SOURCE: Introduction to Alexander Herzen and the Role of the Intellectual Revolutionary, Cambridge University Press, 1979, pp. 1-24.

Acton portrays Herzen 's life as the negotiation of his philosophical, activist, and private selves. In the essay that follows, Acton focuses specifically on how these three aspects interacted to position Herzen in Russian society before his emigration in 1847.

In 1847 Alexander Herzen left Russia for western Europe, never to return. 'I found everything I sought—yes, and more,' he would write later, after his first five years abroad, 'ruin, the loss of every blessing and every hope, blows from behind my back, sly treachery, desecration . . . and moral corruption of which you can have no conception' (VIII, 398).¹ Although the west did not give Herzen what he wanted, it did provide the richest personal and political contrast and drama. The product of autocratic, serf-ridden, agricultural Russia, he was to spend the rest...