Populists and Slavophiles

I T is an historical commonplace to say that the division between the liberal or radical-minded Westerners on the one hand, and the religious anti-Western Slavophiles on the other, was actually symbolic of the split-up Russian consciousness after the reforms of Peter the Great. It is less often realized, however, that an analogous dichotomy was taking place in the Western camp itself when, during the 1860's and particularly in the 1870's, the populist movement or narodnichestvo affected a very large portion of the leftish intelligentsia. Although devoid of any Orthodox-religious flavor, this populist current yet showed its Russian character to a remarkable degree. Its basic trend was hardly less Russian than that of the Slavophiles. In some respects narodnichestvo might even strike one as secularized Slavophilism-with due reservations, of course. To begin with, both the Slavophiles and the populists or narodniki cherished a sincere love for the Russian peasant masses, as well as for such of their time-honored institutions as the obshchina or mir (the village commune) on the one hand and the Russian artel (the artisan co-operative) on the other. In the obshchina in particular, with its collective ownership of land, they both saw an institution of a unique social and moral significance. But while the Slavophiles were looking for their ideal in the pre-Petrine past, the populists kept turning their eyes towards a future which, in their opinion, had much to do with the obshchina but very little with the sentimentalized paternal monarchism of the Slavophiles. Nor were they interested in the Slavophile preoccupations with Orthodoxy and

Political science · Security, Politics, and Digital Transformation · Sociopolitical Dynamics in Russia · Soviet and Russian History

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