THE THEORY AND SPIRIT OF REVOLUTIONARY POPULISM

The history of the Russian revolutionaries of the 1880s is in a sense a history of their struggle with the heritage of the Populists of the 1870s as well as with the régime they despised, for while they remained for the most part deeply affected by the same beliefs as their predecessors and strove hard to preserve those beliefs, nevertheless they were forced increasingly to admit that the bitter campaign of the previous decade had brought the dream of socialist Utopia no nearer to realisation and they had consequently to carry out modifications to revolutionary strategy and tactics in the light of their practical experience in a harsh reality. As for those among them who decided at an early stage to explore new channels, even they had first to reckon with the established Populist canon before they could effectively strike out on their own. It is important at the outset, therefore, briefly to re-examine the basic premisses of the Populism of the 1870s, for they provided a powerful source of inspiration for the activists of the 1880s and gave resilience to the revolutionary movement in that difficult decade, and yet at the same time their survival posed problems with which the activists had to grapple.

Implicit in the Populist credo which had finally evolved around 1870 were perhaps as many as six fundamental and inter-related assumptions. Firstly, the Russian peasant commune was an egalitarian and democratic institution and would serve as a basis for socialism in Russia.