Alexander Herzen Foundation

The Alexander Herzen Foundation (in Dutch: Alexander Herzenstichting) was a non-profit foundation, legally established in 1969 in Amsterdam, dedicated to publish samizdat manuscripts from dissidents in the former Soviet Union in the original language or in translation. The Alexander Herzen Foundation was the first to publish accounts of the Sinyavsky-Daniel trial and the works of Andrei Amalrik, Yuli Daniel, Larisa Bogoraz, Andrei Sinyavsky, Pavel Litvinov and others in the West. The Foundation was ended legally in 1998.[1]

Alexander Herzen, painted by Nikolai Ge

History

The Alexander Herzen Foundation was legally established May 19, 1969, in Amsterdam. The Dutch slavist and essayist Karel van het Reve (1921–1999) took the initiative and was one of the trustees. The other trustees were the Dutch historian Jan Willem Bezemer (1921–2000) and the British-American politicologist Peter Reddaway (1939).[2] Frank Fisher and his wife Elisabeth Fisher-Spanjer were also involved in its founding.[3] The date of establishment of the foundation is mentioned in the obituary written by Robert van Amerongen after Van het Reve's death.[4] The Foundation is named after Alexander Herzen, the Russian philosopher and writer who founded in 1853 an independent publishing house in Russia.

Karel van het Reve was in 1967-1968 foreign correspondent in Moscow of the Dutch daily newspaper Het Parool. He considered, quite unusual at the time, collecting samizdat documents as one of his journalistic tasks. He published, among other pieces, the famous Andrei Sakharov memorandum Reflections on Progress, Peaceful Coexistence, and Intellectual Freedom. This was the overture to the Alexander Herzen Foundation.

The Foundation was established to publish samizdat manuscripts in the West and to preserve the revenues for the authors of the manuscripts. The annotated texts being published in the original language was also important to counteract corrupt editions and bad translations.

The foundation ended in 1998 because the Cold War and the strong repression of the press in Russia and Eastern Europe were over.

Published (selection)

• Andrej Amarik, Will the Soviet Union survive until 1984 (1969)
• Pavel Litvinov, The Trial of the Four. A collection of Materials on the Case of Galanskov, Ginzburg, Dobrovolsky & Lashkova (1972)

Further reading

• Peter Reddaway, 'One of the CIA's most zealous agents', in: Uren met Karel van het Reve. Liber amicorum (1991), p. 138-144

Footnotes

1. See: Website International Institute of Social History in the Netherlands (Alexander Herzen Foundation Archive).
2. See: Website Karel van het Reve (in Dutch)..
3. "The Alexander Herzen Foundation against censorship in the Soviet Union". International Institute of Social History. Retrieved December 4, 2010.
4. van Amerongen, Robert. Karel van het Reve 19 mei 1921 - 4 maart 1999. Jaarboek Maatschappij der Nederlandse Letterkunde 1999 (in Dutch). The Foundation has been legally established on May 19th, 1969, in Amsterdam. Its aim is to publish quickly and responsibly manuscripts written in the USSR which cannot be published there because of censorship. It is a much needed response to the increasing flow of such manuscripts and to the wishes of various Soviet citizens who would like manuscripts to be published under independent and scholarly auspices. The Foundation will publish manuscripts and collections of documents which are of literary or documentary value, irrespective of their political, philosophical or religious tendency, and with the minimum of editing. They may be written in any language of the USSR. [in English on larger Dutch web site]