Prošlost i razmišljanja

Past and Reflections (1852–1870) by Alexander Herzen is one of the greatest works of Russian and world memoir. The first three volumes (parts) cover Herzen's life from his birth in 1812 to the end of the 1840s, that is, until his departure for emigration.

The first part brings to mind a colorful childhood and youth in an aristocratic house in Moscow during Napoleon's invasion of 1812, his student days at Moscow University, the influence of the Decembrists, romantic ideas, and early socialism. The second and third parts describe his arrest in 1834 for "free-thinking" conversations, imprisonment, exile in Vyatka and Vladimir, marriage to his cousin Natalia Zakharina, and the intellectual circle of Moscow Westerners and Slavophiles.

Herzen masterfully combines a personal story with historical and philosophical reflections. The work is at once an autobiography, a novel, a political chronicle, and a philosophical reflection. It critically depicts the Russian autocratic system, serfdom, bureaucracy and hypocrisy of high society, but also the disappointment with the Western revolutions (1848).

The style is exceptionally lively, ironic, lyrical and analytical – Herzen paints portraits of his contemporaries (Belinsky, Ogarev, Bakunin and others) with the skill of a top novelist. The work is deeply humanistic: he defends the freedom of the individual, criticizes the dogmatism of any ideology and searches for the Russian path towards socialism based on the village commune (obščina).

The first three volumes end with a turning point – his departure for Europe, where Herzen will become the leading voice of the Russian emigration and the founder of the free Russian press (Kolokol). The book is the key to understanding the Russian 19th century, the emergence of the intelligentsia, revolutionary ideas and personalities that influenced Turgenev, Tolstoy, Lenin and many others.