SOURCE: "The World of Emigration in Nineteenth-Century Europe," in The Russian Revolutionary Emigres: 1825-1870, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986, pp. 3-31.

In the excerpt that follows, Miller examines both how Herzen affected the emigrant circles in which he moved in the 1850s and how that context shaped him. Miller concludes with a look at the considerable success of Herzen's newspaper The Bell.

Alexander Herzen, an aristocrat whose name is synonymous with the development of Russian socialism, arrived in Western Europe on the eve of the outbreak of revolution in France in 1848. Herzen's role abroad, where he spent the most creative years of his life, was so overwhelming that he has come to be seen as the epitome of the entire Russian emigration during the nineteenth century. In the world of emigration, Herzen assumed a multidimensional role among the exiles of Europe. This role was appreciated in particular by later...