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3.0 out of 5 stars
Pathos, Futility, Tragedy, Farce, 25 Jan 2009
Less a history than a series of sketches, E. H. Carr's 1933 book sits alongside his biographies of Dostoevsky, Karl Marx and Michael Bakunin as a neglected aspect of his prodigious output. The 'romantic exiles' of the title - aristocratic Russian radicals like Alexander Herzen, Bakunin, Nicholas Ogarev - are ruthlessly demolished through an occasionally sordid catalogue of hypocrisy, deceit and narcissism. Herzen and his friends are portrayed as juvenile in the extreme, especially in affairs of the heart and the petty love squabbles which apparently dominated their lives. We are led to understand that these men, romantics rather than rationalists, never came to terms with reality, either in terms of their closeted privilege or the political possibilities of 19th century Europe. In his epilogue, Carr characterises their collective lives in terms of futility, tragedy and pathos.
Although rich in detail, particularly on the countless exchange of love letters, family trees and travel routes, this lacks any deep or satisfying analysis. For a man so associated with determinism, either as a 'realist' in international affairs or as a Marxist, Carr has curiously little to say about economics or politics, not even as off-hand accounting for the apparent shallowness of the exiles. Some of the middle chapters deal fleetingly with internal disputes about democracy and revolution but there is generally little here to suggest that these views were taken at all seriously, or even honestly held. We learn nothing of the general social context in which these men acted, the struggles of the day or the very real brutality of the existing regimes of privilege against which they militated. Herzen's role in the liberation of the Serfs merits no serious discussion, not even to suggest that his role is overblown. Others figure as senseless agitators, misguided children or provocateurs living off the charity of others.
None of this would be so troubling if Carr had taken the trouble to demonstrate their failings against a historical account of why they were so naïve, why they chose exile over privilege, what they actually thought, and the like. Indeed, the focus on personal lives rather reproduces a certain tired and stale style of history in which nations, classes and political movements constitute little more than the backdrop to the petty dramas of our main players.
There is an obvious soft-spot for Bakunin - described at one point as "a giant among pygmies" - but it is laced with pity. Both Herzen and his sometime friend Georg Herwegh come across chiefly as obsessional, vindictive gossips and at least occasional fantasists. Those aware of Carr's particular support for the USSR will not be overly surprised by all this. And, although it becomes obvious only in his closing paragraphs, his chief intention was clearly to show the superiority of Marx's 'scientific' and 'materialist' analysis over the romantic and misguided revolutionary enthusiasms of Herzen and Bakunin.
Carr writes in a fairly engaging style and many of his characterisations may well be fair and representative. But this rather disappoints, both as history and politics. And it is perhaps interesting to contrast Carr's denunciation of this collection of socialists, anarchists, democrats and libertarians, however privileged, with his own support for appeasement in the 1930s, his hope in Marxism as science and in Bolshevism as a movement able to bring about a better world, and ask ourselves who really deserves to be remembered as a pathetic 'romantic'.
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by Isaiah Berlin
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