The purpose of this work is to examine the course of the revolutionary movement in Russia in the 1880s. An attempt is made briefly to describe the main revolutionary organisations and groups, together with their thinking and activity, to indicate their complexion and inter-relationships, to assess their contribution to the movement as a whole and to discuss the way in which they reflected its fortunes.

It is perhaps as well at the outset to enumerate the problems, all of them of perennial importance to Russian socialists, to which the revolutionaries of the decade had to address themselves. What was the relationship of Russia to Western Europe and, in particular, how did her path of economic development compare with that of the West? Was it the peasantry or the proletariat which would provide the main revolutionary force in Russia, and what was the relationship between the peasants, who constituted the vast majority of the population, and the emergent working class of the towns? What should be the respective roles of the intelligentsia and the masses in revolutionary activity, and would revolution come about at the instigation of the former or of the volition of the latter? Should revolutionaries strive primarily to secure economic improvements in the condition of the masses or to transform political institutions? Was revolution an imminent or a distant prospect, and what should the tempo of the movement be?