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All posts tagged Vera Zasulich

Russian Thought lecture 6: Populism: the Intelligentsia and the People

Readings: Alexander Herzen, “The Russian People and Socialism” (1851); Petr Lavrov, “Historical Letters” (1868-9); Nikolai Mikhailovskii, “What is Progress?” (1869); Mikhail Bakunin, “Statism and Anarchy, Appendix A” (1873) Unlike the other movements we have studied in this course so far, which have been purely theoretical, the subject of today’s lecture – Populism (narodnichestvo), and related […]

Vera, or The Nihilists

My interest in British views of Russians recently led me to read Oscar Wilde’s first play, Vera, or The Nihilists, apparently inspired by Vera Zasulich’s attempted assassination of the Governor of St Petersburg in 1878. It’s spectacularly bad, and I’m surprised neither that its first productions, in London in 1880 and New York in 1882, […]

Russians in London: Lenin

I’m no fan of Lenin, but he spent a good deal of time in London, so must be included in this series. I haven’t chosen this mugshot as an expression of my disapproval – it’s just that most of the photos that are available were taken after the revolution, and this one is the closest […]