Berlin's Moscow memorandum was confidential, and could offer no succor to its muted subject, Russia's literary intelligentsia. Given the political climate and palpable danger in Stalinist Russia of publicizing links with foreigners, Berlin could not write candidly about Russian contemporaries. It appears, however, that he soon arrived at a solution to this dilemma. In Herzen, Berlin found a perfect surrogate, a homegrown Russian figure, lauded as a hero by the Soviets themselves, who could "speak out" for those who could not, without risk or fear of reprisal. In the following two years Berlin's central motif contrasting two opposing forces in Russian history gestated and crystallized as he crafted his first essay in which Herzen would take center stage.41
While Berlin was far too sophisticated to invoke the "soul" or "spirit of Russia" phrase that had become popular in previous decades, he developed a thesis that does share some elements with earlier romantic notions which contemplate an indigenous body of thought spawned by a particular national group or people. The Soviet worldview hearkened back to Marx, a product of the West; Berlin, however, indicates that the historical voice of Russia can be heard by turning to its writers, poets, artists, and intelligentsia, particularly those of the nineteenth century.42 It is this enlightened humanist stream that Berlin uses as a foil against what he perceives to be the perversions of Russian tradition under Stalinist Marxism. At the heart of the freethinking, anti-authoritarian current in Russian intellectual history and political thought was Herzen, who became something of a poster boy, the standard-bearer of a rich and variegated Russian legacy that was being smothered both in ideological and concrete terms. Berlin popularized an image ofHerzen as not only central in the development ofRussia's intellectual, socialist, and revolutionary heritage, but also as the most outstanding representative of an authentically Russian brand of liberal thought. Moreover, Herzen could serve as a beacon not only for Russia, but for the West, which had succumbed to the "dangerous" and "sinister" notions lurking in the "political ruminations" of German and French romanticism.43
Berlin's flowing, erudite, and supremely crafted essays were instrumental in directing scholarly and popular attention to Herzen and his thought.44 In championing Herzen, Berlin offered an alternative view of Russia as he chose to focus on the freedom-loving heritage that was suppressed under the Soviet regime. Berlin regarded Herzen as a remedy to the malaise of Western thought,45 the dangerous seed that had grown into Nazi fascism on the one hand, and Marxist-Leninist doctrine and Stalinist repression on the other.46 Berlin's portrayal of Herzen deserves close scrutiny, and, arguably, a monograph on this subject alone could be written. E. H. Carr is reported to have suggested that Berlin understood himself in the tradition of Herzen, and this leaves open the possibility that, conversely, Berlin may have been inclined to fashion Herzen to some extent in his own image.47 Through his essays and by dint of the scholars he coached, advised, and inspired, Berlin influenced a key group of Herzen scholars in the West, and his particular approach set the tone for further research.48
It was only in the :950s that Herzen scholarship in the West began to come into its own, dovetailing with the interest of certain scholars in non-Marxist formations of Russian thought. This research offered an alternative representation of Russia and its ideology to that which had been crystallizing during the Cold War era and the McCarthy years. In 1951 Richard Gilbert Hare (1907-1966) (who had also worked in the Foreign Office) published Pioneers of Russian Social Thought, which offered fuller vignettes of several of the figures that Berlin had surveyed in his 1948 article. Hare accorded more space to Herzen than any other figure in the monograph, although he cites little secondary literature. In a similar vein, Eugene Lampert (19142004), a Russian cultural and intellectual historian, completed Studies in Rebellion (1956), a survey of Russian revolutionary thought, featuring essays on three nineteenth-century non-Marxist Russian thinkers. Lampert devotes more space to Herzen than to any other subject in his book. In his analysis, Lampert concentrates on Herzen's ideology and moral theory, less so on Herzen as a concrete political figure.
Franco Venturi (1914-1994) opens his classic study, Roots of Revolution, which first appeared in Italian in 1952, with a chapter on Herzen, whom he dubs "the true founder of Populism."49 Venturi regards Herzen's influence on the movement as largely due to his force of personality—his personal experiences, and comments which were conveyed in his memoirs, in which "autobiography constantly intrudes on politics"—rather than in the production of a unified doctrine. He further maintains that Herzen looked back with a degree of nostalgia to his parents' generation, late eighteenth- century gentry who strove, albeit somewhat unsuccessfully, after the values of enlightenment and an emerging notion of social responsibility. These values, embodied to some extent in the Decembrists, were fundamental in inspiring Herzen's worldview. Venturi notes the influence of Saint-Simon, Proudhon, and Fourier, and tracks Herzen's absorption of their thought in a narrative outline which, in a brief chapter, takes the reader to 1848. After treating Bakunin, Venturi returns to Herzen, with an equally brief but helpful chapter on The Bell. In doing so, Venturi produced one of the first studies in the West to draw attention to The Bell and its significance in the rise of populism. However, the author's primary concern, as the book's original title, Il populismo russo, makes clear, is to trace the history of the populist movement as it coalesced with other streams of thought to produce the circumstances required for the Russian revolution. Herzen and his publications are of interest to Venturi mainly in regard to their instrumentality in providing the basis for certain fundamental elements of the populist movement of the 1860s.
Marc Raeff, a fine scholar of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Russia, emerged out of the same scholarly zeitgeist of the postwar era. In 1950 he completed his dissertation, and similar to the research bent of Berlin, Venturi, Hare, Lampert, and Malia (see below), it was on a theme that highlighted a softer, non-Marxist version of Russian socialism, stressing liberal rather than authoritarian or determinist elements.50
By the end of the i950s the time was ripe for a full-length English-language monograph on Herzen, and the study of Martin Malia (i924-2004), published in i96i but over a decade in gestation, filled this gap admirably. To this day, Malia's monograph is often regarded as the first port of call, if not the standard reference on the subject. Though dated and subject to the inevitable errors, flaws, and biases that are uncovered with time and exposure to criticism, Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism: 1812-1855 remains the best single intellectual biography written on Herzen's first forty years, though it is just as much (if not more) a history of the development of Russian socialism during the reign of Nicholas I, with Herzen emblematic as the main protagonist.
Trained as a cultural historian and social scientist, Malia delves into the realm of the "social psychology" of ideas, devoting much energy to Her- zen's intellectual development in Russia, the formative years in which he absorbed European thought. According to Malia, Herzen's socialism was largely developed before he ever left Russia's borders. Malia's study effectively ends in i852, the very year Herzen arrived in England. In accord with several authors cited above, Malia was convinced that Herzen was not integrated into English life, and "largely ignored the English, as they did him."51 He allocates little space to Herzen's activities after his arrival in London, or to his writings of that period.52 There is only fleeting reference to Robert Owen, for example, and J. S. Mill is only mentioned once in the entire monograph of nearly 500 pages. This, despite the fact that Herzen was influenced by both thinkers, and, moreover, Herzen's essay on Owen is considered one of his finest. The Bell, among Herzen's greatest achievements, hardly figures in Malia's narrative.53