as well as great luxury.  At twenty-two years of age he was banished to a small town in the Urals, where he spent six years, returning to Moscow in 1840.  It is noteworthy that the offense for which he had been sent into exile was the singing of songs in praise of the Decembrist martyrs.  This occurred at a meeting of one of the “Students’ Circles” founded by Herzen for the dissemination of revolutionary Socialist ideals among the students.

Upon his return to Moscow in 1840 Herzen, together with Bakunin and other friends, again engaged in revolutionary propaganda and in 1842 he was again exiled.  In 1847, through the influence of powerful friends, he received permission to leave Russia for travel abroad.  He never again saw his native land, all the remaining years of life being spent in exile.  After a tour of Italy, Herzen arrived in Paris on the eve of the Revolution of 1848, joining there his friends, Bakunin and Turgeniev, and many other revolutionary leaders.  It was impossible for him to participate actively in the 1848 uprising, owing to the activity of the Paris police, but he watched the Revolution with the profoundest sympathy.  And when it failed and was followed by the terrible reaction his distress was almost unbounded.  For a brief period he was the victim of the most appalling pessimism, but after a time his faith returned and he joined with Proudhon in issuing a radical revolutionary paper, L’Ami du Peuple, of which, Kropotkin tells us in his admirable study of Russian literature, “almost every number was confiscated by the police of Napoleon the Third.”  The paper had a very brief life, and Herzen himself was soon expelled from France, going to Switzerland, of which country he became a citizen.

In 1857 Herzen settled in London, where he published for some years a remarkable paper, called Kolokol (The Bell), in which he exposed the iniquities and shortcomings of Czarism and inspired the youth of Russia with his revolutionary ideals.  The paper had to be smuggled into Russia, of course, and the manner in which the smuggling was done is one of the most absorbing stories in all the tragic history of the vast land of the Czars.  Herzen was a charming writer and a keen thinker, and it is impossible to exaggerate the extent of his influence.  But when the freedom of the serfs, for which he so vigorously contended, was promulgated by Alexander II, and other extensive reforms were granted, his influence waned.  He died in 1870 in Switzerland.

II

Alexander II was not alone in hoping that the Act of Liberation would usher in a new era of prosperity and tranquillity for Russia.  Many of the most radical of the Intelligentsia, followers of Herzen, believed that Russia was destined to outstrip the older nations of western Europe in its democracy and its culture.  It was not long before disillusionment came:  the serfs were set free, but the manner in which the land question had been dealt with made their freedom almost a mockery.  As a result there were numerous uprisings of peasants—­riots which the government suppressed in the most sanguinary manner.  From that time until the present the land question has been the core of the Russian problem.  Every revolutionary movement has been essentially concerned with giving the land to the peasants.