Contenu du sommaire : Alexandre Herzen (1812-1870). Son époque, sa postérité

A. I. Herzen The Living and the Dead Hand Relative to his Family While Herzen is studied overwhelmingly in terms of his impact on others outside his home – the intellectuals, the radicals, the government – it is proposed here to look at his influence internal to his family, both before and after his death, including among some later generations. A close examination is made of his financial resources, his capital – its source, how much did he have, how did he invest it, and what became of it after his death ? Some of his most fundamental ideas, his beliefs, are also addressed as they impacted his family. The author makes special use of his own branch of the family to illustrate how Herzen's influence played down through the generations.

The Role Played by Julian Grigor ´ evič Oksman in the Academic Edition of the Collected Works of Aleksandr Herzen An outline of Memoirs The article deals with the central role played by Ju. G. Oksman (1895-1970) in the academic edition of A. Herzen's Works in 30 volumes (35 volumes altogether), which has been prepared by the Institute for World Literature (IMLI) between 1954 and 1966. The author, who made her contribution to it, evokes, through her notes, his extraordinary personality, his erudition, his precision and his refusal of any dishonest compromise. She also points out how closely Oksman was watched in spite of his rehabilitation after ten years spent in labour camps, because of his contacts with foreign slavists, which led him to new persecutions in 1954 and to the banishment of his name until the Perestroika.

History of a Museum Aleksandr Herzen's House in Moscow The article relates the history of the transformation in 1976 of A. Herzen's house, on Sivcev-Vražek street in Moscow, into a museum and its activity since then. The author also mentions the renovating work concerning the house and the beautiful organization of a quality exhibition. She evokes the energy devoted to gathering all the documents composing Herzen's legacy, scattered all over the world. She finally points out the role of independent cultural centre played by the museum during the last years of the Soviet regime, when A. Herzen's figure allowed the organization of many nonconformist manifestations.

Кто виноват ? (Who Is to Blame ?) in Herzen's Family Drama : ‘ Could It Have Been a Prophecy of My Own Fate ?' In this article the author introduces the first publication in full, and in the original French, of several letters written by Natalie Herzen to Herzen's friend and Natalie's lover, German poet Georg Herwegh, and to his wife, Emma. Grenier analyzes the rhetoric of these letters, juxtaposing them with Alexander Herzen's 1847 novel Who Is to Blame ? Grenier argues that the ambiguous rhetoric and, ultimately, romantic message of the novel made it the primary ideological and rhetorical model that Natalie followed in attempting to realize the novel's heroine Lyubov's ideal of ‘ love for two [ men].' The failure of both Lyubov's and Natalie's experiments, in Grenier's opinion, demonstrates the ontological impossibility of such a project.

A Duel Between Two Romantics Herzen and Herwegh Between 1849 and 1852, Herzen experienced a family drama that acquired symbolical meaning for his interpretation of the failed 1848 revolutions in Europe. The German revolutionary bard Georg Herwegh, originally a brother in arms for Herzen's cause, had intruded into his marriage and seduced his wife Natalie who in November 1849 had a miscarriage – the child was probably Herwegh's, and Herzen would not know about this unborn child during his lifetime. Both authors couched the family drama into literary plots that were provided by George Sand. However, they chose different novels and fictional characters in order to present their own role as favourably as possible. Their public and private behaviour was based on a Romantic conception that should provide a legitimation for their situation. The literary encoding of the conflict proved to be so powerful that, from 1843, Herzen chose not to include a scene of adultery into his autobiography and Herwegh still refused in 1872 to produce Natalie's love letters.

Aleksandr Herzen and Alfred Talandier Alfred Talandier (1822-1890), a republican and socialist lawyer from Limoges, a city in central France, is expelled from his native country after Louis Napoleon Bonaparte's coup d'état on December 2nd, 1851. He settles in London and soon becomes acquainted with Herzen, a resident of the English capital from August 1852 until March 1865. The two refugees meet frequently, help each other financially, contribute to common publications and stand by each other when controversy flares up between political exiles. Talandier is by no means less known than other French émigrés, who had had time to make a name for themselves before leaving their country. There is, however, between Herzen and him, a real friendship that is well worth recounting, if only to complete the picture of the years that the great Russian revolutionary thinker spent in exile in London.

Benoît Malon, Herzen and the First Russian Socialists Activist of the First International, communard then influent socialist leader, B. Malon has published extensively between 1878 and 1880 at the end of his exile in Lugano, Zurich and Paris : two journals, Le Socialisme progressif and La Revue socialiste. He has also written an ambitious History of Socialism. According to him, socialism is an international phenomenon which requires to collect information about the countries in which it develops, among which Russia to which he attributes an important role. He appreciates the ideas of nihilists who, despite their belonging to the priviledged classes, are in favour of the emancipation of people. He considers Herzen, whom he admires, but also and particularly Černyševskij, to be at the origins of this movement. Malon also participates in the French translation of Que faire ? published in Lodi in 1875. Thanks to some information he gave later on, it has been possible to find out the circomstances which allowed him to establish relationships with the Russians who informed him.

Conflict With the ‘ Marxides' A note on the Relations Between Herzen and Marx Herzen claimed that his hostility towards the ‘ marxides' had been brought about by calumnies against Bakunin repeated by Marx. Indeed, the conflictual relationship between Herzen and Marx can primarily be explained by these recurrent false accusations, as well as by misunderstandings, recalled in detail here. But in any case good relations between Herzen and Marx would never have been likely. Their conceptions of the world and moral stances were too different to be reconciled.

Lev Kamenev, a Specialist of Aleksandr Herzen's Work : An Intellectual Between Two Shores The name of the Bolshevik Lev Kamenev has never been associated with that of Aleksandr Herzen. However, since the prerevolutionary period, Kamenev shows a deep interest in Herzen's work. After the Revolution, and particularly in the 1930s when he was director of the Academia Press and of two academic institutes of literature, Kamenev edited numerous texts by Herzen and started up an ambitious programme of studies dedicated to Herzen. Nevertheless, after his death sentence in 1936, a great part of his work disappeared in special archives inaccessible to researchers, till his posthumous rehabilitation in 1988. These archives are now accessible to them. Their disappearance prevented Herzen specialists from having access to his work and notably pushed back for many years the re-editon of The Bell by Herzen, one of Kamenev's most ambitious projects. Kamenev's death also put an end to the discussions over Herzen's legacy. Kamenev, who has been one of the most active promoters of Lenin's interpretation of Herzen, remained a man stamped with prerevolutionary non-Marxist cultural and intellectual traditions, which were not hidden by him, as would be the case later, particularly after the Second World War when the Marxist interpretation of Herzen was definitively imposed.

The Meeting Herzen-Blanqui, Fribourg, 16-17 October 1866 ln 1848, Herzen had been attracted by the personality of Blanqui whose analysis he often shared. ln 1866, the Alsacian republican G. J. Schmitt, editor in Fribourg of the radical newspaper, Le Confédéré, which represented the opposition to the Second Empire, presented Herzen to Blanqui. We publish here the account of this meeting, made by Blanqui to his friend, doctor Watteau and the French translation of the article which had been devoted to him in the Kolokol.