Herze N. Proudhon and a Reco Nsidera Tio N

RUSSIAN HISTORY/HISTOIRE RUSSE, II, No.4 (Winter 1984),422-50. JUDITH E. ZIMMERMAN (Greensburg, Penn .. U. S. A.) HERZE N. PROUDHON AND LA VOIX DU PEUPLE: A RECO NSIDERA TIO N In the summer of 1849 Alexander Herzen became associated with a daily Paris newspaper, La Voix du Peuple, which was published under the unoffi cial direction of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. Herzen's involvement with the paper lasted throughout its short life, from September 1849 to May 1850. It was his first regular association with a journalistic enterprise, and never again would he have a collaborator of the international stature of Proudhon. Not surprisingly, the episode has received a good deal of attention over the years, both from Herzen himself and from later scholars. It raises questions about Herzen's ideological position in the immediate wake of the Revolution of 1848, his perceptions of Proudhon, and the nature of the collaboration. The impact of this experience on his later career is also of interest. For Proudhon, Herzen served primarily as a source of funds ; nonetheless, careful examina tion of the sources indicates that Herzen may also have exercised some limi ted influence on him. In this article I shall integrate unpublished material in the British Library, London and the Herwegh "Archives, Liestal, with source and secondary ma terial already published in an effort to explore the nature of the coopera tion between Proudhon and Herzen , the manifestations of Herzen's influ ence, and La Voix du Peuple as the first stage of Herzen's mature, European career. Herzen was in Geneva when the negotiations were undertaken. The last of the insurrectionary street derr.onstrations of the French Republic had taken place on June 13, 1849. It was called out by the "Mountain," a fusion group of democrats and socialists headed by former Minister of the Interior in the Provisional Government, Alexandre Ledru-Rollin. The demonstration was in protest against the use of French troops in Italy, where they had suppressed the revolutionary republic in Rome , which had been governed by one of the greatest nineteenth-century romantic revolutionaries, Giuseppe Mazzini. Be cause of its international implications, the foreign radicals in Paris had been recruited to take part in the demonstration.I It is an indication that during 1. William L. Langer, The Revolutions of 1848: Chapters from Political and Social Upheaval (New York: Harp er and Row. 1969), pp . 152- 53 ; Gu stav Rasch, Aus meiner HERZEN , PROUDHON AND LA VOIX DU PEUPLE 423 the year he had been in Paris Herzen had become identified as a radical actor, and not just a bystander, that he too was invited to march. He did so, and when the demonstration ended in violence and arrests. he decided to leave Paris in some haste . He borrowed a passport and went to Geneva , where he was made welcome by James Fazy , who controlled the radical government in the Swiss city .2 Natalie Herzen, Georg Herwegh , and two of the three Herzen children arrived soon after. Emma Herwegh remained behind in Paris to look after her family's business concerns, intercede for her husband with the French government. and to some extent act as Herwegh and Herzen 's agent in dealing with Proudhon and his associates. Herzen stay ed in Switzerland until the end of the year , and all the negotiations with Proudhon had to be carried out long distance. The move to Geneva marks an important turning point in Herzen's career. Hitherto , almost since his arrival in the West in 1847 , he had been an observer of other people's revolutions, by necessity relegated to the sidelines . By 1849 most of the revolutions of the preceding year had been suppressed , and many foreign revolutionaries were now drifting around Europe. In Paris, they had begun to coalesce into a visible political presence , and in Geneva Herzen found himself a relatively important person in the emigre colony. Here there Was a significant number of former politicians who were now as cut off from active participation as he was himself. The focus of their activity shifted to journalism, which could still be conducted from safe havens ;journals allowed the refugees to keep alive their own beliefs, to define their theoretical and tactical positions, and to maintain a political presence by smuggling their Work back into their home countries. In this milieu Herzen was an outsider like all the rest; he had, however, one great advantage over other refugees most of them were almost penniless, and he was very rich. His collaboration Was now eagerly sought by a number of radical groups. Shortly after his arri val in Geneva he made some sort of agreement with Fazy to publish an inter national journal. In mid-summer, a group of German refugees sought Herzen's help in establishing a tri -lingual journal; their leader was Gustav Struve, long Festungszeit. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichtc der preussischen Reaction (Pest, Wicn, Leipzig : A, Hartleben , 1868), p. 25; Arnold Ruge, Briefwechsel und Tagebuchbldtter aus den Jahren 1825·1880, ed. Paul Herrlich, 2 vols. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1886) , II, 100-01: Aleksandr Gcrtscn , Sobranie sochinenii v tridtsati tomakh (Moscow: AN SSSR, 1954 65), X, 44-54. [Unless other wise specified, all future references to Herzcn's work s will be to this edition, which will be cited as Gertsen.] 2. Marc Vuillcumier, Michel Aucouturier, Sven Stelling-Mi chaud, and Michel Cadet, eds., Autour d'Aiexandre Herzen: Revolutionnaires et exiles du x ixe siecle: Documents inedits (Genevc: Libraric Droz, 1973), pp . 17-18. On fazy, sec James H. Billington, Fire in the Minds ofMen: Origins of the Revolutionary Faith (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980), pp. 196-202..

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