My Past and Thoughts
My Past and Thoughts () is an extensive autobiography by Alexander Herzen, which he started in the early 1850s and continued to expand and revise throughout his later life. Serialized in "Polyarnaya Zvezda", the book in its full form came out as a separate edition after its author's death. In Herzen's lifetime the major parts of the book were translated into English (1855), German (1855) and French (1860-1862). "My Past and Thoughts" gives a panoramic view on the social and political life in Russian Empire as well as the European West of the mid-19th  century. It is considered to be the classic of Russian literature. Literary significance. Soviet critic Y. Elsberg calls the book "the novel about a Russian revolutionary and thinker" "with all the contradictions of his inner world" and writes that by its form "My Past and Thoughts" is a complex combination of memoirs, historical chronicle novel, diary, letters and a biography.