History of Russia XIX–XX centuries. What does "going to the people" mean?

In the spring of 1874, the Bakuninists and Lavrists, united by calls to "go and rebel the people", made a massive attempt to "go to the people." Deprived of organizational unity, spontaneous in nature, it became a manifestation of the sacrificial impulse of youth. Stepnyak-Kravchinsky recalled: “This movement can hardly be called political. It was more like a crusade, characterized by the quite striking and all-consuming character of religious movements. The youth of the university centers left the cities, went to the Don, to the Volga region, where, according to their calculations, the traditions of Razin and Pugachev were alive. Propaganda covered about 40 provinces.
Young people moved from village to village, calling on the peasants to disobey the authorities, preaching the ideas of socialism. Direct calls for rebellion were most often perceived with hostility by the peasants. By autumn, the movement was crushed, the authorities arrested more than a thousand people. "Walking to the people" revealed the impossibility of implementing Bakunin's rebellious ideas in practice, which resulted in attempts to conduct long-term sedentary propaganda, when the revolutionaries, under the guise of teachers, paramedics, clerks, settled in the countryside.
The authorities staged a “trial of the 193s” over the participants in the “going to the people”, which contributed to the popularization of revolutionary socialist ideas. Another trial, the “Trial of the 50,” by which the members of the “Muscovites” circle were judged, gave the same result.
Secret society "Earth and freedom". By 1876, scattered underground groups united in an organization called "Land and Freedom". It was the largest secret society of revolutionary populists. On St. Nicholas Day, December 6, members of the organization, after a prayer service, which was served in the Kazan Cathedral of St. Petersburg for the health of N. G. Chernyshevsky, staged a demonstration on the square, where they raised a red banner with the inscription "Land and Freedom".
The program requirements of the landowners consisted in the transfer of all land to the communities, in the division of the Russian Empire into parts, "according to local desires", in the development of communal self-government. They hoped to achieve this "only through a violent coup," which they were preparing, inciting the people to riots and strikes and carrying out the "disorganization of power." Their ultimate ideal was anarchy and collectivism. They paid special attention to the development of statutory requirements, which included centralism, conspiracy, mutual comradely control, subordination of the minority to the majority. The soul of the organization was A. D. Mikhailov, who stated: “If we do not have a unity of views on our mutual relations, it will be unbearable and harmful. I will be the first to try to destroy such a shaky, pitiful and powerless alliance.
"Land and Freedom" worked in the countryside, creating settlements of its followers, but the peasants were deaf to the propaganda of the revolutionaries. An attempt by Ya. V. Stefanovich and L. G. Deutsch in 1877 to raise a revolt among the peasants of the Chigirinsky district with the help of a forged royal charter failed and discredited the organization. The disruptive acts of "Land and Freedom" were originally in the nature of revenge and self-defense.
In January 1878, V. I. Zasulich, a long-time member of the populist movement, shot at the St. Petersburg mayor F. F. Trepov, who ordered a political prisoner to be subjected to corporal punishment. The jury acquitted Zasulich, which was received with enthusiasm by the advanced public. For the populist revolutionaries, the verdict of the court became an indicator of public sympathy for their activities and pushed them onto the path of terror.
The Crisis of Land and Freedom. They began to make attempts on government officials, in August 1878 S. M. Kravchinsky killed the head of the III department N. V. Mezentsov with a dagger on the streets of St. Petersburg. The landowners began to consider terror as a means of influencing the people. The leaflet of Land and Freedom stated: "It is necessary to put the revolutionary party in the eyes of the peasantry in the place that its mythical tsar occupies with them." On April 2, 1879, A.K. Solovyov, a land-owner, fired at Alexander II. The attempt was unsuccessful, Solovyov was hanged.
A crisis has brewed in the ranks of Land and Freedom. The supporters of terror, the "politicians", were opposed by his opponents, the "villagers". In June 1879, a congress was held in Voronezh, which led to a compromise. He left the program of the organization unchanged, but recognized terror as a method of conducting political struggle. The participants in the congress spoke in favor of regicide. A consistent opponent of terror was GV Plekhanov, who, left alone, left the congress and withdrew from the organization. Soon there was a complete split at the St. Petersburg congress. The "villagers" made up the "Chernyperedel" society, and the "politicians" - "Narodnaya Volya".
The Chernoperedelites did not accept terror, they refused to conduct political struggle; they continued propaganda activities in the countryside, which did not give any visible results and doomed their undertakings to failure. A few years later, the organization collapsed.
Petr Nikitich Tkachev. Narodnaya Volya declared merciless war on the autocracy. The party organ wrote: "There is no other outcome from this fierce battle: either the government will crush the movement, or the revolutionaries will overthrow the government." The Narodnaya Volya followed the theory of Tkachev, who was convicted in the Nechaev case, fled abroad, where he published the Nabat magazine.
P. N. Tkachev was the ideologist of Russian Blanquism and argued that with the help of a conspiracy a group of revolutionaries could seize power and, relying on it, begin socialist transformations. He taught that the autocracy "has nothing to do with the existing social system", it "hangs in the air", which makes it possible for the Russian revolutionaries to strike several decisive blows at the "government abandoned by all." Considering that the Russian peasant was "a communist by instinct, by tradition," he considered the realization of the ideals of socialism an easy task. Tkachev wrote: "The immediate goal of the revolution should be nothing else than to seize government power and turn the given, conservative state into a revolutionary state."

The content of the article

POPULARITY- the ideological doctrine and socio-political movement of the intelligentsia of the Russian Empire in the second half of the 19th - early 20th centuries. Its supporters set out to develop a national model of non-capitalist evolution, to gradually adapt the majority of the population to the conditions of economic modernization. As a system of ideas, it was typical for countries with a predominantly agrarian nature of the economy in the era of their transition to the industrial stage of development (in addition to Russia, this is Poland, as well as Ukraine, the Baltic countries and the Caucasus that were part of the Russian Empire). It is considered a kind of utopian socialism, combined with specific (in some aspects, potentially realistic) projects for reforming the economic, social and political spheres of the country's life.

In Soviet historiography, the history of populism was closely associated with the stages of the liberation movement begun by the Decembrists and completed by the February Revolution of 1917. Accordingly, populism was correlated with its second, revolutionary-democratic stage.

Modern science believes that the appeal of the populists to the masses was not dictated by the political expediency of the immediate liquidation of the autocracy (the goal of the then revolutionary movement), but by the internal cultural and historical need for the rapprochement of cultures - the culture of the educated class and the people. Objectively, the movement and the doctrine of populism contributed to the consolidation of the nation through the removal of class distinctions, formed the prerequisites for creating a single legal space for all strata of society.

Tkachev believed that a social explosion would have a “moral and cleansing effect” on society, that a rebel could throw off “the abomination of the old world of slavery and humiliation,” since only at the moment of revolutionary action does a person feel free. In his opinion, it was not worth doing propaganda and waiting for the people to mature for the revolution, there was no need to "rebel" the village. Tkachev argued that since the autocracy in Russia has no social support in any class of Russian society, and therefore "hangs in the air", it can be quickly eliminated. To do this, the "carriers of the revolutionary idea", the radical part of the intelligentsia, had to create a strictly conspiratorial organization capable of seizing power and turning the country into a large community-commune. In a commune state, the dignity of a person of labor and science will obviously be high, and the new government will create an alternative to the world of robbery and violence. In his opinion, the state created by the revolution should really become a society of equal opportunities, where "everyone will have as much as he can have, without violating anyone's rights, without encroaching on the shares of his neighbors." To achieve such a bright goal, Tkachev believed, it is possible to use any means, including illegal ones (his followers formulated this thesis in the slogan "the end justifies the means").

The fourth wing of Russian populism, the anarchist, was the opposite of the social revolutionary in terms of the tactics of achieving “people's happiness”: if Tkachev and his followers believed in the political unification of like-minded people in the name of creating a new type of state, then the anarchists disputed the need for transformations within the state. The theoretical postulates of critics of Russian hyper-statehood can be found in the works of populist anarchists - P.A. Kropotkin and M.A. Bakunin. Both of them were skeptical about any power, since they considered it to suppress the freedom of the individual and enslave her. As practice has shown, the anarchist current performed a rather destructive function, although in theoretical terms it had a number of positive ideas.

Thus, Kropotkin, with a restrained attitude towards both political struggle and terror, emphasized the decisive role of the masses in the reorganization of society, called on the "collective mind" of the people to create communes, autonomies, federations. Denying the dogmas of Orthodoxy and abstract philosophizing, he considered it more useful to benefit society with the help of the natural sciences and medicine.

Bakunin, believing that any state is the bearer of injustice and unjustified concentration of power, believed (following J.-J. Rousseau) in "human nature", in its freedom from the restrictions imposed by education and society. Bakunin considered the Russian man a rebel "by instinct, by vocation", and the people as a whole, he believed, had already developed the ideal of freedom for many centuries. Therefore, the revolutionaries only had to move on to organizing a nationwide revolt (hence the name in Marxist historiography of the wing of populism headed by him "rebellious"). The purpose of the rebellion according to Bakunin is not only the liquidation of the existing state, but also the prevention of the creation of a new one. Long before the events of 1917, he warned of the danger of creating a proletarian state, since "bourgeois degeneration is characteristic of the proletarians." The human community was conceived by him as a federation of communities of districts and provinces of Russia, and then the whole world, on the way to this, he believed, the creation of the “United States of Europe” (embodied in our days in the European Union) should stand. Like other populists, he believed in the call of the Slavs, especially Russians, to the revival of the world, which had been brought into decline by Western bourgeois civilization.

The first populist circles and organizations.

The theoretical propositions of populism found an outlet in the activities of illegal and semi-legal circles, groups, and organizations that began revolutionary work "among the people" even before the abolition of serfdom in 1861. These first circles differed markedly in the methods of struggle for the idea: moderate (propaganda) and radical (revolutionary). ) directions already existed within the framework of the movement of the "sixties" (populists of the 1860s).

The propagandistic student circle at Kharkov University (1856–1858) replaced the circle of propagandists P.E. Agriropulo and P.G. Zaichnevsky, founded in 1861, in Moscow. Its members considered the revolution the only means of transforming reality. The political structure of Russia was presented by them in the form of a federal union of regions headed by an elected national assembly.

In 1861-1864 the most influential secret society in St. Petersburg was the first "Land and Freedom". Its members (A.A. Sleptsov, N.A. and A.A. Serno-Solov'evichi, N.N. Obruchev, V.S. Kurochkin, N.I. Utin, S.S. Rymarenko), inspired by the ideas of A .I. Herzen and N.G. Chernyshevsky, dreamed of creating "conditions for the revolution." They expected it by 1863 - after the completion of the signing of the statutory letters to the peasants on the land. The society, which had a semi-legal center for the distribution of printed materials (A.A. Serno-Solovyevich's bookstore and the Chess Club), developed its own program. It declared the transfer of land to the peasants for ransom, the replacement of government officials by elected officials, and the reduction in spending on the army and the royal court. These program provisions did not receive wide support among the people, and the organization dissolved itself, remaining not even discovered by the tsarist security agencies.

In 1863-1866, a secret revolutionary society of N.A. Ishutin (“Ishutins”) grew up in Moscow from a circle adjoining “Earth and Freedom”, the purpose of which was to prepare a peasant revolution through a conspiracy of intelligentsia groups. In 1865, P.D. Ermolov, M.N. Zagibalov, N.P. Stranden, D.A. Yurasov, D.V. Karakozov, P.F. Nikolaev, V.N. Motkov established connections with the St. Petersburg underground through I.A. Khudyakov, as well as with Polish revolutionaries, Russian political emigration and provincial circles in Saratov, Nizhny Novgorod, Kaluga province, etc., attracting semi-liberal elements to their activities. Trying to put into practice Chernyshevsky's ideas on the creation of artels and workshops, to make them the first step in the future socialist transformation of society, they created in 1865 in Moscow a free school, a bookbinding (1864) and sewing (1865) workshops, a cotton factory in Mozhaisk district on the basis of an association ( 1865), negotiated the creation of a commune with the workers of the Lyudinovsky ironworks plant in the Kaluga province. G. A. Lopatin’s group and the “Ruble Society” created by him most clearly embodied in their programs the direction of propaganda and educational work. By the beginning of 1866, a rigid structure already existed in the circle - a small but close-knit central leadership (“Hell”), the secret society itself (“Organization”) and the legal “Societies for Mutual Aid” adjoining it. The “Ishutintsy” prepared Chernyshevsky’s escape from hard labor (1865–1866), but their successful activities were interrupted on April 4, 1866 by an unannounced and uncoordinated attempt by one of the members of the circle, D.V. Karakozov, on Emperor Alexander II. More than 2,000 populists came under investigation in the "regicide case"; 36 of them were sentenced to various measures of punishment (D.V. Karakozov - hanged, Ishutin imprisoned in solitary confinement in the Shlisselburg fortress, where he went crazy).

In 1869, the organization "People's Punishment" began its activity in Moscow and St. Petersburg (77 people headed by S.G. Nechaev). Its purpose was also the preparation of a "people's peasant revolution." The people involved in the "People's Reprisal" turned out to be victims of blackmail and intrigues by its organizer, Sergei Nechaev, who personified fanaticism, dictatorship, unscrupulousness and deceit. P.L. Lavrov publicly opposed his methods of struggle, arguing that “without extreme necessity, no one has the right to risk the moral purity of the socialist struggle, that not a single drop of blood, not a single stain of predatory property should fall on the banner of the fighters of socialism.” When student I.I. Ivanov, himself a member of the "People's Punishment", spoke out against its leader, who called for terror and provocations to undermine the regime and bring a brighter future, he was accused by Nechaev of betrayal and killed. The criminal offense was uncovered by the police, the organization was destroyed, Nechaev himself fled abroad, but was arrested there, extradited to the Russian authorities and tried as a criminal.

Although after the "Nechaev Trial" some supporters of "extreme methods" (terrorism) remained among the participants in the movement, the majority of the Narodniks nevertheless dissociated themselves from the adventurers. As a counterbalance to the unscrupulousness of the "nechaevshchina", circles and societies arose in which the issue of revolutionary ethics became one of the main ones. Since the late 1860s, several dozens of such circles have been operating in large cities of Russia. One of them, created by S.L. Perovskaya (1871), joined the “Great Society of Propaganda”, headed by N.V. Tchaikovsky. For the first time such prominent figures as M.A. Natanson, S.M. Kravchinsky, P.A. Kropotkin, F.V. Volkhovsky, S.S. Sinegub, N.A. Charushin and others .

Having read and discussed a lot of Bakunin's works, the Chaikovites considered the peasants to be "spontaneous socialists", who only had to be "awakened" - to awaken "socialist instincts" in them, for which it was proposed to conduct propaganda. The listeners of it were to be metropolitan otkhodnik workers, who from time to time returned from the city to their villages and villages.

The first "going to the people" (1874).

In the spring and summer of 1874, the Chaikovites, followed by members of other circles (especially the Great Propaganda Society), did not limit themselves to agitation among otkhodniks, and went to the villages of Moscow, Tver, Kursk and Voronezh provinces. This movement was called a "flying action", and later - "first going to the people." It became a serious test for populist ideology.

Moving from village to village, hundreds of students, high school students, young intellectuals, dressed in peasant clothes and trying to talk like peasants, handed out literature and convinced people that tsarism "can no longer be tolerated." At the same time, they expressed the hope that the authorities, "without waiting for the uprising, would decide to make the widest concessions to the people," that the revolt would "turn out to be superfluous," and therefore now it was supposedly necessary to gather strength, to unite in order to begin "peaceful work" (S .Kravchinsky). But the propagandists were met by a completely different people, which they represented, having read books and pamphlets. The peasants were wary of strangers, their calls were regarded as strange and dangerous. According to the memoirs of the populists themselves, they treated stories about a “bright future” as fairy tales (“If you don’t like it, don’t listen, but don’t interfere with lying!”). N.A. Morozov, in particular, recalled that he asked the peasants: “After all, the land of God? General? - and heard in response: “God's where no one lives. And where there are people, there it is human.”

Bakunin's idea of ​​the people's readiness for rebellion failed. The theoretical models of populist ideologists collided with the conservative utopia of the people, their faith in the correctness of power and hope for a "good king".

By the autumn of 1874, "going to the people" began to wane, followed by government repression. By the end of 1875, more than 900 members of the movement (out of 1,000 activists), as well as about 8,000 sympathizers and followers, were arrested and convicted, including in the most high-profile case, the Trial of the 193rd.

The second "going to the people."

Having reviewed a number of program provisions, the populists who remained at large decided to abandon the "circle" and move on to the creation of a single, centralized organization. The first attempt at its formation was the unification of Muscovites into a group called the All-Russian Social Revolutionary Organization (late 1874 - early 1875). After the arrests and trials of 1875 - early 1876, she completely entered the new, second "Land and Freedom" created in 1876 (so named in memory of her predecessors). M.A. who worked in it and O.A. Natanson (husband and wife), G.V. Plekhanov, L.A. Tikhomirov, O.V. Aptekman, A.A. Kvyatkovsky, D.A. Lizogub, A.D. Mikhailov, later - S.L. Perovskaya, A.I. Zhelyabov, V.I. Figner and others insisted on observing the principles of secrecy, subordinating the minority to the majority. This organization was a hierarchically built union, headed by a governing body (“Administration”), to which “groups” (“villagers”, “working group”, “disorganizers”, etc.) were subordinate. There were branches of the organization in Kyiv, Odessa, Kharkov and other cities. The program of the organization assumed the implementation of the peasant revolution, the principles of collectivism and anarchism were declared the foundations of the state system (Bakuninism), along with the socialization of the land and the replacement of the state by a federation of communities.

In 1877, the "Land and Freedom" included about 60 people, sympathizers - approx. 150. Her ideas were disseminated through the social-revolutionary review "Land and Freedom" (Petersburg, No. 1-5, October 1878 - April 1879) and the appendix to it "Leaflet" Land and Freedom "(Petersburg, No. 1-6, March- June 1879), they were vividly discussed by the illegal press in Russia and abroad. Some supporters of propaganda work justifiably insisted on the transition from "flying propaganda" to long-term settled rural settlements (this movement received the name "second going to the people" in the literature). This time, propagandists first mastered crafts that were supposed to be useful in the countryside, becoming doctors, paramedics, clerks, teachers, blacksmiths, and woodcutters. Settled settlements of propagandists arose first in the Volga region (the center is the Saratov province), then in the Don region and some other provinces. The same landowners-propagandists also created a "working group" to continue agitation at factories and enterprises in St. Petersburg, Kharkov and Rostov. They also organized the first demonstration in the history of Russia - December 6, 1876 at the Kazan Cathedral in St. Petersburg. A banner with the slogan "Land and Freedom" was unfurled on it, G.V. Plekhanov made a speech.

The split of the landowners into "politicians" and "villagers". Lipetsk and Voronezh congresses. Meanwhile, the radicals, who were members of the same organization, were already urging supporters to move on to a direct political struggle against the autocracy. The populists of the South of the Russian Empire were the first to embark on this path, presenting their activities as an organization of acts of self-defense and revenge for the atrocities of the tsarist administration. “To become a tiger, you don’t have to be one by nature,” said A.A. Kvyatkovsky, member of Narodnaya Volya, from the dock before the announcement of his death sentence. “There are such social conditions when lambs become them.”

The revolutionary impatience of the radicals resulted in a series of terrorist acts. In February 1878, V.I. Zasulich made an attempt on the life of the St. Petersburg mayor F.F. Trepov, who ordered the flogging of a political prisoner student. In the same month, the circle of V.N. Osinsky - D.A. Lizogub, operating in Kyiv and Odessa, organized the murders of police agent A.G. -Governor D.N. Kropotkin.

From March 1878, a fascination with terrorist attacks swept over St. Petersburg. On proclamations calling for the destruction of another tsarist official, a seal began to appear with the image of a revolver, dagger and ax and the signature "Executive Committee of the Social Revolutionary Party."

On August 4, 1878, S.M. Stepnyak-Kravchinsky stabbed the St. Petersburg chief of gendarmes N.A. Mezentsev with a dagger in response to his signing the verdict on the execution of the revolutionary Kovalsky. On March 13, 1879, an attempt was made on his successor, General A.R. Drenteln. The leaflet of "Land and Freedom" (chief editor - N.A. Morozov) finally turned into an organ of terrorists.

Police persecution was the response to the terrorist attacks of the landlords. Government repression, not comparable in scale to the previous one (in 1874), also affected those revolutionaries who were in the countryside at that time. A dozen showcase political trials took place in Russia with sentences of 10–15 years in hard labor for printed and oral propaganda, 16 death sentences were passed (1879) only for “belonging to a criminal community” (this was judged by proclamations found in the house, proven facts transferring money to the revolutionary treasury, etc.). Under these conditions, many members of the organization regarded the preparation of A.K. Solovyov to assassinate the emperor on April 2, 1879 ambiguously: some of them protested against the attack, believing that it would ruin the cause of revolutionary propaganda.

When in May 1879 the terrorists created the "Freedom or Death" group, without coordinating their actions with the supporters of propaganda (O.V. Aptekman, G.V. Plekhanov), it became clear that a general discussion of the conflict situation could not be avoided.

On June 15, 1879, supporters of active actions gathered in Lipetsk to develop additions to the organization's program and a common position. The Lipetsk Congress showed that "politicians" and propagandists have less and less common ideas.

On June 19–21, 1879, at a congress in Voronezh, the Zemlya Volya tried to resolve the contradictions and preserve the unity of the organization, but unsuccessfully: on August 15, 1879, Land and Freedom disintegrated.

Supporters of the old tactics - "village people", who considered it necessary to abandon the methods of terror (Plekhanov, L.G. Deutsch, P.B. Akselrod, Zasulich, etc.) united in a new political entity, calling it "Black Repartition" redistribution of land on the basis of peasant customary law, "black"). They declared themselves the main successors of the cause of the "landlords".

"Politicians", that is, supporters of active actions under the leadership of the conspiratorial party, created an alliance, which was given the name "Narodnaya Volya". A.I. Zhelyabov, S.L. Perovskaya, A.D. Mikhailov, N.A. Morozov, V.N. a detonator of an explosion capable of awakening the peasant masses and destroying their age-old inertia.

Program of the People's Will,

operating under the motto "Now or never!", allowed individual terror as a response, a means of protection and as a form of disorganization of the current government in response to violence on its part. “Terror is a terrible thing,” said S. M. Kravchinsky, member of the Narodnaya Volya. “And there is only one thing worse than terror, and that is to endure violence without complaint.” Thus, in the program of the organization, terror was designated as one of the means designed to prepare a popular uprising. Further strengthening the principles of centralization and secrecy worked out by Land and Liberty, Narodnaya Volya set the immediate goal of changing the political system (including by regicide), and then convening the Constituent Assembly, asserting political freedoms.

In a short period of time, within a year, the people created a branched organization headed by the Executive Committee. It included 36 people, incl. Zhelyabov, Mikhailov, Perovskaya, Figner, M.F. Frolenko. About 80 territorial groups and about 500 of the most active Narodnaya Volya members in the center and in the localities were subordinate to the executive committee, who, in turn, managed to unite several thousand like-minded people.

4 special formations of all-Russian significance - the Workers', Student and Military organizations, as well as the Red Cross organization - acted in concert, relying on their agents in the police department and their own foreign representation in Paris and London. They published several publications (Narodnaya Volya, Listok Narodnaya Volya, Rabochaya Gazeta), many proclamations with a circulation of 3,000–5,000 copies unheard of at that time.

Members of the "Narodnaya Volya" were distinguished by high moral qualities (this can be judged by their court speeches and suicide letters) - devotion to the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe struggle for "people's happiness", selflessness, self-giving. At the same time, the educated Russian society not only did not condemn, but also fully sympathized with the success of this organization.

Meanwhile, in the “Narodnaya Volya” a “Combat Group” was created (headed by Zhelyabov), which aimed to prepare terrorist attacks as a response to the actions of the tsarist government, which banned the peaceful propaganda of socialist ideas. A limited circle of people was allowed to carry out terrorist attacks - about 20 members of the Executive Committee or its Administrative Commission. Over the years of the organization’s work (1879–1884), they killed 6 people in Ukraine and Moscow, including the chief of the secret police G.P. Sudeikin, the military prosecutor V.S. F.A. Shkryaba, traitor A.Ya. Zharkov.

The Narodnaya Volya people staged a real hunt for the king. They consistently studied the routes of his trips, the arrangement of rooms in the Winter Palace. A network of dynamite workshops made bombs and explosives (in this case, the talented inventor N.I. Kibalchich especially distinguished himself, who later, when he was awaiting the death penalty in solitary confinement in the Peter and Paul Fortress, drew a diagram of a jet aircraft). In total, 8 attempts were made on Alexander II by Narodnaya Volya (the first on November 18, 1879).

As a result, the authorities faltered, creating the Supreme Administrative Commission headed by M.T. Loris-Melikov (1880). He was ordered to sort out the situation, including intensifying the fight against the "bombers". Having proposed to Alexander II a draft of reforms that would allow elements of representative government and should satisfy the liberals, Loris-Melikov expected that on March 4, 1881, this project would be approved by the tsar.

However, the Narodnaya Volya were not going to compromise. Even the arrest of Zhelyabov a few days before the next assassination attempt, scheduled for March 1, 1881, did not make them turn off the chosen path. Sophia Perovskaya took over the task of preparing the regicide. At her signal, on the indicated day, I.I. Grinevitsky threw a bomb at the tsar and blew himself up. After the arrest of Perovskaya and other "bombers", the already arrested Zhelyabov himself demanded that he join the ranks of the participants in this assassination attempt in order to share the fate of his comrades.

At that time, ordinary members of the People's Will were engaged not only in terrorist activities, but also in propaganda, agitation, organizing, publishing and other activities. But they also suffered for their participation in it: after the events of March 1, mass arrests began, culminating in a series of trials (“Trial of the 20”, “Trial of the 17”, “Trial of the 14”, etc.). The execution of members of the Executive Committee of the "Narodnaya Volya" was completed by the defeat of its organizations in the field. In total, from 1881 to 1884, approx. 10 thousand people. Zhelyabov, Perovskaya, Kibalchich were the last in the history of Russia to be subjected to public execution, other members of the Executive Committee were sentenced to indefinite hard labor and life exile.

The activities of the "Black Repartition".

After the assassination on March 1, 1881 by the Narodnaya Volya of Alexander II and the accession to the throne of his son Alexander III, the era of "great reforms" in Russia ended. Neither revolutions nor the mass demonstrations expected by the Narodnaya Volya occurred. For many surviving populists, the ideological gap between the peasant world and the intelligentsia became obvious, which could not be quickly bridged.

16 populists-"villagers" (Plekhanov, Zasulich, Deich, Aptekman, Ya.V. workers and peasants newspaper "Grain" (1880-1881), but it was also soon destroyed. Pinning their hopes again on propaganda, they continued to work among the military, students, organized circles in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Tula and Kharkov. After the arrest of part of the Black Peredelists in late 1881 - early 1882, Plekhanov, Zasulich, Deutsch and Stefanovich emigrated to Switzerland, where, having familiarized themselves with Marxist ideas, they created the Emancipation of Labor group in 1883 in Geneva. A decade later, in the same place, abroad, other populist groups launched their work (the Union of Russian Socialist-Revolutionaries in Bern, the Free Russian Press Foundation in London, the Old Narodnaya Volya Group in Paris), whose goal was to publish and distribute in Russian illegal literature. However, the former "Chernoperedel" members, who were part of the Emancipation of Labor group, not only did not want to cooperate, but also waged a fierce polemic with them. Plekhanov's main works, especially his books "Socialism and the Political Struggle", "Our Differences" were aimed at criticizing the fundamental concepts of the Narodniks from the standpoint of Marxism. Thus, classical populism, leading its origins from Herzen and Chernyshevsky, has practically exhausted itself. The decline of revolutionary populism and the rise of liberal populism began.

However, the sacrificial activity of the classical Narodniks and Narodnaya Volya was not in vain. They wrested many concrete concessions from tsarism in various fields of the economy, politics and culture. Among them, for example, in the peasant question - the abolition of the temporarily obligated state of the peasants, the abolition of the poll tax, the reduction (by almost 30%) of redemption payments, the establishment of the Peasants' Bank. In the labor question - the creation of the beginnings of factory legislation (the law of June 1, 1882 on the restriction of child labor and on the introduction of factory inspection). Of political concessions, the liquidation of the III branch and the release of Chernyshevsky from Siberia were of significant importance.

Liberal populism in the 1880s.

The 1880s–1890s in the history of the ideological evolution of the populist doctrine are considered the period of domination by its liberal component. The ideas of "bombism" and the overthrow of the foundations after the defeat of the Narodnaya Volya circles and organizations began to give way to moderate sentiments, to which many educated public figures gravitated. In terms of influence, the liberals of the 1880s were inferior to the revolutionaries, but it was this decade that made a significant contribution to the development of the doctrine. So, N.K. Mikhailovsky continued the development of the subjective method in sociology. Theories of simple and complex cooperation, types and degrees of social development, the struggle for individuality, the theory of the "hero and the crowd" served as important arguments in proving the central position of the "critically thinking person" (intellectual) in the progress of society. Not becoming a supporter of revolutionary violence, this theorist advocated reforms as the main means of realizing the overdue transformations.

Simultaneously with his constructions, P.P. Chervinsky and I.I. Kablits (Yuzova) expressed their opinion on the prospects for the development of Russia, whose works are associated with the beginning of a departure from the doctrine of a socialist orientation. Having critically comprehended the ideals of revolutionism, they brought to the fore not the moral duty of the enlightened minority of the country, but the awareness of the needs and demands of the people. The rejection of socialist ideas was accompanied by a new arrangement of accents, increased attention to "cultural activities". The successor of the ideas of Chervinsky and Kablitz, an employee of the newspaper Nedelya, Ya.V. Abramov, in the 1890s defined the nature of the activities of the intelligentsia as helping the peasantry in overcoming the difficulties of a market economy; at the same time, he pointed to a possible form of such practice - activity in the zemstvos. The strength of Abramov's propaganda work was its clear targeting - appeal to doctors, teachers, agronomists with an appeal to help the position of the Russian peasant with his own work. In essence, Abramov put forward the idea of ​​a depoliticized "going to the people" under the slogan of doing small things that make up the lives of millions. For many zemstvo employees, the "theory of small deeds" has become an ideology of utility.

Other populist theories of the 1880s–1890s, called “economic romanticism”, proposed “saving the community” (N.F. Danielson), put forward programs for state regulation of the economy, in the implementation of which the peasant economy could adapt to commodity-money relations ( V.P. Vorontsov). The adherence of the followers of the landowners to two directions became more and more distinct - those who shared the idea of ​​"adaptation" to the new conditions of existence and those who called for a political reform of the country with a reorientation to the socialist ideal. However, the unifying element for both remained the recognition of the need for the peaceful evolution of Russia, the rejection of violence, the struggle for individual freedom and solidarity, the artel-communal method of organizing the economy. Being on the whole an erroneous petty-bourgeois theory, "economic romanticism" drew the attention of public thought to the peculiarities of Russia's economic development.

From the mid-1880s, the main publication of the liberal populists became the journal Russkoye Bogatstvo, published from 1880 by an artel of writers (N.N. Zlatovratsky, S.N. Krivenko, E.M. Garshin, etc.)

Since 1893, the new editors of the journal (N.K. Mikhailovsky, V.G. Korolenko, N.F. Annensky) made it the center of public discussions on issues close to the theorists of liberal populism.

The resumption of the "circle". Neopopulism.

Since the mid-1880s, there have been trends in Russia towards the decentralization of the revolutionary underground, towards the strengthening of work in the provinces. Such tasks were set, in particular, by the Young Party of the People's Will.

In 1885, a congress of the southern Narodnaya Volya (B.D. Orzhikh, V.G. Bogoraz, and others) gathered in Yekaterinoslav in an attempt to unite the revolutionary forces of the region. At the end of December 1886, the “Terrorist faction of the Narodnaya Volya party” arose in St. Petersburg (A.I. Ulyanov, P.Ya. Shevyryov and others). The program of the latter, along with the approval of the terrorist struggle, contained elements of Marxist assessments of the situation. Among them - recognition of the fact of the existence of capitalism in Russia, orientation towards workers - "the core of the socialist party". Narodnaya Volya organizations and organizations ideologically close to them continued to operate in Kostroma, Vladimir, Yaroslavl in the 1890s. In 1891, the "Group of Narodnaya Volya" worked in St. Petersburg, in Kyiv - "South Russian group of Narodnaya Volya".

In 1893–1894, the “Social Revolutionary Party of People’s Law” (M.A. Natanson, P.N. Nikolaev, N.N. Tyutchev and others) set the task of uniting the country’s anti-government forces, but it failed. As Marxism spread in Russia, populist organizations lost their dominant position and influence.

The revival of the revolutionary direction in populism, which began in the late 1890s (the so-called "neo-populism") turned out to be associated with the activities of the party of socialist revolutionaries (SRs). It was formed through the unification of populist groups in the form of the left wing of democracy. In the second half of the 1890s, small, predominantly intellectual in composition, populist groups and circles that existed in St. Petersburg, Penza, Poltava, Voronezh, Kharkov, Odessa united in the Southern Party of Socialist Revolutionaries (1900), others - in the "Union of Socialist-Revolutionaries" ( 1901). Their organizers were M.R. Gots, O.S. Minor and others - former populists.

Irina Pushkareva, Natalya Pushkareva

Literature:

Bogucharsky V.Ya. Active populism in the seventies. M., 1912
Popov M.R. Landlord's Notes. M., 1933
Figner V.N. Imprinted Labor, vol. 1. M., 1964
Morozov N.A. Lead my life, vol. 2. M., 1965
Pantin B.M., Plimak N.G., Khoros V.G. Revolutionary tradition in Russia. M., 1986
Pirumova N.M. Social doctrine of M.A. Bakunin. M., 1990
Rudnitskaya E.L. Russian Blanquism: Pyotr Tkachev. M., 1992
Zverev V.V. Reformist populism and the problem of Russia's modernization. M., 1997
Budnitsky O.V. Terrorism in the Russian liberation movement. M., 2000
Blokhin V.V. The historical concept of Nikolai Mikhailovsky. M., 2001

Chronology

• 1861 - 1864 Activities of the first organization "Land and Freedom".
• 1874 The first mass “going to the people”.
• 1875 Establishment of the South Russian Union of Workers.
• 1876 ​​- 1879 The activities of the populist organization "Land and Freedom".
• 1878 Creation of the "Northern Union of Russian Workers".
• 1879 Formation of the organizations "Narodnaya Volya" and "Black Repartition"
• 1883 Creation of the Emancipation of Labor group.
• 1885 Morozov strike.
• 1895 Establishment of the "Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class"
• 1898 I Congress of the RSDLP.
• 1903 II Congress of the RSDLP.

Populism. Its main currents

AT 1861. a secret revolutionary society of raznochintsy was created " Earth and will” (existed until 1864), uniting various circles. Land and Freedom considered propaganda to be the main means of influencing the peasants.

The fall of serfdom and the intensification of the class struggle in the post-reform period contributed to the rise of the revolutionary movement, which brought to the fore revolutionary populists. The populists were followers of the ideas of Herzen and Chernyshevsky, ideologists of the peasantry. The Narodniks solved the main socio-political question of the nature of Russia's post-reform development from the standpoint of utopian socialism, seeing in the Russian peasant a socialist by nature, and in the rural community as the "embryo" of socialism. The populists denied the progressivity of the capitalist development of the country, considering it a decline, regression, an accidental, superficial phenomenon imposed from above by the government; they opposed it with "originality", a feature of the Russian economy - people's production. The Narodniks did not understand the role of the proletariat, they considered it a part of the peasantry. Unlike Chernyshevsky, who considered the masses to be the main driving force of progress, the populists of the 70s. played a decisive role heroes”, “critical thinkers”, individuals who direct the masses, the “crowd”, the course of history at their own discretion. They considered the Raznochinskaya intelligentsia to be such “critical thinking” individuals, who would lead Russia and the Russian people to freedom and socialism. The populists had a negative attitude towards the political struggle, they did not connect the struggle for a constitution, democratic freedoms with the interests of the people. They underestimated the power of the autocracy, did not see the connections of the state with the interests of the classes, and concluded that the social revolution in Russia was an extremely easy matter.

The ideological leaders of the revolutionary populism of the 70s. were M.A. Bakunin, P.L. Lavrov, P.N. Tkachev. Their names represented three main directions in the populist movement: rebellious (anarchist), propaganda, conspiratorial. The differences were in the definition of the main driving force of the revolution, its readiness for revolutionary struggle, methods of struggle against the autocracy.

Anarchist (rebellious) direction

The ideological positions of populism were significantly influenced by anarchist views of M.A. Bakunin, who believed that any state hinders the development of the individual, oppresses it. Therefore, Bakunin opposed any power, considering the state as a historically inevitable evil. M.A. Bakunin argued that the peasantry was ready for revolution, so the task of heroes from the intelligentsia, critically thinking individuals, is to go to the people and call them to rebellion, rebellion. All individual outbreaks of peasant uprisings, Bakunin believed, “must be merged into the general all-consuming flame of the peasant revolution, in the fire of which the state must perish” and a federation of free self-governing peasant communities and workers' artels was created.

Propaganda direction

The ideologist of the second direction in populism - propaganda, - was P.L. Lavrov. He outlined his theory in Historical Letters, published in 1868-1869. He considered the intelligentsia capable of critical thinking to be the leading force of historical progress. Lavrov argued that the peasantry was not ready for a revolution, therefore it was necessary to train propagandists from educated “critical-minded individuals”, whose task was to go to the people not with the aim of organizing an immediate revolt, but in order to prepare the peasants for revolution through long-term propaganda of socialism.

conspiratorial direction

P.N. Tkachev - ideologist conspiratorial direction did not believe in the possibility of carrying out the revolution by the forces of the people, he placed his hopes on the revolutionary minority. Tkachev believed that the autocracy has no class support in society, so it is possible for a group of revolutionaries to seize power and move on to socialist transformations.

spring 1874. began " going to the people”, the purpose of which is to cover as many villages as possible and raise the peasants to revolt, as Bakunin suggested. However, going to the people ended in failure. Mass arrests followed, and the movement was crushed.

AT 1876 newly created populist underground organization " Earth and will”, the prominent participants of which were S.M. Kravchinsky, A.D. Mikhailov, G.V. Plekhanov, S.L. Perovskaya, A.I. Zhelyabov, V.I. Zasulich, V.N. Figner and others. Its program was reduced to the demand for the transfer and equal distribution of all land among the peasants. During this period, the populists, according to Lavrov's idea, moved to the organization of a "settlement in the city", as teachers, clerks, paramedics, artisans. The populists thus sought to establish strong ties with the peasants in order to prepare for a popular revolution. However, this attempt of the populists also ended in failure and led to mass repressions. "Land and Freedom" was built on the principles of strict discipline, centralism and conspiracy. Gradually, a faction of supporters of the transition to political struggle was formed in the organization by using the method of individual terror. In August 1879, “Land and Freedom” broke up into two organizations: “ People's Will” (1879 - 1882) and “ Black redistribution” (1879 - 1884). Chernoperedeltsy(among the most active members are G.V. Plekhanov, P.B. Axelrod, L.G. Deich, V.I. Zasulich and others) opposed the tactics of terror, for conducting a wide advocacy work among the masses of peasants. In the future, part of the Black Peredelites, led by G.V. Plekhanov moved away from populism and took the position of Marxism.

Narodnaya Volya(the Executive Committee of the "Narodnaya Volya" included A.D. Mikhailov, N.A. Morozov, A.I. Zhelyabov, S.M. Perovskaya and others) adopted terrorist fight. They believed that the assassination of the tsar and the most influential members of the government should lead to the seizure of power by the revolutionaries and the implementation of democratic reforms. "Narodnaya Volya" prepared 7 assassination attempts on Tsar Alexander II. March 1 1881 Alexander II was killed. However, the expected overthrow of tsarism did not happen. The main organizers and perpetrators of the murder were hanged by a court verdict. The reaction intensified in the country, reforms were curtailed. The revolutionary trend of populism itself entered a period of prolonged crisis.

In the 80s - 90s. 19th century the reformist wing in populism is being strengthened, and liberal populism is gaining significant influence. This direction was focused on the reorganization of society by peaceful, non-violent means.

At the end of the XIX century. the polemic between the populists and the Marxists acquired a very sharp character. The populists considered Marxist teaching unacceptable for Russia. The successor of the populist ideology was the illegal party created from scattered populist groups in 1901 socialist revolutionaries(Socialist-Revolutionaries).

The party had a left-wing radical bourgeois-democratic character. Its main goals: the destruction of the autocracy, the creation of a democratic republic, political freedom, the socialization of land, the destruction of private ownership of land, its transformation into public property, the transfer of land to the peasants according to equalizing norms. The Socialist-Revolutionaries worked among the peasants and workers, widely used tactics individual terror against government officials.

The labor movement in Russia in the late XIX - early XX centuries.

In the second half of the XIX century. enters the political arena of Russia proletariat. The labor movement is exerting an ever greater influence on the social and political life of the country. This was a completely new phenomenon in the socio-political and social life of post-reform Russia. In the 60s. 19th century the struggle of the proletariat was just beginning and its actions differed little from the peasant unrest. But in the 70s. workers' riots began to develop into strikes, the number of which was constantly growing. The largest strikes were at the Neva paper-spinning factory (1870) and the Krenholm manufactory (1872). During these years, the populists had a great influence on the labor movement. They carried out agitation cultural and explanatory work among the workers.

An important role in the development of the popular movement was played by the first two workers' unions, in whose ideological positions populist views were still strong, but the influence of the ideas of the First International was already evident.

The first workers' organization was the 1875“South Russian Union of Workers". It was founded in Odessa by the revolutionary intellectual E.O. Zaslavsky. The union consisted of about 250 people in a number of cities in the South of Russia (Odessa, Kherson, Rostov-on-Don).

AT 1878. in St. Petersburg, on the basis of disparate working circles, a “ Northern Union of Russian Workers". The "Union" consisted of over 250 people. It had its branches beyond the Neva and Narva outposts, on Vasilyevsky Island, the Vyborg and Petersburg sides, and the Obvodny Canal. The backbone of the "Union" were metalworkers. Its leaders were revolutionary workers - locksmith V.P. Obnorsky and carpenter S.N. Khalturin.

Obnorsky, while still abroad, managed to get acquainted with the workers' movement in Western Europe, with the activities of the First International. He prepared the program documents of the Union. Khalturin knew illegal literature well and was associated with populist organizations.

In the 80s - 90s. the strike movement becomes more organized and mass. The main centers of the strike movement are the Petersburg and Central industrial regions. The biggest event of those years was Morozov strike (1885) at the Morozov textile factory near Orekhovo-Zuev, Vladimir province. The strike was distinguished by its unprecedented scope, organization, and the steadfastness of the strikers. Troops were called in to put down the strike, and 33 workers were put on trial. The facts of serious oppression of workers, cruelty and arbitrariness at the factory were revealed at the trial. As a result, the jury was forced to deliver a verdict of not guilty. All in all, during the 1980s. there were about 450 strikes and unrest of workers.

The growth of the strike movement necessitated labor legislation”- the publication of a series of laws regulating the relations between workers and manufacturers. Among them: laws prohibiting children under 12 from working, laws prohibiting night work for women and adolescents, and a law on fines. Workers have the right to complain about the owner. Factory inspection was introduced. Although the labor legislation in Russia was very imperfect, its adoption was evidence of the strength of the growing labor movement.

Since the mid 90s. in Russia there is an increase in the strike movement. The labor movement begins to play an ever greater role in the socio-political struggle, which makes it possible to speak of the beginning proletarian stage in the liberation movement in Russia. In 1895 - 1900. 850 workers' strikes were registered. Part of the strikes was not only economic but also political in nature. Characteristic features of the liberation movement in Russia in the years under review were the spread of Marxism and the formation of revolutionary parties.

The wide spread of Marxism in Russia is associated with the name of G.V. Plekhanov and with the group " Emancipation of labor”.

The group arose in 1883 in Geneva as part of P.B. Axelrod, L.G. Deycha, V.I. Zasulich, V.I. Ignatov. The group was headed by G.V. Plekhanov. All of them were "Chernoperedeltsy". Their transition to Marxism was associated with a serious crisis in populist doctrine. The goal of the Emancipation of Labor group is to spread the ideas of scientific socialism by translating into Russian the works of K. Marx and F. Engels.

G.V. Plekhanov was the first Russian Marxist to criticize the erroneous views of the Narodniks. In his works “Socialism and the Political Struggle” (1883) and “Our Differences” (1885), he revealed the untenability of the populist idea of ​​a direct transition to socialism through the peasant community.

G.V. Plekhanov showed that in Russia capitalism was already being established, while the peasant community was disintegrating, that the transition to socialism would take place not through the peasant community, but through the conquest of political power by the proletariat. He substantiated the leading role of the proletariat, put forward the task of creating an independent party of the working class, which was to lead the revolutionary struggle against the autocracy. During the years of the upsurge of the labor movement, the Social Democrats sought to lead the labor movement, to create a party of the working class.

In solving this problem, V.I. Lenin.

He and his associates created from scattered social-democratic circles of St. Petersburg " Union of Struggle for the Liberation of the Working Class". The "Union" consisted of a central group and working groups. Among the leaders were Yu.Yu. Zederbaum (Martov), ​​V.V. Starkov, G.M. Krzhizhanovsky and others. Ulyanov (Lenin) was the leader.

The main merit of the “Union” was that for the first time in the revolutionary movement in Russia it united the theory of the Marxist movement with the practice of the labor movement. The "Union" conducted propaganda in factories and factories, led the strike movement. The activity of the "Union" and the growth of the mass labor movement faced serious government repression. In December 1895 V.I. Lenin and others were arrested. However, the revolutionary struggle did not stop. "Unions" arose in Moscow, Kyiv, Vladimir, Samara and other cities. Their activities contributed to the emergence of the Russian Social Democratic Party in the multinational Russian Empire.

The Russian Social Democratic Party was founded in Minsk in March 1898. The 1st Congress was attended by 9 delegates from the St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kyiv, Yekaterinoslav "Unions", the "Workers' Newspaper" group and the "Public Workers' Union in Russia and Poland" (Bund) .

The congress elected the Central Committee and proclaimed the creation of the RSDLP. After the congress, the Manifesto of the Russian Social Democratic Party was published. The Manifesto noted that the Russian working class was “completely deprived of what its foreign comrades freely and calmly use: participation in the government of the state, freedom of speech and print, freedom of association and assembly”, it was emphasized that these freedoms are a necessary condition in the struggle of the worker class "for their final emancipation, against private property and capitalism - for socialism." The manifesto was not a party program; it did not formulate specific tasks. The congress did not adopt the party's rules either.

An important role in the preparations for the Second Congress of the RSDLP, at which the party of the working class was to be constituted, was played by newspaper "Iskra". Her first issue came out in 1900.

The editorial staff of Iskra included G.V. Plekhanov, V.I. Zasulich, L.B. Axelrod, V.I. Lenin, Yu.O. Martov and others. The editorial staff of the newspaper carried out organizational work to convene the II Congress of the RSDLP.

In 1903 on the II Congress in London were accepted Program and the Charter, which formalized the formation of the RSDLP. The program provided for two stages of the revolution. Minimum program included bourgeois-democratic demands: the elimination of the autocracy, the introduction of an eight-hour working day, universal, direct, equal and secret suffrage, the abolition of redemption payments. The maximum program is the implementation of the socialist revolution and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Ideological and organizational differences split the party into Bolsheviks (supporters of Lenin) and Mensheviks (supporters of Martov).

The Bolsheviks sought to turn the party into an organization of professional revolutionaries. Mensheviks they did not consider Russia ready for a socialist revolution, opposed the dictatorship of the proletariat and considered it possible to cooperate with all opposition forces.

The contradictions revealed at the Second Congress of the RSDLP subsequently manifested themselves in practice during the years of the Russian revolutions of 1905-1907, 1917 (February, October).

"Going to the people" is a phenomenon that has no analogues in any country in the world. Agrarian Russia was not shaken by bourgeois revolutions. The best representatives of the nobility rose up against autocracy and serfdom. The peasants received their freedom under the reform of 1861, which was of a half-hearted nature, which caused their discontent. The raznochintsy took over the revolutionary baton, believing in the possibility of achieving socialism through a peasant uprising. The article is devoted to the movement of the progressive intelligentsia for enlightenment and revolutionary propaganda among the people.

background

Young people from the middle class were drawn to education, but the autumn of 1861 was marked by an increase in tuition fees. Mutual aid funds that help poor students were also banned. Unrest began, brutally suppressed by the authorities. Activists were not only expelled from universities, but also turned out to be thrown out of life, since they were not taken to public service. called the victims "exiles of science". In the Kolokol magazine published abroad, he invited them to go "to the people."

So spontaneously began "going to the people." This movement grew into a mass movement in the early 70s, gaining a special scope in the summer of 1874. The appeal was supported by the revolutionary theorist P. L. Lavrov. In his "Historical Letters" he expressed the idea of ​​the need to "pay the debt to the people."

ideological inspirers

By that time, a utopian idea had formed in Russia about the possibility of a peasant revolution, the victory of which would lead to socialism. Its adherents were called populists, because they talked about a special path for the development of the country, idealizing the peasant community. The reasons for "going to the people" lie in the unconditional faith of the raznochintsy in the correctness of this theory. In the revolutionary ideology, three currents stood out (the diagram is presented a little higher).

The anarchist believed that a call to rebellion was enough for the peasants to take up the pitchfork. P. L. Lavrov suggested that “critically thinking” representatives of the intelligentsia first help the people (peasants) realize their mission, in order to jointly create history. Only P. N. Tkachev argued that the revolution should be made by professional revolutionaries for the people, but without their participation.

The "going to the people" of the populists began under the ideological leadership of Bakunin and Lavrov, when the first associations had already been created - the Moscow and St. Petersburg circles of N.V. Tchaikovsky and the "Kyiv Commune".

Basic goals

Thousands of propagandists went to remote villages under the guise of merchants and artisans disguised as artisans. They believed that their costumes would inspire the confidence of the peasants. With them they carried books and propaganda appeals. Thirty-seven provinces were covered by the movement, especially actively - Saratov, Kyiv and Upper Volga. The triune goal of "going to the people" included the following points:

• The study of peasant sentiments.
• Propaganda of socialist ideas.
• Organization of the uprising.

The first stage (until the middle of 1874) is called "flying propaganda", because the revolutionaries, counting on their strong legs, moved from one settlement to another without stopping for a long time. In the second half of the 70s, the second stage began - "sedentary propaganda". Populists settled in the villages, acting as doctors, teachers or artisans, specially mastering the necessary skills.

results

Instead of supporting the revolutionaries, they met with distrust. Even in the Lower Volga region, where the traditions of Emelyan Pugachev and Stepan Razin should be alive. The peasants eagerly listened to speeches about the need to divide the landlords' land and abolish taxes, but as soon as it came to calls for rebellion, interest faded. The only real attempt at an uprising was the "Chigirinsky plot" of 1877, brutally suppressed by the autocracy. Often the villagers themselves handed over the propagandists of the gendarmerie. For six years, 2564 people were involved in the inquiry.

The painting by I. Repin in 1880 captures the moment of the propagandist's arrest in a peasant's hut. The main evidence is a suitcase with literature. The picture clearly shows how the "going to the people" ended. This led to massive repression. The most active were convicted in St. Petersburg in 1878. The trial went down in history as the "Trial of one hundred and ninety-three", in which about a hundred people were sentenced to exile and hard labor.

Historical meaning

Why did the revolutionary youth movement end in failure? Among the main reasons are:

• Unpreparedness of the peasantry for a revolutionary upheaval.
• Lack of connections and general leadership.
• The brutality of the police.
• Lack of conspiracy skills among propagandists.

What conclusion did the unsuccessful "going to the people" lead to? This can be understood from subsequent historical events. A massive departure from Bakuninism and a search for new forms of political struggle began. There was a need for a single all-Russian organization on the terms of the strictest secrecy. It will be created in 1876 and in 2 years will go down in history under the name "Land and Freedom".

39. Revolutionary populism: main directions, stages of activity, similarities

signs of revolutionary populism;

In post-reform Russia, populism became the main trend in the liberation movement. His ideology was based on a system of views about a special, "original" path of Russia's development towards socialism, bypassing capitalism.

The foundations of this “Russian socialism” were formulated at the turn of the 1940s and 1950s by A. I. Herzen.

Signs:

1) Recognition of capitalism in Russia as a decline, regression

2) Belief in the "communist instincts" of the Russian peasant, in the fact that the very principle of private ownership of land is alien to him and that the community, because of this, can become the initial unit of communist society.

3) Ways to achieve should be shown by the intelligentsia - a part of the population that is not connected with property, does not have selfish interests in the exploitative system, has mastered the cultural heritage of mankind and therefore is most receptive to the ideas of equality, humanism, social justice.

4) The conviction that the state, and the Russian autocracy in particular, is a superstructure above classes, a bureaucratic apparatus not associated with any classes. Because of this, a social revolution, especially in Russia, is an extremely easy matter.

5) The transition to a new society is possible only through a peasant revolution.

M.A. Bakunin, P.L. Lavrov, P.N. Tkachev and their views on the development of the revolutionary process in Russia; the impact of these views on practice;

At the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, the doctrine of populism was also formed, the main ideologists of which were M. A. Bakunin, P. L. Lavrov and P. N. Tkachev.

Bakunin is one of the most prominent anarchist theorists. He believed that any statehood is evil, exploitation and despotism. He contrasted any form of state with the principle of "federalism", that is, a federation of self-governing rural communities, production associations based on collective ownership of tools and means of production. They are then combined into larger federal units.

Lavrov shared Bakunin's thesis about the "social revolution", which "will come out of the countryside, not the city", considered the peasant community as a "cell of socialism", but rejected the position that the peasantry was ready for revolution. He argued that the intelligentsia was not ready for it either. Therefore, in his opinion, the intelligentsia itself must undergo the necessary training before starting systematic propaganda work among the people. Hence the difference between the "rebellious" and "propaganda" tactics of Bakunin and Lavrov.

Tkachev believed that the coup in Russia should be carried out not through a peasant revolution, but through the seizure of power by a group of revolutionary conspirators, because with the "wild ignorance" of the peasantry, its "slavish and conservative instincts", neither propaganda nor agitation can cause a popular uprising, and the authorities will easily catch the propagandists. In Russia, Tkachev argued, it is easier to seize power by conspiracy, because the autocracy at the moment has no support ("hanging in the air").

Tkachev's ideas were subsequently taken over by Narodnaya Volya.

"going to the people" in 1874: goals, forms, results; political processes of the 70s;

The first major action of revolutionary populism in the 70s was the mass "going to the people" in the summer of 1874. It was a spontaneous movement. Several thousand propagandists took part in the movement. Basically, it was young students, inspired by Bakunin's idea of ​​the possibility of raising the people to a "general rebellion." The impetus for the campaign "to the people" was the severe famine of 1873-1874. in the Middle Volga.

"Going to the people" in 1874 failed. Speaking in the name of peasant interests, the populists did not find a common language with the peasants, who were alien to the socialist and anti-tsarist ideas inspired by the propagandists.

Again, young people, leaving their families, universities, gymnasiums, dressed in peasant clothes, learned blacksmithing, carpentry, carpentry and other crafts and settled in the countryside. They also worked as teachers and doctors. This was the "second going to the people", now in the form of permanent settlements in the countryside. Some of the Narodniks decided to conduct propaganda among the workers, who were seen as the same peasants, who only temporarily came to factories and plants, but were more literate and, therefore, more receptive to revolutionary ideas.

But again, they were declassified.

The success of the "second going to the people" was also not great. Only a few natives of the people found a common language with the revolutionaries, subsequently becoming active participants in populist and workers' organizations.

the creation of "Land and Freedom", the beginning of revolutionary terrorism, the creation of "Narodnaya Volya" and "Black Redistribution";

The revolutionists saw the need for a centralized revolutionary organization. This was created in 1876. In 1878 - the name of the Earth and the will

1) When creating the “Land and Freedom”, its program was also adopted, the main provisions of which were:

transfer of all land to peasants with the right to communal use of it,

the introduction of secular self-government,

· freedom of speech, assembly, religion, creation of industrial agricultural and industrial associations.

The authors of the program chose propaganda among the peasants, workers, artisans, students, military men as the main tactical method of struggle, as well as influence on the liberal opposition circles of Russian society in order to win them over to their side and thus unite all the dissatisfied.

At the end of 1878 it was decided to curtail the decision to go to the people. The organization begins to see the idea of ​​the need for regicide as the ultimate goal of the revolution. However, not all members of the Earth and the will agreed with such a decision. And in the end, in 1879, it broke up into the Black Repartition and Narodnaya Volya.

2) The difficulties of propaganda, its low effectiveness, the harsh actions of the government against the revolutionaries (hard labor, imprisonment) prompted terror. Some terrorist organizations have been created.

3) "Narodnaya Volya" - a revolutionary populist organization that arose in 1879, after the split of the "Land and Freedom" party, and set the main goal of forcing the government to democratic reforms, after which it would be possible to fight for the social transformation of society. Terror became one of the main methods of the political struggle of Narodnaya Volya. In particular, members of the terrorist faction Narodnaya Volya hoped to push political changes by the execution of Emperor Alexander II.

goals and main forms of activity of the "Black Redistribution";

The populist organization "Black Redistribution", headed by G. V. Plekhanov, declared its rejection of the tactics of individual terror and set the goal of "propaganda among the people" in order to prepare an "agrarian revolution." Its members carried out propaganda mainly among workers, students, and the military. The Black Repartition program largely repeated the program provisions of Earth and Zero. In 1880, she was betrayed by a traitor. A number of members of the Black Redistribution were arrested. In January 1880, fearing arrests, Plekhanov emigrated abroad with a small group of Black Peredelites. The leadership of the organization passed to P. B. Axelrod, who tried to intensify its activities. A new printing house was set up in Minsk, which published several issues of the newspapers Cherny Peredel and Zerno, but at the end of 1881 it was hunted down by the police. More arrests followed. After 1882, the "Black Repartition" broke up into small independent circles. Some of them joined the "Narodnaya Volya", the rest ceased to exist.

"Narodnaya Volya": reasons for choosing terror as the main means of struggle; assassination attempts and execution of Alexander II on March 1, 1881;

The program of "Narodnaya Volya" set the goal of "disorganizing the government. They decided to bring it to life with the help of terror.

Assassination attempts:

On April 4, 1866, on the Neva embankment, Karakozov fired at Alexander II, but the peasant O. Komissarov prevented him.

On April 2, 1879, all 5 shots fired by Solovyov at Alexander II on the square of the Guards Headquarters missed the emperor. On May 28, A. Solovyov was executed on the Smolensk field in the presence of a crowd of 4,000.

On February 5, 1880, at 6:30 p.m., a dinner was scheduled with the Prince of Hesse. However, due to the malfunction of his watch, the prince was late and the king and his entourage approached the doors of the dining room only at 18 hours and 35 minutes. At that moment there was an explosion.

The explosion in the Winter Palace did not bring the results desired by the terrorists, Alexander II was not injured,

On February 27, 1881, Andrei Zhelyabov, the main organizer of the impending assassination of Alexander II, was arrested. Sofya Perovskaya led the preparation of the assassination attempt on the tsar. On March 1, 1881, a group of terrorists led by her ambushed the royal carriage on the banks of the Catherine Canal. N. I. Rysakov threw a bomb that turned the carriage around and hit several people from the tsar's convoy, but did not hit the tsar. Then the bomb thrown by I. I. Grinevitsky mortally wounded the emperor and the terrorist himself.

The assassination of Alexander II caused fear and confusion at the top. "Street riots" were expected. The Narodnaya Volya themselves expected that "the peasants would take up the axes." But the peasants perceived the act of regicide by the revolutionaries differently: "The nobles killed the Tsar because he gave the peasants freedom." Narodnaya Volya members appeared in the illegal press with an appeal to Alexander III to carry out the necessary reforms, promising to stop terrorist activities. The appeal of the Narodnaya Volya was ignored. Soon, most of the Executive Committee of the "Narodnaya Volya" was arrested.

theoretical, organizational defeat of revolutionary populism and its consequences.

With the defeat of the "Narodnaya Volya" and the collapse of the "Black Repartition" and the 80s, the period of "effective" populism ended, however, as the ideological direction of Russian social thought, populism did not leave the historical stage. In the 1980s and 1990s, the ideas of liberal (or, as it was called, “legal”) populism became widespread.

The assassination of Alexander II by the Narodnaya Volya did not lead to a change in the political system of the country, it only caused an increase in conservative tendencies in government policy and a wave of repressions against revolutionaries. And although the populist idea continued to live and find new supporters, the minds of the most radical part of the Russian intelligentsia began to increasingly take over Marxism, which made great strides in the West in the 80-90s of the 19th century.