a rich Russian landowner, Ivan Yakovlev, by a young German Protestant woman, Henriette Wilhelmina Luisa Haag from Stuttgart. Yakovlev supposedly gave his son the surname Herzen because he was a "child of his heart" (German Herz).

He was first cousin to Count Sergei Lvovich Levitsky (1819–1898, Moscow, Russian: Сергей Львович Львов-Левицкий), considered the patriarch of Russian photography and one of Europe's most important early photographic pioneers, inventors and innovators. In 1860, Levitsky would immortalize Herzen in a famous photo capturing the writer's essence and being.

Herzen was born in Moscow, shortly before Napoleon's invasion of Russia and brief occupation of the city. His father, after a personal interview with Napoleon, was allowed to leave Moscow after agreeing to bear a letter from the French to the Russian emperor in St. Petersburg. His family accompanied him to the Russian lines.

A year later, the family returned to Moscow, remaining there after Herzen completed his studies at Moscow University, until 1834, when Herzen was arrested and tried on charges of having attended a festival during which verses by Sokolovsky that were uncomplimentary to the tsar, were sung. He was found guilty, and in 1835 banished to Vyatka, now Kirov, in north-eastern Russia. He remained there until the tsar's son, Alexander (later to become Alexander II) visited the city, accompanied by the poet Zhukovsky; Herzen was allowed to leave Vyatka for Vladimir, where he was appointed editor of the city's official gazette.

In 1840, he returned to Moscow, where he met literary critic Vissarion Belinsky, who was strongly influenced by him. He then obtained a post in the ministry of the interior at St Petersburg; but as a consequence of complaining about a death caused by a police officer, was sent to Novgorod, where he was a state councillor until 1842. In 1846, his father died, leaving him a large amount of property.

In 1837, he eloped with Natalya Zakharina (Letters from France and Italy, 1847-1851), his cousin, secretly marrying her. She accompanied his emigration abroad in 1847, never returning to Russia. She bore him four children, before succumbing to tuberculosis in 1852 (Letters from France and Italy, 1847-1851). Herzen was eventually joined in France by his lifelong friend Nikolay Ogarev. By then, Natalya was in the final stages of tuberculosis and soon died. Ogarev was in poor health, having suffered a number of strokes. Herzen began an affair with Ogarev's common-law wife Natalia Tuchkova, the daughter of the general Tuchkov (the hero of the War of 1812). Tuchkova bore Herzen three more children. His assets were frozen because of his emigration, however Baron Rothschild with whom his family had business relationship, negotiated the release of Herzen's assets, which were nominally transferred to Rothschild.

From Italy, on hearing of the revolution of 1848, he hastened to Paris and then to Switzerland. He supported the revolutions of 1848, but was bitterly disillusioned with European socialist movements after their failure. In 1852, he left Geneva for London, where he settled for many years. He promoted socialism and individualism, arguing that the full flowering of the individual could best be realized in a socialist order. In 1864, he returned to Geneva, and after some time went to Paris, where he died in 1870 of tuberculosis complications. Originally buried in Paris, his remains were taken to Nice.