page_title: Free Russian Press
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Free Russian Press / History
caption_attribution_description: English: The title page of issue "Общее вече" ("Common Veche"), the exile-russian publication of Alexander Herzen and Nikolay Ogarev. London, 1862. Русский: Первая страница первого номера издания Герцена и Огарёва "Общее вече". Лондон, Вольная русская типография, 1862 год. Отсканировано с факсимильного издания 1964 года.
context_page_description: The Free Russian Press was a printing company and a publishing house launched in 1853 in London by Alexander Hertzen with a view to becoming the 'uncensored voice of free Russia'.
context_section_description: On 21 February 1853, Hertzen issued a statement, published under the title "Free Russian Press in London. For Brothers in Russia" in which he informed "all the free-thinking Russians" of the new publishing house with its own printing facilities to be opened on 1 May and promising 'free tribune to all'. "Send me whatever you will, and everything written in the spirit of freedom will be published, from the scientific articles or pieces on statistics and history, to novels, novellas or poems...  If you haven't got anything of your own, sent hand-written copies of the banned poems by Pushkin, Ryleyev, Lermontov, Polezhayev or Pecherin... Since I am yet to maintain my links with Russia... I am going to publish my own manuscripts for a while," he informed his readership.
  It took several months for Hertzen, assisted by a group of the Polish emigres to purchase all the necessary printing facilities, including the typeface, small, sharp and clear, produced by the French firm Famille Didot initially for the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences which for some reasons had rejected it. He established links with bookstores in London, Paris, Berlin, Leipzig and Hamburg and made the full use of the financial help provided by James  Rothshield. 
  The Free Russian Press was launched on 22 June 1853, the eve of the Crimean War. The first one to come out was a brochure titled "The Yuriev day! The Yuriev Day!", a call for the Russian nobility to awaken to the need of the liberation of Russian peasants. It was followed by "The Poles Forgive You!", a proclamation propagating the idea of the respective democratic communities in the two countries, Poland and Russia, joining forces to work together for the common revolutionary cause.
  In August Hertzen's essay "Baptized Property" (Крещёная собственность) came out, attacking serfdom. Over the course of the next two years 15 leaflets and brochures were published, none of them containing a single word from an author or correspondent from Russia. 
  In August 1855 Alexander Hertzen started to publish his first periodical, Polyarnaya Zvezda (Polar Star), the first issue of it still comprising the materials from the immigrant circles. He made another plea for a response. "The question of whether or not you'll provide us your support is crucial. Your response will give us the idea about the ripeness of social awareness in Russia... Without articles from Russia, without the Russian readership, the Polar Star won't be having reason enough for its existence... Surely, your silence won't shatter our belief in the Russian people and its future; it will only make us doubt the moral strength and the real worth of our own generation [of Russians]."
  The second, May 1856 issue of the paper featured for the first time a letter from Russia, but 190 pages of its 288 were still written by Hertzen.
  1856 marked dramatic turn in fortunes for Free Russian Press. In April that year Nikolai Ogaryov arrived in London to join in with the enterprise. In the course of several weeks he managed to contact a large group of Russian authors, mostly belonging to the liberal intelligentsia. People like Konstantin Kavelin, Boris Chicherin and Nikolai Melgunov, who started to write to Hertzen, promptly gave him to understand that the only way for the publication out of quagmire would be to start addressing the widest possible range of the Russian readership, not just marginal radicals. 
  In July 1856 Hertzen and Ogaryov launched another periodical, Voices from Russia (Голоса из России), moderate in its tone and appeal, and having little in common with the blatantly pro-revolutionary Polar Star. All of a sudden a flood of material rushed in from Russia.
  In March 1857 Hertzen and Ogaryov decided that they needed one more publication, the one that would be focusing more closely on current events. On 13 April the launch of a newspaper was announced, and on 22 June the first issue of Kolokol came out. Originally a supplement to the Polar Star, it quickly gained its own ground and became Hertzen and Ogaryov's major project. 
  In 1859—1861 the numb
caption: Obshcheye Veche, 15 July 1862. The first issue
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