The Narodniks were members of a movement of the Russian Empire intelligentsia in the 1860s and 1870s, some of whom became involved in revolutionary agitation against tsarism . Their ideology, known as Narodism , Narodnism or Narodnichestvo , was a form of agrarian socialism , though it is often misunderstood as populism .
80-673: The Going to the People campaigns were the central impetus of the Narodnik movement. The Narodniks were in many ways the intellectual and political forebears and, in notable cases, direct participants of the Russian Revolution —in particular of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party , which went on to greatly influence Russian history in the early 20th century. Narodnichestvo as a philosophy was influenced by
160-413: A Moscow-based printing press that produced fake passports and propaganda pamphlets, or the various quarters used by the students for shelter and resupply. The movement spread rapidly throughout the country, with authorities reporting that populist propagandists were active in over three-quarters of Russian provinces . The Don and Volga regions became main locations for agitation, due to their history as
240-659: A commune that they were trying to revolutionize ("settled" propaganda), and others practiced propagandizing by using pamphlets and literature to maximize the number of people that the message reached ("flying" propaganda). Disunity was prevalent even though Narodniks only traveled in three directions: either towards Volga , Dnieper , or Don . The Narodniki, who often took up work as nurses, scribes, schoolteachers, or participated in construction and harvest, struggled in unfamiliar terrain and poverty. All Narodniks resented foreign intervention into Russia, wanted Russian communes to control their own economic policies. Narodniks believed that
320-694: A decade of indoctrination". In Ukraine , the ranks of the buntars swelled with a number of " illegals ", who remained out of the reach of the Russian authorities. The buntars began agitating in Korsun , where they planned to incite the local peasants to expropriate the land they worked and to launch an armed uprising against the Russian authorities, gaining a foothold there by the spring of 1876. But their plans did not materialize and after one of their members turned informant they were forced to abandon Korsun and scatter. Some of these buntars were able to gain
400-460: A dedicated following among Russian Marxists, including one Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov . The Moscow Circle was tried in March 1877, charged with conspiracy to overthrow the existing order and incitement to revolt. The fifty defendants, including Pyotr Alexeyev , defended themselves on the grounds of merely agitating for the workers' right to the fruits of their labor, in speeches that were excised from
480-611: A foothold in Chyhyryn , where the lower-class peasants and their landlords had come into conflict over land rights. Claiming to act on behalf of Alexander II, the buntars led by Yakov Stefanovich intervened on the side of the peasant dusheviks in order to redistribute land to them. Under the leadership of Stefanovich, self-styled as "Commissar Dmytro Naido", they formed peasant combat druzhinas with elected atamans and soviets . The organisation grew to over one thousand members and existed for nine months until its discovery by
560-400: A generalised revolution . Despite the disagreements on militancy between the two factions, they were able to come together on a number of issues, including that the coming revolution would necessitate an economic transformation of society , and that an effective propagandist would need to "completely identify [themself] with the common people" by adopting their customs. They also agreed on
640-467: A means of exerting pressure on the government for reform, as the spark that would ignite a vast peasant uprising, and as the inevitable response to the regime's use of violence against the revolutionaries". The attempt to get the peasantry to overthrow the Tsar proved unsuccessful, due to the peasantry's idolisation of the latter as someone "on their side". Narodism therefore developed the practice of terrorism:
720-621: A number of former activists of People's Will, NBP , and other movements ANS combines left-wing populism with far-right views. Ideologically it combines neo-narodnichestvo , and Third Position -style views such as National Bolshevism , National-anarchism , and National Syndicalism . The ANS uses the flag of the Green armies during the Russian Civil War , as well as the Sown Field emblem. ANS call themselves "the heirs of
800-473: A political level, because the peasantry were generally horrified by the murder, and the government had many Narodnaya Volya leaders hanged, leaving the group unorganized and ineffective. However, these events did not mark the end of the movement, and the later Socialist-Revolutionaries , Popular Socialists , and Trudoviks all pursued similar ideas and tactics to the Narodniks. The philosophy and actions of
880-495: A popular uprising against the state and attacked the Senate as having organised a show trial . In the end, 90 of the defendants, including Sophia Perovskaya , were acquitted. The others were sentenced to a variety of different punishments, from five days' to ten years' imprisonment, 28 of whom were sentenced to hard labor. Requests by the court to commute the sentences of 62 convicts were rejected by Alexander II, who even lengthened
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#1732766119140960-754: A rural Russian—a lack of material goods, poor healthcare, etc.—left little time for discussions of socialism or egoism . Feminism in the Narodnik movement was also hard for the peasantry to accept. Pre-Marxist revolutionaries believed in an unusually strong equality of sex , and educated noblewomen played major roles in radical movements in the latter decades of the nineteenth century. The Narodniks promulgated Chernyshevskyan ideas of chaste cohabitation—that men and women should live together with no sexual interactions—and gender equality. These concepts were extremely odd to most peasants, and they did not generally react well to them. Furthermore, Narodniks often lived in communes where non-married men and women slept and lived in
1040-427: A tenuous connection to the populist movement, the trial ironically resulting in them being inducted into the movement, with one historian even calling it a "conference of activists arranged by and at the expense of the government". The spokesperson for the 193 defendants, who referred to themselves as the " Socialist Revolutionary Party ", declared their intention to establish a "free union of autonomous communes" through
1120-630: Is rather a right-wing fragment of the " Left Front ", which grew and was later joined by many people with left-right views". The first significant and annual action of the ANS was the Russian March , which activists, together with other movements, have been organizing since 2017. In addition, the Association participates in the anti-corruption protests of Alexei Navalny , holding its own actions at them. The ANS activists themselves are known to
1200-433: Is responsible for the third reason that the "going to the people movement" failed; the peasants did not receive the intellectuals well. The reception that the intelligentsia received in the communes was so poor that it destroyed their idealized image of the peasant that was so common prior to 1874. The Narodniks saw peasants as a unified body; they thought that all peasants dressed poorly, so intellectuals dressed as poorly as
1280-743: The artel as a model for socialism found that it was actually closer to a privately held company than a workers' cooperative , the workers at which were left too tired after the workday to be receptive to revolutionary propaganda. Attempts to propagandize the Old Believers were held back by their prejudices , while peasants of the Volga were discovered to have profited from the emancipation edict and were thus unreceptive to subversive ideas. The buntars were also largely unsuccessful in stirring up revolt, with peasants either unwilling, unequipped or unorganized enough to do so, while those that traveled to
1360-588: The Bessarabian -born Constantin Stere (who was a member of Narodnaya Volya in his youth). The latter helped found various groups, included one formed around the literary magazine Viața Românească , which he published along with Garabet Ibrăileanu and Paul Bujor. Stere and the Poporanist (from popor , Romanian for "people") movement eventually rejected revolution altogether. Nevertheless, he shared
1440-523: The Chaikovsky Circle and Land and Liberty , with the goals of self-education and external propaganda work. They shared the common general aims of destroying the Russian monarchy and of distributing land fairly among the peasantry. The Narodniks generally believed that it was possible to forgo the capitalist phase of Russia's development and proceed directly to socialism . The Narodniks saw
1520-608: The Tsar 's government in the nineteenth century. Unlike the French Revolution or the Revolutions of 1848 , the "to the people" movement was political activism primarily by the Russian intelligentsia. These individuals were generally anti-capitalist, and they believed that they could facilitate both an economic and a political revolution amongst rural Russians by "going to" and educating the peasant classes. The concept of
1600-400: The buntars continued, with the former planning to intellectually educate the peasants and the latter planning to play on the emotions of the peasantry to foment revolt. But both largely handed out pamphlets detailing the same objectives: "land to the peasants, mills and factories to the workers, freedom and equality for all." More well-off participants also found themselves unable to deal with
1680-431: The 1877. Some participants openly declared that if state repression had not fallen on them, then they naturally would have become disillusioned and lose their revolutionary fervor themselves, but the arrests had instead strengthened much of their resolve. Those who continued on included Sergey Stepnyak-Kravchinsky who fled abroad where he planned to return and continue his populist agitation, Catherine Breshkovsky who
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#17327661191401760-590: The Circle had established the All-Russian Social-Revolutionary Organization, intended as an organ to unite all the disparate revolutionary elements within it and organized along non-hierarchical lines with a rotating executive committee. In a synthesis of both Lavrov and Bakunin's ideas, the organization planned to establish decentralized groups that would both propagandize the masses and carry out acts of terrorism against
1840-550: The Narodnik movement in 1874 failed because they approached the peasants as though the peasants were intellectuals like themselves. Radicals in the latter part of the 1870s would learn that their concept of the narod was flawed, and intellectuals would have to instead make themselves into peasants to have success in the movement and begin a revolution against the government of Alexander II. Nikolay Chernyshevsky 's "anthropological principle" held that all humans, regardless of class, have many intrinsic similarities, and intellectuals saw in
1920-614: The Narodnik view that capitalism was not a necessary stage in the development of an agrarian country. This perspective, which contradicted traditional Marxism, also influenced Ion Mihalache 's Peasants' Party and its successor, the National Peasants' Party , as well as the philosophy of Virgil Madgearu . Going to the People Going to the People was a populist movement in the Russian Empire . It
2000-399: The Narodniks therefore helped prepare the way for the Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917 . The Popular Resistance Association is an example of a modern-day grouping claiming the heritage of the Narodniks and the democratic socialist parties inspired by them. The Narodnik movement was a populist initiative to engage the rural classes of Russia in a political debate that would overthrow
2080-427: The Narodniks, the more radical the Narodniks became. They grew increasingly selective in their membership, and their Zemlya i Volya (Land and Freedom) members would eventually evolve to form more terroristic organizations: Narodnaya Volya (The People's Will) and Chornyperedel (Black Repartition). These groups sought to begin a revolution through violence, and when members of Narodnaya Volya killed Tsar Alexander in 1881,
2160-491: The Russian intelligentsia to "bestir itself from the mental lethargy into which, in contrast to the sensitive and lively years of the seventies, it had fallen and formulate a scientific theory of Russian economic development". One response to this repression was the formation of Russia's first organized revolutionary party, Narodnaya Volya ("People's Will"), in June 1879. It favoured secret society -led terrorism , justified "as
2240-495: The Tsar and to the Russian Orthodox Church ; not understanding this, the Narodnik rhetoric blamed the Tsar and centralized religion for the peasants' lack of land and material resources. Another example of the cultural disconnect between the intelligentsia and the peasants in the "to the people" movement was the Narodniks propagandizing through pamphlets when virtually all poor Russians were illiterate. In essence,
2320-462: The Tsar had impoverished the peasants, but Narodniks should have understood how highly the peasants regarded the Tsar. By failing to present a disciplined message and avoid directly attacking the Tsar, the Narodniki was often simply ignored. It was not until the formation of Narodnaya Volya in 1879 that young revolutionaries saw the need for organization and a disciplined message. This lack of unity
2400-497: The Urals did not find any of the rumored fugitives that they intended to organize into a revolutionary armed force. Many peasants even turned over their "exotic urban visitors" to government authorities, although this was a rare occurrence. Most state repression came because the propagandists themselves had failed to take the necessary precautions to escape government surveillance and their premises were quickly raided by police. It
2480-598: The author Leo Tolstoy to experience a moral crisis, during which he renounced the Russian Orthodox Church as an oppressive institution, instead placing his faith in the peasantry. Peasant collectivism became, to Tolstoy, "my monastery, the church where I escaped and found refuge from all the anxieties, the doubts and temptations of my life." The campaign later went on to inspire the Ballets Russes , with its founder Sergei Diaghilev declaring its intellectual origins to be "in objects of utility (domestic implements in
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2560-427: The campaign as a " pilgrimage ", in which the guilt -driven students saw themselves as paying off a debt to the peasantry, one the students had incurred through their privileged upbringing. The movement itself was a spontaneous self-organized affair, with the only attempts at centralizing leadership ending up stillborn. The decentralized groups involved acted autonomously, with the only point of connection being
2640-527: The center of revolutionary focus in the country, with a renewed attempt by populists to "go to the people" in the spring of 1875, which also proved a failure, leading to widespread disillusionment with the Lavrovist methods of peaceful propaganda. The majority of the movement moved towards the buntar position, with Sergey Stepnyak-Kravchinsky criticising Lavrov for his reformism and declaring that "one mutinous act, even if unsuccessful, would achieve more than
2720-587: The centers of Stenka Razin 's and Yemelyan Pugachev 's rebellions respectively. The movement also penetrated Ukraine , students attempted to organize fugitives hiding in the Urals , while others propagandized amongst the Old Believers . The only region that remained untouched by the movement was Siberia , due to its large non-Russian population . Divisions in the movement between the Lavrovists and
2800-526: The centuries-old historical tradition of the national liberation struggle of our people: ... the rebels of Razin, Bulavin and Pugachev, the Decembrists, Narodnaya Volya and the Party of Socialist Revolutionaries": "We adhere to left-nationalist, narodnik views... We oppose imperialism, this is our difference from "The Other Russia", we stand for solidarity of nations, and the right to self-determination... ANS
2880-503: The concepts of social anarchism , younger ones were more driven by a sense of rugged individualism and a desire to hold private property . Peasants still held out hope for land redistribution, but this hope was placed in the initiatives of Alexander II and the promises of military service . Some peasants even responded with anger when populists advocated overthrowing the Tsarist autocracy. The students that had previously held up
2960-491: The coordinator were detained on the eve of the Russian March as witnesses in a criminal case about an abandoned fire, searches were carried out in the apartments of the activists and the ANS headquarters. In the spring of 2019, information appeared about a criminal case against an activist of the Volgodonsk branch of the ANS - Vladimir Boyarinov, later activists denied this information, and Boyarinov himself said that he
3040-400: The country districts), in the painting on the sleighs, in the designs and the colours of peasant dresses, or the carving around a window frame, we found our motifs, and on this foundation we built." Inspired by the campaign, the Russian ethnographers Yury Melgunov and Evgenia Linyova had recorded peasant songs, using the scientific method to transcribe the polyphonic harmonies displayed by
3120-655: The courts' records. The Circle were sentenced to hard labor in Siberia, which earned them even greater sympathy from the public, eventually resulting in a successful appeal for their release. Following a brief trial against the South Russian Workers' Union, in October 1877, the " case of Revolutionary Propaganda in the Empire " was initiated against the campaign's participants. Some of the defendants had only
3200-467: The department for economic security and anti-corruption (OBEiPK), as well as police special forces, conducted searches at six addresses in Moscow. Operational activities took place at the ANS headquarters and in five apartments where the activists live. The front doors were cut down by the security forces before the arrival of the lawyers. The actions of the law enforcement agencies were filmed by employees of
3280-479: The dictatorship of a revolutionary minority , which he believed would institute a regime of state capitalism in the name of socialism. Lavrov aimed this critique at the nascent Russian Blanquist tendency led by Pyotr Tkachev , who had likewise criticised Lavrov as a "preacher of peaceful progress" that was unnecessarily delaying the revolution. In the ensuing debate, Lavrov denounced Tkachev as an "irresponsible demagogue", with Friedrich Engels even joining in on
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3360-441: The empire in order to live among the peasants and "prepare them for their future political role." Many of these youths had never before visited the villages of Russia, but sought to adopt their manner of dress and take up jobs as manual laborers as a way of engaging the population. The movement notably involved many women such as Catherine Breshkovsky , who participated alongside men as propagandists. To many of its participants,
3440-446: The goal of social revolution in mind, the Circle dedicated themselves to "fostering an intelligentsia from among the people", setting out to establish student cadres that would "go out to the people" in order to spread education and revolutionary propaganda. The arrest of leading members of the Circle, including Kropotkin, only accelerated preparations for "going to the people". The Lavrovists argued that anyone preparing to partake in
3520-458: The hardships of the lifestyle, quickly returning to the cities after their enthusiasm for the movement wore off. Those who did continue were met with further difficulties, being turned away from possible lodgings or failing to properly abide by local customs. They found the people often unreceptive to their revolutionary message, either due to widespread illiteracy or disinterest in the ideas presented to them. While older peasants responded well to
3600-422: The image of the peasant to further their own political objectives. Narodniks saw the peasant commune as a Russia that had not been tainted by western influence; Alexander Herzen wrote that the narod was "the official Russia; the real Russia." Hampered by a biased understanding of the peasantry, the Narodniks struggled, mostly unsuccessfully, to relate to the peasantry. Rural Russians were typically highly devoted to
3680-530: The larger Narodnik movement lost virtually all support in the communes and rural parts of Russia. Government oppression further radicalized the Narodniks, and the peasants could not support enhanced radicalization of the already radical intelligentsia. Narodnichestvo had a direct influence on politics and culture in Romania , through the writings of Constantin Dobrogeanu-Gherea and the advocacy of
3760-466: The movement also lost their faith in the revolutionary potential of the peasantry and shifted their focus to the urban working class. In Odessa , one Lavrovist founded the South Russian Workers' Union, which for its short existence spread socialist ideas among the city's factory workers and even organized strikes, the first organization of its kind to do so in Russia. Nevertheless, the peasantry remained at
3840-481: The movement took on a religious character, in which they acted as populist missionaries of a "new faith", adopting elements of Biblical scripture as a way of spurring the masses towards revolution. This led the Ukrainian historian Avrahm Yarmolinsky to characterize the movement as a "children's crusade", due to the "ignorance and naivete" of the enthusiastic student participants. Orlando Figes further described
3920-502: The movement would need to undergo rigorous education, before they could themselves propagandise and indoctrinate the peasantry to their own ideas. But the buntars dismissed this idea, believing that the peasants themselves needed no education on populist ideals, as they already traditionally held to an egalitarian and anti-authoritarian philosophy. The buntars held that uprisings would themselves have an educational effect, as even small and failed rebellions would accumulate towards
4000-477: The narod, like the volk in Germany , was an attempt to establish a new national identity in Russia that was both nationalistic and liberal. Fyodor Dostoevsky said that "none of us like the narod as they actually are, but only as each of us has imagined them." Russian political activists and government officials often claimed to be working to improve the lives of Russian peasants; in reality, they were manipulating
4080-478: The necessity of active revolutionary agitation. The dispute was carried into Russia with the publication of Lavrov's newspaper Forward! and Bakunin's book Statism and Anarchy . The tamer ideology of the Lavrovists proved less popular than Bakunin's revolutionary anarchism , with the Circle of Tchaikovsky even switching its sympathies from the former to the latter, under the leadership of Peter Kropotkin . With
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#17327661191404160-492: The need for students to take up a manual trade which would help them "rub off civilization", with students setting up workshops around the country to train them in a number of different skills. By the 1870s, radical propaganda was being circulated widely within self-education circles and student communes, igniting a "youth revolution", during which young people were inspired "to resolve all (of Russia's) cursed questions which gave humanity no respite." In their excitement to "go to
4240-402: The newly emancipated peasantry. The slogan "To the People!" was first expounded by the "father of Russian socialism" Alexander Herzen , in an 1861 issue of his newspaper Kolokol , following the closure of Saint Petersburg University in response to growing student unrest . This came during a rising wave of populism in Russia, during which Narodniks urged the unoccupied students to "go to
4320-400: The peasantry as the revolutionary class that would overthrow the monarchy, and perceived the village commune as the embryo of socialism. However, they also believed that the peasantry would not achieve revolution on their own, insisting instead that history could only be made by outstanding personalities , who would lead an otherwise passive peasantry to revolution. Vasily Vorontsov called for
4400-404: The peasantry the instrument to realize their hopes." As historian Daniel Field wrote, however, "Narodniks found that the peasant desire for land was not accompanied by a wish to rebel." The Russian government did not look favorably on the Narodniks advocating their overthrow, and peasants would only abide Narodniks so long as no criminal connections could be drawn to them. The Narodniks believed that
4480-479: The peasantry, they believed, had to be shown that the Tsar was not supernatural , and could be killed. This theory, called "direct struggle", intended "uninterrupted demonstration of the possibility of struggling against the government, in this manner lifting the revolutionary spirit of the people and its faith in the success of the cause, and organising those capable of fighting". On March 1, 1881, they succeeded in assassinating Alexander II . This act backfired on
4560-441: The peasants a purified version of themselves that could be radicalized; time demonstrated that this was simply not the case. Disunity between Bakunists and Lavrists, and Narodnik circles acting on independent initiative, were a further obstacle. The Bakunists believed revolution among the peasantry and populist uprisings in Russia would begin in the immediate future, the latter believed that propaganda should precede revolution, and
4640-460: The peasants were the class in Russia most prone to revolution, yet the peasants were not ready for revolutionary action. Government suppression of the Narodniki resulted in mass trials that widely publicized the views of the Narodniki, and outraged the public. Between 1873 and 1877, the Russian police arrested 1,611 propagandists, of whom 15% were women. Radicals in the movement focused on Russia's oppressive taxation and land laws, and their propaganda
4720-497: The people", i.e. to "live among them, merge with them and fight for their interests." Trips into the provinces were planned by students throughout the 1860s, but disagreements on the objective of such a movement led to a factional schism among Russian students in Switzerland . Followers of Pyotr Lavrov advocated for a long period of peaceful propaganda among the peasantry, whereas the followers of Mikhail Bakunin believed in
4800-454: The people", many students left university before they had even graduated or symbolically destroyed their certificates, in a process accelerated by the outbreak of famine in the Volga region . By the spring of 1874, there was a mass exodus of students from Moscow and Saint Petersburg . Approximately 2,000 to 4,000 students, some of whom were offspring of the nobility, traveled to rural parts of
4880-563: The police in September 1877, after which its leading members were arrested. By this time, Russian anarchists in exile in Geneva had begun publication of The Worker monthly newspaper, but it only gained a limited readership during its short-lived existence. From London, Lavrov's bi-weekly newspaper Forward! was much more widely circulated, publishing reports on the socialist movement both in Russia and internationally. The conflict between
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#17327661191404960-553: The process would be more gradual. Bakunists believed that the peasants were ready to revolt with little propagandizing, whereas the Lavrists thought that considerable effort would be needed for the uprisings to begin. A lack of ideological unity resulted in varied approaches to the movement, and because of this the Narodniks no longer presented a united front to rural Russia. Some Narodniks believed in propagandizing by staying in one area for an extended period of time and assimilating into
5040-652: The public for their actions: in support of the protests against the construction of the Church of St. Catherine - "Apologize for the YeKB ", "Our candidate is a Russian riot" in St. Petersburg - for a boycott of the 2018 Russian presidential election , "You won't throw it at everyone" - in defense of Ivan Golunov and others. ANS activists are often detained at rallies and demonstrations (including those agreed), by law enforcement officers. In November 2018, two ANS activists and
5120-510: The ruling classes of Russia. Breaking from the old focus on the peasantry, the Organization focused its own activities on the urban working classes. Women began work in the factories, where they spoke to their fellow workers and distributed pamphlets, but were quickly identified by their employers and forced out. The organization was suppressed by August 1875, with about a third of its membership being arrested. Other former participants in
5200-424: The same rooms. To Orthodox Russian peasants in the 1870s, such disregard of gender norms were both offensive and off-putting. Nearly 60% of Narodnik women were from the wealthy classes, which meant that Russian peasants could not relate to most intellectuals in the movement intellectually, economically or socially. Historian Dmitri Pisarev writes that "sensing their inability to act alone, the intelligent radical made
5280-435: The seizure of power, they would need to be re-educated before the establishment of socialism and the " withering away of the state ". The Lavrovists and anarchists alike abhorred Tkachev's authoritarian and anti-democratic schema for revolution, with Sergey Stepnyak-Kravchinsky denouncing it as "nothing but vileness and political revolution ". Despite the limited circulation of the journal, Tkachev's ideas eventually found
5360-456: The sentences of a dozen participants. The Senate had attempted to use the show trials to engender public opinion against the revolutionaries, but it had the opposite effect, as the defendants used their trials as a platform to espouse their populist ideas. Following their guilty verdict, one group of the convicts signed a statement reaffirming their commitment to the revolutionary populist cause and encouraged their still-free comrades to continue
5440-480: The side of Lavrov. Tkachev and the Blanquists established their own journal Tocsin , in which they attacked Lavrovism for its gradualist stance and called for the seizure of power by a "morally and intellectually advanced" elite, which would consolidate control over the state, rather than abolishing it like the anarchists. Tkachev believed that the masses were incapable of liberating themselves and that, following
5520-485: The singers. Their work directly influenced the composer Igor Stravinsky , particularly in The Firebird , Petrushka and The Rite of Spring . Popular Resistance Association The Popular Resistance Association ( ANS ; Russian : Ассоциация народного сопротивления; АНС ; Assotsiatsiya narodnogo soprotivleniya , ANS ) is a Russian national anarchist political organization. Founded in 2016 by
5600-409: The so-called "Critical Narodniks" and "Doctrinaire Narodniks". Critical Narodniks followed Mikhaylovsky, and assumed a very flexible stance on capitalism, whilst adhering to their basic orientation. The more well-known Doctrinaire Narodniks had a firm belief that capitalism had no future in Russia or in any agrarian country . Narodniki established semi-underground circles (кружки, kruzhki ) such as
5680-564: The struggle against the Tsarist autocracy , resulting in the establishment of the Land and Liberty organisation by populists such as Sergey Stepnyak-Kravchinsky , Sophia Perovskaya and Mark Natanson . Ivan Turgenev 's novel Virgin Soil was inspired directly by the "Going to the People" campaign, drawing from the revolutionary elements he had observed at that time. The campaign also caused
5760-464: The two factions continued in print, with Forward! publishing scathing critiques of anarchism, focused on the anarchists' insistence on the imminence of revolution in Russia, their practice of direct action and their appeals to "elemental passions". Lavrov also analyzed the differences between the rise of socialism in the West, characterized by its resistance to capitalism, and its rise in Russia, where it
5840-466: The works of Alexander Herzen (1812–1870) and Nikolay Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky (1828–1889), whose convictions were refined by Pyotr Lavrov (1823–1900) and Nikolay Mikhaylovsky (1842–1904). In the late 19th century, socialism and capitalism were slowly becoming the primary theories of Russian political thought, and Mikhaylovsky, realizing this shift in thought, began to tweak his original ideas of Narodnism, such that two groups of Narodniks emerged:
5920-410: Was a movement driven by ethics. He therefore insisted on the necessity of a "revolutionary morality" to guide Russian socialists in the overturn of the existing system and continued to call for a process of peaceful indoctrination in order to build revolutionary capacity. Lavrov called for intellectuals to build a workers' and peasants' army , but insisted on it being self-managed , himself opposed to
6000-547: Was arrested and Yakov Stefanovich who evaded the police. While the peasantry was largely unmoved by the movement, it had won new converts from the intelligentsia, who made an aborted attempt at a second round of propaganda the following year. The Circle of Tchaikovsky was succeeded by the Moscow Circle, made up of a young women's group around Vera Figner and a number of Georgian nationalists that had found common cause with Russian revolutionaries. By February 1875,
6080-585: Was largely inspired by the work of Russian theorists such as Mikhail Bakunin and Pyotr Lavrov , who advocated that groups of dedicated revolutionaries could inspire a mass movement to overthrow the ruling class, especially as it concerned the peasantry. The anarchist Peter Kropotkin called the experience "the mad summer of 1874". Populism first took root in Russia following the emancipation reform of 1861 , when an ideology of national reconciliation between antagonistic social classes began to take hold among Russian intellectuals, who turned their attention to
6160-418: Was possible in order to fit in. In actuality, the peasants saw a poorly dressed person as a person with no authority or credibility. Accordingly, intellectuals dressing as they imagined the peasant dressed had an adverse effect; it actually made peasants suspicious of the intellectuals. Furthermore, Narodnik propaganda failed to address the more mundane, ordinary concerns of the peasantry. The everyday troubles of
6240-521: Was specially used in order to falsify a criminal case against the ANS leadership. According to other information, Boyarinov simply used the ANS for personal gain. In the summer of 2019, during the Moscow protests on July 27, the press secretary of the ANS, Nikita Zaitsev, was detained, who later cut his veins in the police department. On May 7, at about seven in the morning, officers of the FSB , Centre E ,
6320-477: Was ultimately a failure, and by the autumn of 1874, more than a thousand arrests had been made. They failed to inspire "unrest even on a local scale" or to establish local footholds for future activities, with perhaps only a few dozen converts won at the cost of hundreds arrested. Of those arrested, many spent three to four years imprisoned, until the Governing Senate eventually brought them to court in
6400-426: Was viewed as a threat by Tsar Alexander II. He ordered the arrest and trial of known Narodniks and Narodnik sympathizers in the peasantry; peasants were forced to expose the Narodniks to the authorities to escape persecution themselves. Beginning in 1877, a long and slow trial of 193 Narodniks was conducted. The propagandists had to either operate covertly or face imprisonment. The more the government tried to repress
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