The 1870s-1880s Populism Movement

In the final paper, I plan to explore what leads Russian intelligentsia participating in the 1870s-1880s populism movement to use violence as the main form of political struggle. After the failure of nihilism to bring about social changes that addressed the frustrated expectations following the emancipation of serfs, populism took over as the dominant orientation of the intelligentsia. As before, the intelligentsia regarded as their responsibility to improve the social, economic and moral conditions of the peasants oppressed by the reactionary, authoritarian state; but this time, they recognized the revolutionary potential in the peasantry and therefore initiated the "going to the people" movement, during which they, the repentant, privileged …show more content…
However, the movement accomplished nothing: the peasants were utterly unmoved and even turned the students into the police because they took the students as their enemy who were acting against the benevolent tsar. This setback did not disintegrate populism but rather led it to make a curious turn: individual violence emerged as the norm. Attempts of assassinations of government officials and the tsar himself became a common occurrence that unsettled both the urban and the rural society, and such terror was met with the tightened control of the government, countless trials and execution. The political organization responsible for the main violent activities was The Will of the People, especially its executive committee. Although none of the members came from the peasant class and university students (or intelligentsia in the traditional sense) made up the most important part of the participants, they acted in the name of the peasant who rejected them before. This paper will try to formulate a theory within which such adoption of violence can be understood. More generally, it is interested in finding out the conditions under which a privileged class will take up terrorism against the