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Narodnik Movement : ------

The Narodniks or ‘Narodniki’ were the participants of a 19th century Socialist movement in Russia. They believed in using the force of peasantry in political propaganda would lead to the awakening of the masses. Under their leadership this ‘Populist’ kind of movement tried to lead to the liberalization from the shackles of Czarist regime. As 19th century Russia was predominantly an agricultural country and the peasants, called ‘Narod’ in Russian language, represented the majority of the people, hence the movement also came to be known as ‘Narodnik’. The movement arose among the Russian intelligentsia in 1860s and gathered momentum in the 1870s. The dissatisfaction regarding the Emancipation manifesto of Alexander II in 1861 enhanced the pace of this movement. Actually the Emancipation Declaration indeed liberated the peasants from the shackles of serfdom. But it could not satisfy the class- interest of the peasantry for its inclination towards favouring the landlords in the redistribution of lands and by imposing an implicated system of collective compensation on the villages. The Narodniks embodied in their teachings a considerable amount of Communist ideology gathered from German philosopher Karl Marx’s works. For instance, they accepted Marx’s ideas of community ownership and production. They also rejected the idea of private enterprise as prescribed by Marx. However, the Narodniks modified two of Marx’s fundamental principles. Firstly, they believed in agrarian communism and disregarded industrial Proletariats, which, at that time, represented only a small minority of the total Russian population. Secondly, they modified Karl Marx’s theory of Historical Materialism. According to Marx, human society must progress inevitably from primitive communism to industrial capitalism and ultimately would reach the Dictatorship of the Proletariats. The Narodniks argued that such theory could not be applicable in Russian context, where peasant life was based on the traditional institution of communal land tenure—the ‘Mir’. So, for Russian situation, they advocated to skip the intermediate stage of capitalism and to shift straight from primitive communism to modern socialism. In that case, the Narodniks asserted, the ‘Mir’ or the ‘Artel’ (a primitive village productive cooperative)

2 would naturally evolve a system of production and distribution beneficial to the village community. The activities of the Narodniks developed in the late 1860s and in early 1870s in a diffuse movement known as ‘Khozhdenie-v-Narod’, which means ‘going to the people’. In this movement hundreds of young intellectuals, dressed in peasants’ cloths, canvassed in rural areas and incited the peasantry to rise against the existing socio-economic order. This led to police persecution. Lots of agitators were arrested and put on political trial. It pulled down the enthusiasm of the Narodnik movement to a great extent. Furthermore, the illiterate peasantry did not always respond to the propaganda of the Narodniks in the expected way and sometimes even acted as secret informers of the police and thus betrayed the dedicated intellectuals who were fighting for their (the peasants) causes. The combination of peasant indifference and government repression in mid-1870s drove the Narodniks to adopt more radical programme and firm method of organization. The first revolutionary Narodnik group to emerge from this situation was ‘Zemlya-i-Volya’ (which means ‘Land and Freedom’). Zemlya-i-Volya initially continued to work among the peasantry. However, too much police intervention soon compelled them in resorting to the avenue of secret terrorism. In 1879 A.D., Zemlya-i-Volya split into two groups—‘Narodnaya Volya’ (means ‘People’s Will’) and ‘Chorny Peredel’ (means ‘Black Repartition’). Narodnaya Volya was exclusively a terrorist society, which got disintegrated after they assassinated Czar Alexander II in 1881. ‘Chorny Peredel’ was a party that continued to emphasize on working among the peasantry until its members sifted their attention to the urban proletariat in late 1880s. However, in the end, it can be said that the populist ideology of the Narodnik movement had been revived by its 20th century ideological descendant—the Socialist Revolutionary Party that took the most vital role in bringing revolutionary socio-economic transition in Russian history.