1. As Richard Pipes has shown, it is necessary to clarify one's use of the word “populism,” especially with regard to periodization. Pipes distinguishes the “subjective and narrow original meaning” of the term narodnichestvo, as conceived by the revolutionary intelligentsia of the late 1870s to describe the stage of the revolutionary movement, 1875-78, from the “broad and objective” connotation of the word as “introduced by Russian Marxists of the early 1890s. Richard, Pipes, “ Narodnichestvo : A Semantic Inquiry,” Slavic Review, 23, no. 3 (September 1964) : 441–58 Google Scholar. Franco Venturi, in his classic work on the Russian revolutionary movement (77 Populismo rtisso, 1952, or in its English version, Roots of Revolution, 1960), defines populism as the phase of the revolutionary movement from 1848 to 1881, while according to Avrahm Yarmolinsky populism “dominated the radical scene from the sixties until nearly the end of the century.” Avrahm, Yarmolinsky, Road to Revolution : A Century of Russian Radicalism (New York, 1962), pp. 168–69 Google Scholar. Since this paper is concerned with Soviet historiography, I have followed the practice of Soviet historians in referring to Russian revolutionary populism (russkoe revoliutsionnoe narodnichestvo) of the 1870s.

2. Marxist ambivalence toward Russian revolutionary populism has rather profound roots among the ideological forefathers to whom Soviet historians must refer. Marx and Engels appear to have been generally perplexed, although occasionally encouraged, by the Russian situation. See David, Mitrany, Marx Against the Peasant : A Study in Social Dogmatism (Chapel Hill, 1951), pp. 30–35 Google Scholar. Plekhanov, of course, was an ardent populist before he became a Marxist. As suggested above, Lenin's evaluation of the populists of the 1870s varied as a function of strategy requirements. Thus a certain amount of confusion confronts anyone who wishes to find in Lenin's writings a single, ideologically “correct“ interpretation of the period.

3. The reader is here referred to Jonathan Frankel's excellent article, “Party Genealogy and the Soviet Historians (1920-1938),” Slavic Review, 25, no. 4 (December 1966) : 563-603.

4. Ibid., p. 599.

5. The ideologues of the 1860s—Chernyshevsky, Dobroliubov, and Pisarev—have generally received a good press in the Soviet Union. They have been recognized as “revolutionary democrats” and the chief representatives of the so-called Russian Enlightenment, because they were the first to propose an uncompromising struggle of the Russian masses against the tsar, the church, and the nobility.

6. Volk, S. S., Narodnaia volia ﹛1879-1882) (Moscow, 1966), p. 25 Google Scholar. The People's Will (Narodnaia volia) was the organization under which populism launched its aggressive, terrorist manhunt, which resulted, on March 1, 1881, in the assassination of Tsar Alexander II.

7. The Russian Institute, Columbia University, The Anti-Stalin Campaign and International Communism : A Selection of Documents (New York, 1956)Google Scholar.

8. Shteppa, K. F., Russian Historians and the Soviet State (New Brunswick, 1962), p. 382.Google Scholar

9. Thus I am inclined to agree with S. V. Utechin, who argues that the tremors of 1957, instead of heralding a reversion to Stalinist precepts in Soviet historiography, in fact were concerned only with selected interpretive questions which had surfaced in 1956 and which by 1957 the regime had seen fit to pronounce upon. The introduction of new areas of study, initiated in the mid-1950s, was relatively unaffected. See Utechin's comments in John, Keep and Liliana, Brisby, eds., Contemporary History in the Soviet Mirror (New York and London, 1964), p. 25 Google Scholar.

10. One might consider Venturi's II populismo russo, published in Italy before Stalin's death, as the first evidence of the “rehabilitation” of the populists and of a burgeoning interest in this area of study by Soviet historians. Venturi's postwar research was based on extensive materials from Soviet archives, and he received considerable aid from Soviet historians, who hoped that he would make an appropriate interpretation. Indeed, Il populismo russo has been favorably reviewed and widely read by Soviet students of the revolutionary movement.

11. One of these conferences met in the spring of 1957, under the auspices of the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences, and drew up the following list of subjects for subsequent investigation : Lenin on populism; historiography of populism; periodization of populism; sociological outlook of the revolutionary populists; populists and the workers' movement; the Chaikovsky circle; the movement v narod (to the people); the Trial of the Fifty; the People's Will; populists and the national raions; the Russian revolutionary movement among army and navy men in the 1870s and 1880s; the significance of the populists for the social democrats. Kolesnichenko, D. A. and Kurashova, N., “Obsuzhdenie problem po istorii revoliutsionnogo dvizheniia vtoroi poloviny XIX v.,” Istoriia SSSR, 1957, no. 2, p. 212 Google Scholar.

12. P. S., Tkachenko, “O nekotorykh voprosakh istorii narodnichestva,” Voprosy istorii, 1956, no. 5, p. 37 Google Scholar.

13. Kolesnichenko and Kurashova, “Obsuzhdenie problem,” pp. 207-11.

14. See, in support of Tkachenko : Levin, Sh. M., “Revoliutsionnoe narodnichestvo 70- kh godov v osveshchenii V. I. Lenina,” Istoriia SSSR, 1962, no. 2, pp. 19–41Google Scholar; V. V., Shirokova, “Eshche raz o revoliutsionnykh demokratakh i narodnikakh,” Istoriia SSSR, 1962, no. 3, pp. 72–79Google Scholar; V. F., Zakharina, “Revoliutsionnye narodniki 70-kh godov : Ideologi krest'ianskoi demokratii,” Istoriia SSSR, 1963, no. 5, pp. 101–16Google Scholar; and opposed : G. I., Ionova and A. F., Smirnov, “Revoliutsionnye demokraty i narodniki,” Istoriia SSSR, 1961, no. 5, pp. 112–42Google Scholar; and the description of this position in M. G. Sedov's article, “Sovetskaia literatura o teoretikakh narodnichestva,” in Istoriia i istoriki (Moscow, 1965).

15. Polevoi, Iu. Z., “V. I. Lenin o domarksistom periode revoliutsionnogo dvizheniia v Rossii,” Kommunist, 1958, no. 6, pp. 60–62Google Scholar.

16. Kolesnichenko and Kurashova, “Obsuzhdenie problem,” p. 211.

17. Ionova and Smirnov, “Revoliutsionnye demokraty i narodniki,” p. 139.

18. Ibid., pp. 117-18; and D. A., Kolesnichenko and M. G., Vandalkovskaia, “Diskussiia o vnutrennei periodizatsii raznochinskogo etapa russkogo revoliutsionnogo dvizheniia,” Istoriia SSSR, 1966, no. 4, pp. 108–9Google Scholar.

19. Ionova and Smirnov, “Revoliutsionnye demokraty i narodniki,” p. 128.

20. Kolesnichenko and Kurashova, “Obsuzhdenie problem,” p. 211.

21. Both the detractors and the rehabilitators maintain that they have derived their views from Lenin's works. The detractors, who build their argument upon the distinction between the revolutionaries of the seventies and the “revolutionary democrats” of the sixties, cite Ot kakogo nasledstva my otkasyvaemsia?', in which Lenin identified three separate periods of the revolutionary movement : the 1860s, the 1870s, and the 1880s-90s. The rehabilitators retort by referring to the Leninist distinction between “old” populism (which, with its origins in Herzen and Chernyshevsky, continued on through the 1860s and 1870s) and “new” populism (liberal populism) of the 1880s and 1890s.

22. Zakharina, “Revoliutsionnye narodniki,” p. 112.

23. V. A., Malinin and M. I., Sidorov, Predshestvenniki nauchnogo sotsialisma v Rossii (Moscow, 1963)Google Scholar.

24. P. S., Tkachenko, “O spornykh problemakh istorii narodnichestva,” Istoriia SSSR, 1963, no. 6, pp. 76–84Google Scholar.

25. Zakharina, “Revoliutsionnye narodniki,” pp. 102, 116.

26. Kozmin, B. P., Rttsskaia sektsiia pervogo intematsionala (Moscow, 1957).Google Scholar

27. B. P., Kozmin, “Narodnichestvo na burzhuazno-demokraticheskom etape osvoboditel'nogo dvizheniia v Rossii,” Istoricheskie zapiski, 65 (1959) : 195–98Google Scholar.

28. Here, especially, one can note the similarities between the schematic framework of Franco Venturi and B. P. Kozmin.

29. Kozmin, “Narodnichestvo na burzhuazno-demokraticheskom etape,” pp. 198-214.

30. la. A. Linkov, for example, suggests that the seventies witnessed a complication of the revolutionary movement as it had existed in the sixties, for the populists adapted the earlier theories to a program of action. V. F., Zakharina, “Teoreticheskaia konferentsiia po narodnichestvo,” Istoriia SSSR, 1960, no. 1, p. 262 Google Scholar. According to M. I. Khefets, revolutionary populism of the seventies was the successor, in somewhat different historical conditions, of the earlier movement. Khefets, M. I., Vtorata revoliutsionnaia situatsiia v Rossii (Moscow, 1963), p. 59 Google Scholar. B. S. Itenberg states that the men of the seventies were able to make contacts and to carry on propaganda activity among the people, while their ideological predecessors of the sixties had only been able to dream of these practical programs. Itenberg, B. S., Dvishenie revoliutsionnogo narodnichestva (Moscow, 1965), p. 6 Google Scholar. The new ideas posed in the seventies revolved around the problem of capitalism. The original role of the populists, say the rehabilitators, was to note the development of capitalism and to pose alternative solutions to it. Although they were mistaken in believing that capitalism could be avoided, the populists are not to be blamed, because capitalism was not developed sufficiently to appear irreversible. Kolesnichenko and Vandalkovskaia, “Diskussiia o vnutrennei periodizatsii,” p. 114.

31. Volk, Narodnaia volia (1879-1882), p. 29.

32. Tkachenko, “O nekotorykh voprosakh,” p. 42.

33. Tkachenko, “O spornykh problemakh,” pp. 75-79.

34. Itenberg, B. S., “Nekotorye voprosy izucheniia istorii obshchestvennogo dvizheniia v Rossii vo vtoroi polovine XIX veka,” in Sovetskaia istoricheskaia nauka ot XX k XXII s“ezdu KPSS (Moscow, 1962), p. 262 Google Scholar.

35. Malinin and Sidorov, Predshestvenniki, pp. 251-52.

36. S. S., Volk and S. B., Mikhailova, “Sovetskaia istoriografiia revoliutsionnogo narodnichestva 70-kh - nachala 80-kh godov XIX veka,” in Sovetskaia istoriografiia klassovoi bor'by i revoliutsionnogo dvizheniia v Rossii (Leningrad, 1967), pt. 1, p. 143 Google Scholar.

37. Ibid., and Kolesnichenko and Vandalkovskaia, “Diskussiia o vnutrennei periodizatsii, “ p. 114.

38. See, for example, Ginev, V. N., Narodnicheskoe dvizhenie v Srednem Povolzh'e, 70-e gody XIX veka (Moscow, 1966)Google Scholar; History, Institute of, Istoriia SSSR s drevneishikh vremen do nashikh dnei, vol. 3 (Moscow, 1967)Google Scholar; Sedov, M. G., Geroicheskii period revoliutsionnogo narodnichestva (Moscow, 1966)Google Scholar; A. K., Vorobeva, “K. Marks i F. Engels o revoliutsionnom dvizhenii i revoliutsionerakh Rossii,” Voprosy istorii, 1968, no. 4, pp. 44–59Google Scholar; V. F., Zakharina, “Problemy istorii revoliutsionnogo narodnichestva, 1870-1880 gg.,” Istoriia SSSR, 1967, no. 1, pp. 160–77.Google Scholar

39. Volk and Mikhailova, “Sovetskaia istoriografiia,” p. 146.

40. Kolesnichenko and Vandalkovskaia, “Diskussiia o vnutrennei periodizatsii,” p. 111.

41. See, for example, Levin, s Obshchestvennoe dvizhenie v Rossii v 60-70-e gody XIX veka (Moscow, 1958), p. 297 Google Scholar, and “Revoliutsionnoe narodnichestvo 70-kh godov v osveshchenii V. I. Lenina,” pp. 22-24.

42. Istoriia Kommunisticheskoi partii Sovetskogo Soiuza, 1 (Moscow, 1964) : 52-53.

43. B. S., Itenberg, “Parizhskaia kommuna i russkie revoliutsionery 70-kh godov XIX v.,” Istoriia SSSR, 1961, no. 2, p. 158.Google Scholar

44. Sedov, “Sovetskaia literatura o teoretikakh narodnichestva.“

45. Kolesnichenko and Kurashova, “Obsuzhdenie problem,” p. 211.

46. Keep and Brisby, Contemporary History in the Soviet Mirror, pp. 95-97.

47. Several works of considerable scholarly significance have been produced by the rehabilitators, a testimony to the potential of Marxist historical writing when it is permitted a certain degree of freedom. Of particular interest are Itenberg, Dvizfienie revoliutsionnogo narodnichestva; Levin, Obshchestvennoe dvizhenie v Rossii v 60-70-e gody XIX veka; Sedov, Geroicheskii period revolintsionnogo narodnichestva; V. A., Tvardovskaia, “Organizatsionnye osnovy ‘Narodnoi voli, '” Istoricheskie zapiski, 67 (1960) : 103–44Google Scholar; and Volk, Narodnaia volia (1879-1882).

48. Keep and Brisby, Contemporary History in the Soviet Mirror, pp. 105-6.

49. Tkachenko, “0 nekotorykh voprosakh,” p. 34.

50. R. A., Ulianovsky, “O nekotorykh chertakh sovremennogo etapa natsional'noosvoboditel'nogo dvizheniia,” Narody Asii i Afriki, 1967, no. 5, pp. 21–36.Google Scholar

51. Okinshevich, Leo and Carlton, Robert G., eds., Latin America in Soviet Writings : A Bibliography, vols. 1 and 2 (Baltimore, 1966)Google Scholar. The trend has continued in the last half of the 1960s.

52. Volk, Narodnaia volia (1879-1882), p. 465.

53. Tkachenko, “O spornykh voprosakh,” pp. 76-77.