The Narodniks were members of a movement of the Russian Empire intelligentsia in the 1860s and '70s, some of whom became involved in revolutionary agitation against tsarism. Their ideology, known as Narodism, Narodnism, or Narodnichestvo, was a form of agrarian socialism, though it is often misunderstood as populism. The Going to the People campaigns were the central impetus of the Narodnik movement.
Etymology Naród (see нарóдъ and нарóд) is the Russian word for people, nation.
History Narodnichestvo as a philosophy was influenced by the works of Alexander Herzen (1812–1870) and Nikolay Chernyshevsky (1828–1889), whose convictions were refined by Pyotr Lavrov (1823–1900) and Nikolay Mikhaylovsky (1842–1904). In the late 19th century, socialism and capitalism were slowly becoming the primary theories of Russian political thought, and Mikhaylovsky, realizing this shift in thought, began to tweak his original ideas of Narodnism, such that two groups of Narodniks emerged: the so-called "Critical Narodniks" and "Doctrinaire Narodniks". Critical Narodniks followed Mikhaylovsky, and assumed a very flexible stance on capitalism, whilst adhering to their basic orientation. The more well-known Doctrinaire Narodniks had a firm belief that capitalism had no future in Russia or in any agrarian country. Narodniks established semi-underground circles (кружки, kruzhki) such as the Chaikovsky Circle and Land and Liberty, with the goals of self-education and external propaganda work. They shared the common general aims of destroying the Russian monarchy and of distributing land fairly among the peasantry. The Narodniks generally believed that it was possible to forgo the capitalist phase of Russia's development and proceed directly to socialism.
The Narodniks saw the peasantry as the revolutionary class that would overthrow the monarchy, and perceived the village commune as the embryo of socialism. However, they also believed that the peasantry would not achieve revolution on their own, the peasantry would have to be influenced by the radicals, who would lead an otherwise passive peasantry to revolution. Vasily Vorontsov called for the Russian intelligentsia to "bestir itself from the mental lethargy into which, in contrast to the sensitive and lively years of the seventies, it had fallen and formulate a scientific theory of Russian economic development".
One response to this repression was the formation of Russia's first organized revolutionary party, Narodnaya Volya ("People's Will"), in June 1879. It favoured secret society-led terrorism, justified "as a means of exerting pressure on the government for reform, as the spark that would ignite a vast peasant uprising, and as the inevitable response to the regime's use of violence against the revolutionaries". The attempt to get the peasantry to overthrow the Tsar proved unsuccessful, due to the peasantry's idolisation of the latter as someone "on their side". Narodism therefore developed the practice of terrorism: the peasantry, they believed, had to be shown that the Tsar was not supernatural, and could be killed. This theory, called "direct struggle", intended "uninterrupted demonstration of the possibility of struggling against the government, in this manner lifting the revolutionary spirit of the people and its faith in the success of the cause, and organising those capable of fighting". On March 1, 1881, they succeeded in assassinating Alexander II. This act backfired on a political level, because the peasantry were generally horrified by the murder, and the government had many Narodnaya Volya leaders hanged, leaving the group unorganized and ineffective. However, these events did not mark the end of the movement, and the later Socialist-Revolutionaries, Popular Socialists, and Trudoviks all pursued similar ideas and tactics to the Narodniks.
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