SOURCE: "Conclusion," in Mid-Passage: Alexander Herzen and European Revolution, 1847-1852, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989, pp. 221-28.

The following chapter, which reviews Herzen's reaction to the failed European uprisings of 1848, culminates in a comparison of Herzen's thought with that of Karl Marx.

Historians have perceived the revolutions of 1848 as paradoxical defeats for the revolutionary ideal. The dreams of political romanticism died on the barricades in Paris in June, or in Vienna in October; the makers of the revolution went to prison, or to exile, or to their deaths. The age of generous ideals and of simple, clear visions of political morality came to an end, to be succeeded by a new "toughness" and "realism." Yet within a quarter century, the victors had put into place many of the reforms the vanquished had fought for; the radical and democratic exiles were amnestied and could come home to a world of...