Alexander Herzen

In 1837, he secretly married his cousin, Natalya Zakharina, and emigrated abroad with her. They were blessed with four children but she died of tuberculosis in 1852.

After his wife’s death, he started an affair with his best friend’s wife, Natalia Tuchkova, and she bore him three children.

On January 21, 1870, he died of tuberculosis in Paris, France at the age of 57.

Alexander Herzen was born out of a wedlock on April 6, 1812 in Moscow, Russia, to Ivan Alekseyevich Yakovlev, a rich Russian landowner and Henriette Wilhelmina Luisa Haag, a German Protestant woman.

He was born shortly before the Napolean’s invasion of Russia and received his early education from French, German and Russian tutors.

He got enrolled at the University of Moscow and during his university years, the writings of Comte de Saint-Simon and Charles Fourier had a profound impact on him. He was drawn towards Saint-Simon's doctrines that criticized the shortcomings of the existing order and promised to end the exploitation of man by man. He completed his graduation in 1833.

He, along with his dear friend, Nikolay Ogaryov, took a strong pledge to devote their lives to continue the Decembrists’ struggle for freedom from Nicholas 1’s rule in Russia.

In 1834, he was arrested for attending a festival where verses of Mikhail Sokolovsky that were critical of Nicholas's predecessors were sung. He was proven guilty and faced an exile from his country. He was sent to work in the provincial bureaucracy in Vyatka.

After few years, Herezen was allowed to leave Vytaka for Vladimir, where he was appointed as the editor of the city's official gazette. In 1840, he returned to Russia and obtained a post in the ministry of the interior at Saint Petersburg.

But his honesty sent him back in exile, this time to Novgorod, for speaking truthfully about a death caused by a police officer. He served as a state councilor in Novgorod until 1842.

Upon his return from the second exile, he joined the camp of Westernizers, one of the group of intellectuals who emphasized Russia’s common historic destiny with the Western Europe, as opposed to Slavophiles, who believed Russia should follow a course determined by its own character and history, for its development and modernization.

In 1842, his first literary work, an essay on Dilettantism in Science, was published under the pseudonym of Iskander. He continued his writing through ‘Letters on the Study of Nature’ (1845-46), ‘Who is to Blame?’ (1847) and few more.

He developed a socialist philosophy, which provided ideological basis for much of the revolutionary activity in Russia.

One of his greatest literary masterpieces is his autobiography ‘My Past and Thoughts’ which is a source of information and insight into the Russian society under the reign of Nicholas I.