The feminist agenda of the first Russian political novel

The novel Who is to Blame? remained the most famous Herzen's work to Russian readers until the end of the nineteenth century, but in different periods of its existence in the reader's environment, various ideas turned out to be in demand by the public and had an impact on the socio-political agenda. In connection with specific historical events, not only the perception of the problems of the novel, but also the social composition of its readers changed. Initially, Herzen's novel had a specific addressee, people of "his circle", educated noblemen, the so-called "representatives of the advanced convictions of the 1840s". Then, in the 1850s and 1860s, the circle of readers expanded, for example, with raznochintsy, for which the noble problem was much less relevant. With a share of convention, it can be argued that for the first "group" the most important was the "socio-political" line of the novel and the relevant theme of a "superfluous man", with whom readers who belonged to the Herzen circle could associate themselves. For the second "group", readers of the 1850s and 1860s, the "family" line of the novel turned out to be more important, and, mainly, "key" was the question of the position of a woman in Russian society. The article attempts to interpret Herzen's novel in the context of the genesis of Russian feminism. The main focus is on the period of the 1850s-1860s. In its first part, the work presents the history of the relationship between Alexander Herzen and his wife Natalia in 1841-1845, when the family crisis helped Herzen to formulate the main provisions of Russian feminism. Herzen added Russian seriousness to the "frivolous" French feminism. The French then preached the "rehabilitation of the flesh" (the Saint-Simonian Enfantin spoke about it and called for rejecting the old family bourgeois morality and recalling the body), and "rehabilitation of the heart" (which George Sand called for, saying that love is a sacred feeling that can not be limited to marriage). Against this background, Herzen proposed, in fact, "rehabilitation of activities". He wrote that love is only one thing, not the whole life of a person; in addition to a small private life, there is a large public one, and a "mature" person is called, first of all, for the "world of common interests, artistic and scientific life". The second part analyses the novel Who is to Blame?, written in the period when Herzen tried to present the main findings of his feminist concept in the artistic form. The young intellectual Beltov, thrown into a boring provincial city, is "copied" from himself, and this is quite obvious. The descriptions of the weak character of the raznochinets Krutsifersky allow assuming that his thoughts were borrowed from Natalya. In the logic of Herzen, Krutsifersky is more to blame for the family drama because he is too devoted to his wife, because feelings become more important to him than activities. The article notes that the "family" line of the novel was most in demand by the reading public at the end of the 1850s and the beginning of the 1860s. Then, under the influence of the emerging "women's issue", Herzen's feminist ideas began to have an impact on the socio-political agenda.

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