Narodniks was the name for Russian revolutionaries of the 1860s and 1870s. Their movement was known as "Narodnichestvo" (Narodism). The term term derives from the Russian expression "Khozhdenie v narod", "Going into the people".
The Narodniks formed in response to the growing conflicts between the peasantry and the kulaks. The groups did not establish a concrete organization, but shared the common general aim of overthrowing the monarchy and kulaks, and distributing land among the peasantry. The Narodniks generally believed that Capitalism was not a necessary result of industrial development , and that it was possible to skip Capitalism all together, and enter straight into a kind of Socialism.
The Narodniks believed the peasantry was the revolutionary class that would overthrow the monarchy, regarding the village commune as the embryo of Socialism. The Narodniks, however, did not believe that the peasantry would be able to achieve revolution on their own accord, but instead that history could only be made by heroes, outstanding personalities, who would lead an otherwise passive peasantry to revolution.
In the spring of 1874, the conflict between the kulaks and peasantry brought turbulence to Russia's urban centers, and the Narodnik intelligentsia left the cities for the villages, going "among the people" (hence their name), attempting to teach the peasantry their moral imperative to revolt. They found almost no support.
Given the Narodniks social background, generally middle and upper-middleclass, they were not well akin to Russian peasants and their culture. They spent much time learning peasant custom, dress and dance. In some cases, they even had to learn Russian as wealthy Russians from the West generally spoke French or German.
On arriving into some villages, dressed appropriately and singing and dancing what they had learned, many Russian peasants, completely removed from the enlightenment of Western Russia, mistook them for witches. Many were hounded by vigilante groups, often being maimed by farm utensils or going through the process of frenzied trials whereupon they were burned at the stake.
The Tsarist secret police (Okhranka) responded to the attempt with steeled repression: revolutionaries and peasant sympathizers were beaten, imprisoned and exiled. In 1877, the Narodniks came to their height with thousands of revolutionaries and peasants in support. The movement was again, however, swiftly and brutally crushed.
Responding to repression of open, spontaneous forms of organization thereto taken, Russia's first organized revolutionary party formed: People's Will (Narodnaia Volia), with a new revolutionary program suited to the extremely repressive conditions: terrorism led by a secret society.
Although the People's Will Party did not last for long, later, the Socialist-Revolutionaries, Popular Socialists , and Trudoviks all shared similar tactics, ideas and practices originally set down by the Narodniks.
(Source Marxists.org Glossary of Organisations - Narodniks)
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