Russia's Populist Past:

...This function has sometimes been blurred by the philosophical, economic and sociological teachings of Populist leaders who, for various reasons, indulged in ideological debates...

...With good reason, Venturi avoids defining Populism (Narodnichestvo) for there were almost as many kinds of Populism as Populist writers and groups...

...Similarly, discussions in the Russian revolutionary movements from the '70s onward to the Bolshevik coup d'état in November 1917 reflected the common issues all revolutionaries faced...

...Any dictatorship must surround itself with oppressive power, blind obedient tools...

...Soviet historiography and historiography influenced by traditional Russian Marxism have been much less interested in the intrinsic merits of Populism than in its attitude toward the peasant commune (obshchina), toward the prospects of capitalist economy in Russia, toward the urban worker, etc...

...Petersburg, not the "Zemlya Volya" in 1881 in Kiev (p...

...Many other scholars, journalists and writers have followed in Thun's footsteps, but it is hardly an overstatement to say that only Franco Venturi, Professor of Modern History at the University of Milan, has succeeded in giving a systematic, well-constructed and full account of the groups, parties and factions whose combined efforts led to the downfall of the Romanov dynasty...

...Thus, Soviet historiography suggests a rupture between the period preceding the '80s and '90s ("utopian socialism") and the era introduced in 1833 by the establishment in Switzerland of the "Group for the Liberation of Labor" (Plekhanov, Akselrod) and by the emergence of the first Social Democratic groups in Russia proper in the '90s...

...The title of the American edition does greater justice to the book's contents than did the original Italian title (Il Populismo Russo), because the author actually covers all socialist and anarchist opinion, conspiracy and revolutionary endeavor on the Russian scene between 1848 and 1881...

...Professor Venturi's account is unique in its lucidity and comprehensiveness, and in its use of an enormous literature on the subject accumulated during the 19th and 20th centuries inside and outside of Russia...

...Reviewed by Boris Sapir Author, "Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy on the Problem of Law," "Liberman and Russian Socialism" Since 1883, when Swiss Professor A. Thun undertook to present the history of revolutionary movements in Russia (his book is still very readable), those movements have acquired world-wide importance...

...The idea behind this approach is that, prior to the 1880s and 1890s, socialism in Russia was not realistic and only after it discarded its "wrong"—i.e., Populist—philosophy did it become "scientific socialism"—i.e., Marxist socialism...

...Populism was much more than a mere preparation for the Marxist Social Democratic party which certainly did not find a tabula rasa in Russia, but resumed—in different circumstances—a tradition firmly established for at least a generation prior to publication of Plekhanov's well-known pamphlet, Socialism and Political Struggle (1883...

...Unfortunately, too, the index of this book was carelessly prepared and such names as Mikhailovsky, Oshanina-Polonskaya, Tellalov, and a publication such as Zerno, are not referred to in the index, though they have not been omitted from the text...

...On several points, primarily of a technical nature, some comment is warranted, but that belongs in a specialized publication...

...The deeper meaning of their doctrine, and particularly of their practical work in towns and villages, was an outright negation of the existing political and social system, a challenge to the absolutist regime of the Tsar, and a call for revolution and social justice...

...However, the major issue in the '70s, '80s and '90s remained the same: liquidation of the outdated and oppressive Tsarist autocracy...

...In short, if one takes this view, socialism in Russia had, under Marxist influence, progressed from "Utopia to Science...

...But this is a fallacy...

...That the Populists relied on the peasantry in the '70s and on the intelligentsia at the beginning of the '80s is no less reasonable than the young Marxists' appeal to the workers in the '90s...

...It was Petrunkevich and not Petrushevsky who met Valerian Osinsky and other "terrorists" in 1878 (pp...

...To evaluate properly Populism's role, one must see its function in Russian society after Tsar Alexander II's great reforms...

...Venturi has produced a dispassionate study, one whose objectivity is comparable to that of the least autobiographical of novelists, Gustav Flaubert, and he has deliberately, I believe, refrained from exploiting the hindsights of a contemporary historian...

...518), and Akselrod should be credited with the successful attempts to revive the "Cherny Peredel" early in 1880 in St...

...The relevance of the political polemics inside the Populist movement may be gauged from the following quote from a pamphlet written in 1874 by Peter Lavrov against Peter Tkachev, who may be regarded as one of Lenin's forerunners: "History has proved and psychology confirms that any unlimited power, any dictatorship, corrupts the best people, and that even men of genius who thought to do much good by decrees did not succeed in this endeavor...

...any dictatorship must suppress not only reactionaries, but also people who simply do not agree with its policy...

...The book is, therefore, "must" reading for any student of modern Russian history...

...The following corrections do, however, seem to be in order: Akselrod organized the "Workers Union of South Russia" in 1879 in Odessa, not in Kiev (p...

...When the disciples of Bakunin and Lavrov "went to the people" in 1874, there was no working class to speak of and the group best suited to staff Narodnaya Volya with "terrorists" were the alienated intelligentsia...

...617-18 and 818...

...Only before a party acquires dictatorship can one dream that it [the party] will be able to renounce its absolute power...