V. I.

Lenin

One hundred years have elapsed since Herzen’s birth. The
whole of liberal Russia is paying homage to him, studiously evading,
however, the serious questions of socialism, and taking pains to conceal
that which distinguished Herzen the revolutionary from a
liberal. The Right-wing press, too, is commemorating the Herzen centenary,
falsely asserting that in his last years Herzen renounced revolution. And
in the orations on Herzen that are made by the liberals and Narodniks
abroad, phrase-mongering reigns supreme.

The working-class party should commemorate the Herzen centenary, not
for the sake of philistine glorification, but for the purpose of making
clear its own tasks and ascertaining the place actually held in history by
this writer who played a great part in paving the way for the Russian
revolution.

Herzen belonged to the generation of revolutionaries among the nobility
and landlords of the first half of the last century. The nobility gave
Russia the Birons and

Arakcheyevs, [1] innumerable “drunken officers, bullies, gamblers,
heroes of fairs, masters of hounds, roisterers, floggers, pimps”, as well
as amiable

Manilovs. [2] “But,” wrote Herzen, “among them developed the men of

December 14, [3] a phalanx of heroes reared, like Romulus and Remus, on
the milk of a wild beast.... They were veritable titans, hammered out of
pure steel from head to foot, comrades-in-arms who deliberately went to
certain death in order to awaken the young generation to a new life and to
purify the children born in an environment of tyranny and servility.” [4]

Herzen was one of those children. The uprising of the Decembrists
awakened and “purified” him. In the feudal Russia of the forties of the
nineteenth century, he rose to a height which placed him on a level with the greatest thinkers of his
time. He assimilated Hegel’s dialectics. He realised that it was “the
algebra of revolution”. He went further than Hegel, following Feuerbach to
materialism. The first of his Letters on the Study of Nature ,
“Empiricism and Idealism”, written in 1844, reveals to us a thinker who
even now stands head and shoulders above the multitude of modern empiricist
natural scientists and the host of present-day idealist and semi-idealist
philosophers. Herzen came right up to dialectical materialism, and
halted—before historical materialism.

It was this “halt” that caused Herzen’s spiritual ship wreck after
the defeat of the revolution of 1848. Herzen had left Russia, and observed
this revolution at close range. He was at that time a democrat, a
revolutionary, a socialist. But his “socialism” was one of the countless
forms and varieties of bourgeois and petty-bourgeois socialism of the
period of 1848, which were dealt their death-blow in the June days of that
year. In point of fact, it was not socialism at all, but so many
sentimental phrases, benevolent visions, which were the expression at
that time of the revolutionary character of the bourgeois
democrats, as well as of the proletariat, which had not yet freed itself
from the influence of those democrats.

Herzen’s spiritual shipwreck, his deep scepticism and pessimism after
1848, was a shipwreck of the bourgeois illusions of socialism. Herzen’s spiritual drama was a pro duct and reflection of that
epoch in world history when the revolutionary character of the bourgeois
democrats was already passing away (in Europe), while the
revolutionary character of the socialist proletariat had not yet
matured. This is something the Russian knights of liberal verbiage, who are
now covering up their counter-revolutionary nature by florid phrases about
Herzen’s scepticism, did not and could not understand. With these knights,
who betrayed the Russian revolution of 1905, and have even forgotten to
think of the great name of revolutionary , scepticism is a form of
transition from democracy to liberalism, to that toadying, vile, foul and
brutal liberalism which shot down the workers in 1848, restored the
shattered thrones and applauded Napoleon III, and which Herzen
cursed , unable to understand its class nature.

With Herzen, scepticism was a form of transition from the illusion of a
bourgeois democracy that is “above classes” to the grim, inexorable and
invincible class struggle of the proletariat. The proof: the Letters to an Old Comrade —to Bakunin—written by Herzen in 1869, a year before
his death. In them Herzen breaks with the anarchist Bakunin. True, Herzen
still sees this break as a mere disagreement on tactics and not as a gulf
between the world outlook of the proletarian who is confident of the
victory of his class and that of the petty bourgeois who has despaired of
his salvation. True enough, in these letters as well, Herzen repeats the
old bourgeois-democratic phrases to the effect that socialism must preach
“a sermon addressed equally to workman and master, to farmer and
townsman”. Nevertheless, in breaking with Bakunin, Herzen turned his gaze,
not to liberalism, but to the International —to the international
led by Marx, to the International which had begun to “ rally the legions ” of the proletariat, to unite “ the world of labour ”, which is “abandoning the world of those who enjoy without working”. [5]

Failing as he did to understand the bourgeois-democratic character of
the entire movement of 1848 and of all the forms of pre-Marxian socialism,
Herzen was still less able to understand the bourgeois nature of the
Russian revolution. Herzen is the founder of “Russian” socialism, of
“Narodism”. He saw “socialism” in the emancipation of the peasants
with land , in community land tenure [6] and in the peasant idea of “the right to land”. He set forth
his pet ideas on this subject an untold number of times.

Actually, there is not a grain of socialism in this doctrine
of Herzen’s, as, indeed, in the whole of Russian. Narodism, including the
faded Narodism of the present-day Socialist-Revolutionaries. Like the
various forms of “the socialism of 1848” in the West, this is the same
sort of sentimental phrases, of benevolent visions, in which is expressed
the revolutionism of the bourgeois peasant democracy in
Russia. The more land the peasants would have received in

1861 [7] and the less they would have had to pay for it, the more would
the power of the feudal landlords have been undermined and the more rapidly, freely and widely would capitalism have
developed in Russia. The idea of the “right to land” and of “equalised
division of the land” is nothing but a formulation of the revolutionary
aspiration for equality cherished by the peasants who are fighting for the
complete overthrow of the power of the landlords, for the complete
abolition of landlordism.

This was fully proved by the revolution of 1905: on the one hand, the
proletariat came out quite independently at the head of the revolutionary
struggle, having founded the Social-Democratic Labour Party; on the other
band, the revolutionary peasants (the Trudoviks and the Peasant

Union [8] ), who fought for every form of the abolition of landlordism
even to “the abolition of private landownership”, fought precisely as
proprietors, as small entrepreneurs.

Today, the controversy over the “socialist nature” of the right to
land, and so on, serves only to obscure and cover up the really
important and serious historical question concerning the difference of
interests of the liberal bourgeoisie and the revolutionary
peasantry in the Russian bourgeois revolution;, in other words,
the question of the liberal and the democratic, the “compromising”
(monarchist) and the republican trends manifested in that revolution. This
is exactly the question posed by Herzen’s

Kolokol , [9] if we turn our attention to the essence of the
matter and not to the words, if we investigate the class struggle as the
basis of “theories” and doctrines and not vice versa.

Herzen founded a free Russian press abroad, and that is the great
service rendered by him. Polyarnaya Zvezda [10] took up the tradition of the
Decembrists. Kolokol (1857–67) championed the emancipation of the
peasants with might and main. The slavish silence was broken.

But Herzen came from a landlord, aristocratic milieu. He left Russia in
1847; he had not seen the revolutionary people and could have no faith in
it. Hence his liberal appeal to the “upper ranks”. Hence his innumerable
sugary letters in Kolokol addressed to Alexander II the Hangman,
which today one cannot read without revulsion. Chernyshevsky, Dobrolyubov
and Serno-Solovyevich, who represented the new generation of revolutionary raznochintsi, [11] were a thousand times right when they reproached Herzen
for these departures from democracy to liberalism. However, it must be said
in fairness to Herzen that, much as he vacillated between democracy and
liberalism, the democrat in him gained the upper hand nonetheless.

When Kavelin, one of the most repulsive exponents of liberal
servility—who at one time was enthusiastic about Kolokol
precisely because of its liberal tendencies—rose in arms against
a constitution, attacked revolutionary agitation, rose against “violence”
and appeals for it, and began to preach tolerance, Herzen broke
with that liberal sage. Herzen turned upon Kavelin’s “meagre, absurd,
harmful pamphlet” written “for the private guidance of a government
pretending to be liberal”; he denounced Kavelin’s “sentimental political
maxims” which represented “the Russian people as brutes and the
government as an embodiment of intelligence”. Kolokol printed an
article entitled “Epitaph”, which lashed out against “professors weaving
the rot ten cobweb of their superciliously paltry ideas, ex-professors,
once open-hearted and subsequently embittered because they saw that the
healthy youth could not sympathise with their scrofulous
thinking”. Kavelin at once recognised himself in this portrait.

When Chernyshevsky was arrested, the vile liberal Kavelin wrote:

“I see nothing shocking in the arrests ... the revolutionary party
considers all means fair to overthrow the government, and the latter
defends itself by its own means.” As if in retort to this Cadet, Herzen
wrote concerning Chernyshevsky’s trial:

“And here are wretches, weed-like people, jellyfish, who say that we must
not reprove the gang of robbers and scoundrels that is governing us.”

When the liberal

Turgenev [12] wrote a private letter to Alexander II assuring him of his
loyalty, and donated two goldpieces for the soldiers wounded during the
suppression of the Polish insurrection, Kolokol wrote of “the
grey-haired Magdalen (of the masculine gender) who wrote to the tsar to
tell him that she knew no sleep because she was tormented by the thought
that the tsar was not aware of the repentance that had overcome her”. And
Turgenev at once recognised himself.

When the whole band of Russian liberals scurried away from Herzen for
his defence of Poland, when the whole of “educated society” turned its back on Kolokol , Herzen was not
dismayed. He went on championing the freedom of Po land and lashing the
suppressors, the butchers, the hangmen in the service of
Alexander II. Herzen saved the honour of Russian democracy. “We have saved
the honour of the Russian name,” he wrote to Turgenev, “and for doing so
we have suffered at the hands of the slavish majority.”

When it was reported that a serf peasant had killed a landlord for an
attempt to dishonour the serf’s betrothed, Herzen commented in
Kolokol : “Well done!” When it was reported that army officers
would be appointed to supervise the “peaceable” progress of
“emancipation”, Herzen wrote:

“The first wise colonel who with his unit joins the peasants instead of
crushing them, will ascend the throne of the Romanovs.” When Colonel
Reitern shot himself in Warsaw (1860) because he did not want to be a
helper of hangmen, Herzen wrote: “If there is to be any shooting, the ones
to be shot should be the generals who give orders to fire upon unarmed
people.” When fifty peasants were massacred in Bezdna, and their leader,
Anton Petrov, was executed (April 12, 1861), Herzen wrote in
Kolokol :

“ If only my words could reach you, toiler and sufferer
of the land of Russia!... How well I would teach you to despise your
spiritual shepherds, placed over you by the St. Petersburg Synod and a
German tsar.... You hate the landlord, you hate the official, you fear
them, and rightly so; but you still believe in the tsar and the bishop
... do not believe them. The tsar is with them, and they are his men. It is
him you now see—you, the father of a youth murdered in Bezdna, and you,
the son of a father murdered in Penza.... Your shepherds are as ignorant as
you, and as poor.... Such was another Anthony (not Bishop Anthony, but
Anton of Bezdna) who suffered for you in Kazan.... The dead bodies of your
martyrs will not per form forty-eight miracles, and praying to them will
not cure a tooth ache; but their living memory may produce one
miracle—your emancipation.”

This shows how infamously and vilely Herzen is being slandered by our
liberals entrenched in the slavish “legal” press, who magnify Herzen’s
weak points and say nothing about his strong points. It was not Herzen’s
fault but his misfortune that he could not see the revolutionary people in
Russia itself in the 1840s. When in the sixties he came to see the
revolutionary people, he sided fearlessly with the revolutionary democracy
against liberalism. He fought for a victory of the people over tsarism, not for a deal between the liberal
bourgeoisie and the landlords’ tsar. He raised aloft the banner of
revolution.

In commemorating Herzen, we clearly see the three generations, the
three classes, that were active in the Russian revolution. At first it was
nobles and landlords, the Decembrists and Herzen. These revolutionaries
formed but a narrow group. They were very far removed from the people. But
their effort was not in vain. The Decembrists awakened Herzen. Herzen began
the work of revolutionary agitation.

This work was taken up, extended, strengthened, and tempered by the
revolutionary raznochintsi—from Chernyshevsky to the heroes of Narodnaya

Volya. [13] The range of fighters widened, their contact with the people
became closer. “The young helmsmen of the gathering storm” is what Herzen
called them. But it was not yet the storm itself.

The storm is the movement of the masses themselves. The proletariat,
the only class that is thoroughly revolutionary, rose at the head of the
masses and for the first time aroused millions of peasants to open
revolutionary struggle. The first onslaught in this storm took place in
1905. The next is beginning to develop under our very eyes.

In commemorating Herzen, the proletariat is learning from his example
to appreciate the great importance of revolutionary theory. It is learning
that selfless devotion to the revolution and revolutionary propaganda among
the people are not wasted even if long decades divide the sowing from the
harvest. It is learning to ascertain the role of the various classes in the
Russian and in the international revolution. Enriched by these lessons, the
proletariat will fight its way to a free alliance with the socialist
workers of all lands, having crushed that loathsome monster, the tsarist
monarchy, against which Herzen was the first to raise the great banner of
struggle by addressing his free Russian word to the masses.

---
Notes:
[1]
Biron, E. I. (1690–1772)—all-powerful favourite of the
Empress Anna Ivanovna. He came from the petty nobility of Courland and was
not a Russian subject. But while holding no official position, he exerted
great influence on the domestic and partly the foreign policy of Russia. He
established a terroristic regime and followed a policy of Germanising the
state apparatus. He took advantage of his position to rob the Treasury,
take bribes and engage in speculative deals. After the death of the Empress
he became Regent for a while. He was overthrown in November 1740 as the
result of a coup d’état.

Arakcheyev, A. A. (1769-1834)—One of the most reactionary
representatives of the tsarist autocracy, Minister of War in the reign of
Alexander I. A man distinguished by brutality and cruelty, he exerted
tremendous influence on Russia’s home and foreign policies. His name is associated with a long period of reaction and police
tyranny, brutal militarism, spying, bribery, corruption and soulless, petty
formalism, comprising what became known as the “Arakcheyev regime”.

[2]
Manilov —a character in Gogol’s Dead Souls . A sentimental, amiable landowner, Manilov personifies pipe-dreaming and empty
talk.

[3]
The men of December 14 were Russian revolutionary noblemen who
fought against serfdom and the autocracy. They revolted on December 14,
1825.

[4]
Lenin is quoting from Alexander Herzen’s Ends and Beginnings.

[5]
The passage is taken from Herzen’s letters “To an Old Comrade” (the
fourth and second letters).

[6]
The village commune in Russia was the communal form of peasant
use of the land, characterised by compulsory crop rotation, and undivided
woods and pastures. Its principal features were collective liability
(compulsory collective responsibility of the peasants for timely and full
payments, and the fulfilment of all kinds of services for the benefit of
the state and the landlords), the periodical redistribution of the land,
with no right to refuse the allotment given, and prohibition of its
purchase and sale.

The land fords and the tsarist government used the village commune to
intensify feudal oppression and to squeeze land redemption payments and
exactions from the people.

[7]
The “ peasant Reform ” of 1861 abolished serfdom in
Russia. As a result, the landlords were able to cut off for themselves over
one-fifth, or even two-fifths, of the peasants’ land. They retained
possession of the best parts of the peasants’ allotments (the “cut-off
lands”, woods, meadows, watering places, grazing grounds, and so on),
without which the peasants could not engage in independent farming. The
redemption payments imposed on the peasants for their allotments were
nothing short of plunder by the landlords and the tsarist government. To
pay off their debts by instalments to the tsarist government, the peasants
were granted credit for forty-nine years at 6 per cent interest. Arrears on
redemption payments grew from year to year. The former landlord peasants
alone paid the government 1,900 million rubles by way of compensation,
while the market price of the land transferred to the peasants did not
exceed 544 million rubles. The peasants had in effect to pay hundreds of
millions of rubles for their land, which led to the ruin of the peasant
households.

Lenin described the “peasant Reform” of 1861 as the first act of mass
violence against the peasantry for the benefit of rising capitalism in
agriculture, as a “clearing of estates” for capitalism by the landlords.

[8]
All-Russia Peasant Union —a revolutionary-democratic organisation founded in 1905. Its first and second congresses, herd in
Moscow in August and November 1905, drew up its programme and tactics. The
Union demanded political freedom and the immediate convening of a
constituent assembly. It favoured the tactic of boycotting the First
Duma. Its agrarian programme included the demand for abolishing private
landownership and transferring the monastery, church, crown and state lands
to the peasants without compensation. Its policy was half-hearted and
vacillating. While insisting on the abolition of the landed estates, the
Union was agreeable to partial compensation for the landlords.

The Peasant Union was persecuted by the police ever since it came into
being. It fell to pieces early in 1907.

[9]
Kolokol ( The Bell )—a political periodical, published under the motto of Vivos voco ! (I call on the living!)
by A. I. Herzen and N. P. Ogaryov at the Free Russian Printing Works
established by Herzen. The periodical was published in London from July 1,
1857 to April 1865 and in Geneva from May 1865 to July 1867. It was a
monthly, but occasionally it was brought out twice a month. In all 245
issues appeared.

In 1868 Kolokol was published in French (15 issues appeared),
with an occasional supplement in Russian. It had a circulation of 2,500
copies and it was disseminated throughout Russia. It exposed the tyranny of
the autocracy, the plunder and embezzlement practised by the civil
servants, and the ruthless exploitation of the peasants by the
landlords. It issued revolutionary appeals and helped to rouse the people
to the struggle against the tsarist government and the ruling classes.

Kolokol was the leading organ of the revolutionary uncensored
press and the forerunner of the working-class press in Russia. It played an
important role in the development of the general-democratic and
revolutionary movement, in the struggle against the autocracy and against
serfdom.

[10]
Polyarnaya Zvezda ( The Pole Star )—a literary-political symposium. Its first three issues were published by
A. I. Herzen, and the subsequent ones by Herzen and Ogaryov, at the Free
Russian Printing Works in London from 1855 to 1862. The last issue appeared
in Geneva in 1868. Altogether eight issues appeared.

[11]
The raznochintsy (literally, men of various social-estates)
were educated members of Russian society drawn from the small towns folk,
the clergy, the merchants and the peasantry, as distinct from those drawn
from the nobility.

[12]
Turgenev, I. S. (1818-1883)—a famous Russian writer who did
much for the development of the Russian literary language. His writings
reflected the typical contradictions of Russian society. While protesting
ardently against serfdom, he put forward mode rate liberal demands. Lenin
said that “Turgenev ... was drawn towards a moderate monarchist and nobleman’s constitution, ... was repelled by the
muzhik democracy of Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky”

[13]
Narodnaya Volya ( People’s Will )—an illegal organisation of the revolutionary-minded intelligentsia, the Narodniks,
founded In 1879 to combat the tsarist regime. It was active until the
second half of the 1880s.