To this Marx replied that he did not know me personally, that he had no private accusation to make against me, bu t for him it was sufficil'nt that I was a Russian, and, moreover, a Russian who supported Russia in everything he wrote; in short, if the I� On 2ith February. 1 855. ( A .S. ) This was the meetin� at which Marx
<h•clined to be present because Herzen would be there. (R.)
England
483
committee did not exclude me, he and all his people would be obliged to go.
Ernest Jones, the French, the Poles, the Italians, two or three Germans and the English voted for me. Marx was left with a tiny minority. He rose and, with his faithful followers, left the committee and did not return.
Beaten in the committee, the Marxists withdrew to their stronghold, The Morning Advertiser. Hurst and Blackett had published one volume of My Past and Thoughts, which included
'Prison and Exile.' In order to get a good sale for their wares they had not hesitated to put 'My Exile in Siberia' in the table of contents. The Express was the first to notice this piece of showing off. I wrote a letter to the publisher and another to The Express. Hurst and Blackett affirmed that the heading had been put in by them; that it was not in the original, but that Hofmann and Campe also had put 'in Siberia' in the German translation. All this was printed by The Express. It seemed that the affair was over; but The Morning Advertiser began to stick a pin into me two or three times a week. It said that I had used the word 'Siberia' to get the book a better sale; that I had protested five days after the appearance of the book: that is, giving time for the edition to sell. I replied; they printed a headline: 'The Case of Mr H.,' as reports of murders are usually printed, or of criminal cases. The Advertiser's Germans doubted not only the
'Siberia' affixed by the publisher, but even my banishment itself.
'At Vyatka and Novgorod Mr H. was on Imperial service: where was he banished to, and when?'19
19 The Marxists' accusation was both plausible and damaging. Siberian exile, such as Dostoevsky suffered in the same period (cf. The House of the Dead), was to Herzen's as Leavenworth is to parole. Herzen was not a convict like Dostoevsky--or Bakunin, Lenin or Trotsky later. He was a well-connected but imprudent aristocrat who was banished but not imprisoned; i.e., was merely required to ] i,-e in certain provincial towns (on the 'Vestern, civilized, non-Siberian side of the Urals) as a minor government official. So My Exile in Siberia was indeed a phoney title for his book, and his Marxist enemies made the most of it. Too much. Did they really believe their charge except as effective demagogy? ( Marxists weren't over-delicate in such matters then, from my reading, nor are they now, from my experience.) Herzen's explanation-that his English publishers, without consulting him. put "Siberia" into the title for the usual publ ishers' reasons-seems to me convincing because: (a) unless he was a fool, he must have realized that (since he reveals at length just where and when he was exiled; see the chapters on Perm, Vyatka, Vladimir and Novgorod ) the most cursory reader would detect the fakery
M Y P A S T A N D T H O U G H T S
484
Eventually interest evaporated and The Morning Advertiser forgot me.20
-and Herzen wasn't a fool; ( b) he was jealous of his honor to the point of touchiness; (c) he tended to minimize his achievements like a gentleman rather than to inflate them like a careerist; and (d) even granting, for argument's sake, that he was a foolish scoundrel careerist
-which is his Marxian enemies' polemical assumption-he was a rich man, the wealthiest revolutionary in London, including Engels, and really didn't need the extra royalties that "Siberia" hype might have brought him. As for the 1\larxists' accusation that Herzen was "On I mperial Sen-ice," this is the factual lie of demagogy: narrowly true and deeply false. \Yhen Tolstoy "served"' his Tsar at Sevastopol as an artillery officer (the same Tsar Nicholas Herzen had "served," more critically and less bloodily, twenty years earlier) he was also "On Imperial Service." Considering the writings that came out of these •·services," the formulation seems inadequate. (D.M.)
20 In Volume X I ( 1 957). pp. 678-80. of the Soviet Academy's edition of Herzen's works there is an account of the disparity in view and the hostility to each other of Herzen and Marx. They never met, although they were living in London in the 1 850s and 1 860s. (R.) See Appendix for a translation, made by Mr. Higgens at my request, of the Soviet Academy's history of, and political glosses on, the Marx-Herzen antagonism, which was mutual, intense and lifelong; also for some glosses of my own on their glosses.
England
485
Robert Owen
Shut up the world at large, let Bedlam out
And you will be perhaps surprised to find
All things pursue exactly the same route,
As now with those of soi-disant sound mind;
This 1 could prove beyond a single doubt
Were there a ;ot of sense among mankind;
But till that point d'appui is found, alas!
Like Archimedes, 1 leave earth as 'twas.
BYRON, Don Juan, xrv, 84
I
SooN AFTER MY ARRIVAL in London in 1 852 I received an invitation from a lady2 to stay for a few days at her house in the country near Sevenoaks.3 I had made her acquaintance through Mazzini at Nice in 1850. My life was still sunny when she came to see us, and so it was when she left. I wanted to see her again, so I went.
Our meeting was awkward. There had been too much darkness in my life since we had seen each other.4 If a man does not boast of his misfortunes he feels ashamed of them, and this feeling of I The significance of this chapter extends far beyond a mere characterization of Owen and memories of him. It contains sharp criticism of bourgeois society and is remarkable for expressing the tendencies towards historical optimism in Herzen's Weltanschauung, of his faith in the role of historical activity [by l progressive people and of the importance of progressive thought. (A.S.) I agree with the Soviet academicians about the chapter's importance though I see it as a noble statement of Herzen's political philosophy which, like Owen's, was idealistic, moralistic, anarchistic and humanistic-in short, all the Soviet Academy of Sciences despises and the opposite of what it means by "progressive." ( D.M. ) 2 Matilda Biggs, the daughter of James Stansfeld, whose whole family was on friendly terms with the democratic emigres in London, and in particular with Herzen. ( A .S.)
3 A home was found for Owen at Park Farm, Sevenoaks, where he lived from 1 853 until his death. (R.)
4 Herzen is referring to the 'Family Drarna' and the death of Natalya, his wife. (A.S. )
M Y P A S T A N D T H O U G H T S