Alexander Herzen

Alexander Ivanovich Herzen was born on 6 April 1812 in Russia, into a world he would spend his life trying to remake. His writings became the intellectual foundation for Russian agrarian populism, seeding movements from the Narodniki to the Socialist-Revolutionaries. Exiled in London, he published essays and manifestos aimed at his homeland, contributing to the political pressure that culminated in the emancipation of the serfs in 1861. His social novel Who is to Blame? appeared in 1845–46, a question Russia would keep asking. Between 1852 and 1870 he wrote My Past and Thoughts, an autobiograp…