Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Note on dates, transliteration and use of Russian terms
- Glossary
- Map of European Russia in the 1880s
- 1 RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY POPULISM BEFORE 1 MARCH 1881
- 2 NARODNAYA VOLYA AFTER 1 MARCH 1881
- 3 ‘POPULISTS’, ‘MILITARISTS’, ‘CONSPIRATORS’ AND OTHER GROUPS IN THE 1880s
- 4 THE BEGINNINGS OF RUSSIAN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY
- Conclusion
- Key to abbreviations used in notes and bibliography
- Notes
- Select bibliography
- Index
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Note on dates, transliteration and use of Russian terms
- Glossary
- Map of European Russia in the 1880s
- 1 RUSSIAN REVOLUTIONARY POPULISM BEFORE 1 MARCH 1881
- 2 NARODNAYA VOLYA AFTER 1 MARCH 1881
- 3 ‘POPULISTS’, ‘MILITARISTS’, ‘CONSPIRATORS’ AND OTHER GROUPS IN THE 1880s
- 4 THE BEGINNINGS OF RUSSIAN SOCIAL DEMOCRACY
- Conclusion
- Key to abbreviations used in notes and bibliography
- Notes
- Select bibliography
- Index
Summary
There is no doubt but that after 1 March 1881 revolutionary Populism entered a decadent phase and that the Russian revolutionary movement as a whole, having suddenly flourished in the 1870s, went into a temporary decline. For one thing, terrorism abated, even though certain groups did continue to contemplate its application. Meanwhile, those groups which were in any case opposed to violence (albeit on tactical rather than moral grounds), realising that the advent of socialism was not so imminent as their predecessors had hoped, accepted that the patient and unheroic activity of many generations would be necessary before revolution would take place, and set themselves correspondingly limited objectives. Activity came to be hampered, moreover, by confusion and lack of purpose as the weakness of the major theoretical premisses of Populism became increasingly apparent. After all, it seemed unlikely now that ‘critically thinking’ individuals could generate far-reaching social change by means of patient propaganda, inflammatory agitation or terrorism – political or economic – or indeed that they could obliterate distinctions between themselves and the peasantry, as Populists had once hoped. As for the peasants themselves, they, as revolutionaries had already begun to their chagrin to learn in the 1870s, were not exceptionally amenable to socialism or ready to carry out revolution from below, be it peaceful, as Lavrov had hoped, or violent, as Bakunin had imagined.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Russian Revolutionary Movement in the 1880s , pp. 161 - 170Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1986