Alexander Herzen 1812 – 1870

Alexander Ivanovich Herzen was a Russian writer, philosopher, and revolutionary, often called the father of Russian socialism. The illegitimate son of a wealthy nobleman, he was exiled within Russia for his early radical politics before settling permanently in Western Europe in 1847. From London, where he founded the Free Russian Press and edited the journal Kolokol, The Bell, he addressed his Russian readership with a sustained critique of both autocracy and Western liberal individualism, defending instead a Russian agrarian socialism rooted in the village commune. His memoir My Past and Thoughts is one of the great works of nineteenth-century Russian prose.