Populism had many varieties, but as a distinctive movement it developed mainly out of the radical Enlighteners or Nihilists of the 1860s \u2013 Chernyshevsky’s work was an important factor in this development. The different factions within Populism were united by a common faith in the Russian people or narod<\/em> (hence narodnichestvo<\/em> \u2013 relating to the population, not popularity) and in particular in the institution of the village commune. This was seen an alternative to the capitalist development that the radicals perceived not only in Europe, but rapidly taking hold in Russia as well. This idea is first apparent in radical thought in Herzen’s \u201cThe Russian People and Socialism\u201d (1851), and in later guises was seen as a possible means of bypassing the capitalist stage of development and moving straight onto socialism.<\/p>\n It should be remembered, however, that the concept of the intrinsic value of the narod<\/em> is far from being an exclusively radical idea (although the idea of the narod<\/em>\u00a0as rebellious is only found in radical thought \u2013 and not even universally there). We see similar ideas about the Russian peasantry, for example, in Dostoevsky’s writing (albeit placed in a Christian context of the narod<\/em> as a God-bearing people who will bring salvation to Russia and the world), and, more generally, in Slavophile thinking, which resembles Populism in some ways, but is very different in others:<\/p>\n both the Slavophiles and the populists or narodniki<\/em> cherished a sincere love for the Russian peasant masses, as well as for such of their time-honored institutions as the obshchina<\/em> or mir<\/em> (the village commune) on the one hand and the Russian artel<\/em> (the artisan co-operative) on the other. In the obshchina<\/em> 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<\/em> but very little with the sentimentalized paternal monarchism of the Slavophiles. (Janko Lavrin, p. 307)<\/p>\n Populism, moreover, rejected the Orthodox dimension that was central to Slavophile thinking; this was a secular doctrine of radicals who rejected traditions of church because (like Herzen) they saw it as an institution of authority that supported the state and therefore denied freedom to individuals.<\/p>\n Their emphasis was on liberty and democracy, but the Populists’ primary goals (in the early stages at least) were generally social rather than political, focused on the welfare of the peasantry. This changed later with the development of the revolutionary movement and terrorist organizations (about which more later), and indeed even as a starting point their political convictions were essentially revolutionary: they followed Herzen, Bakunin and Chernyshevsky in viewing the autocracy as the main source of evil and suffering because it entrenched inequality and the absence of freedom, and they advocated the abolition of the state as the only possible solution to this (and this is where they overlap significantly with anarchist philosophy, which influenced many of the Populists). The idea was that following the destruction of the state, a federation of communes would emerge as ideal autonomous social structures (Ulam, p. 21). The extract from “Statism and Anarchy” (1873) by Mikhail Bakunin<\/strong> (1814-1876) that we will be looking at next week is a good example of the conception of the village mir<\/em> as an autonomous institution based on communal self-government that has the potential to oppose, and ultimately destroy, the state. Unlike Herzen, Bakunin sees the narod<\/em> as a primarily rebellious force \u2013 albeit one hampered by traditional beliefs \u2013 and he proposes that the main task of revolutionaries should be to forge links between communes in order to create a common ideal that will enable the many separate peasant revolts to come together in a more powerful and sustained movement.<\/p>\n Bakunin’s aims were always primarily political (unlike the early Populists), and in fact it’s safe to say the welfare of the peasantry was not particularly high on his list of priorities. Nor was he a consistent theoretical writer; action was always far more important to him. So while his conception of the peasant commune was an important influence on the Populists’ general idea of the narod<\/em>, Populist theory itself developed in a rather different, and often more abstract, way. With that in mind, I want to focus on the theoretical underpinnings of the Populists’ faith in the narod<\/em> and in the peasant commune as a social structure, by looking at the work of Petr Lavrov and Nikolai Mikhailovsky.<\/p>\n Pyotr Lavrov (1823-1900)<\/p><\/div>\n Pyotr Lavrov<\/strong> (1823-1900) has been described as \u201cone of the most attractive figures in the nineteenth-century Russian revolutionary movement\u201d who was \u201cuniversally respected by socialists regardless of theoretical differences or political viewpoints\u201d (Walicki, p. 235) \u2013 which was extremely rare in a movement characterized by factionalism, division and in-fighting. He was from a family of wealthy landowners and was educated at the military academy in Petersburg, thereafter teaching mathematics at various military academies. He was made a colonel in 1858, and became interested in philosophy around this time. Among his early writing, Sketches in the Domain of Practical Philosophy<\/em> (1860) outlined a theory of anthropologism, to which Chernyshevsky’s “Anthropological Principle in Philosophy” was a response. Lavrov started out as a liberal, but became more radical, and was in touch with the leadership of the first Zemlia i volia<\/em> (Land and Freedom) group. In 1866 he was arrested in the aftermath of Karakozov\u2019s assassination attempt on the tsar, and was exiled to Vologda province. His \u201cHistorical Letters\u201d were written and published while he was still in exile in 1868-9, and in 1870 the revolutionary German Lopatin (the first Russian translator of Marx’s Capital<\/em>) helped him to escape abroad. In Europe Lavrov made contact with the International Workingmen\u2019s Association (the First International) and participated in the Paris commune, before being sent to organize help in Belgium and England. It was then that he met Marx and Engels, which was the start of a lasting friendship (see Pomper, pp. 122-3 on this) \u2013 again this was unusual, as ironically Marx generally had very little time for Russian revolutionaries. Whilst in London he published the revolutionary journal Vpered<\/em> (Forward) from 1873-6 \u2013 like Herzen’s Kolokol<\/em> earlier, this became a very important forum for \u00e9migr\u00e9 revolutionary writing (you can read more about his activities in London here<\/a>). Lavrov was more radical than many of his supporters at home in Russia, and did not just advocate peaceful propaganda; he thought the education of the peasantry was important, but saw the future in the Russian commune and agrarian socialism, and may well have influenced Marx on this question. Nevertheless,<\/p>\n he condemned the Nechaev line that all means were permissible in the revolutionary struggle, warned against revolutionary adventurism, and emphasized the need for a lengthy and careful preparatory struggle. He shared the general Populist belief in the priority of social over political goals and agreed with Bakunin that the introduction of socialism could not be reconciled with the retention of the state apparatus. (Walicki, p. 236)<\/p>\n The reference here is to Sergei Nechaev<\/strong> (1847-1882), a notoriously opportunist revolutionary, author of the \u201cRevolutionary Catechism\u201d that espoused the use of any means, including violence, in the political struggle. He was famous for duping Bakunin into believing he had a large, secret revolutionary organization in Russia, and for arranging the murder of a student to bind a group of radicals together in a conspiratorial organization \u2013 Dostoevsky used these events as the inspiration for his novel Demons (Besy<\/em>, 1871-2).<\/p>\n After the assassination of Alexander II in 1881, Lavrov joined Narodnaya volya<\/em> and edited the party journal in Geneva, but when this movement fell apart he went back more to scholarly work, before his death in Paris.<\/p>\n What is notable about Lavrov’s thinking is the way in which he connects everything to ideas of social justice, and tries to create a theory that encompasses both history and the need for contemporary action, and which give impetus to changes in society. Lavrov was not a materialist \u2014 his conception of knowledge was confined to phenomena and the relations between them \u2014 but he saw different types of phenomena: sensory phenomena (possible objects of sense-experience), as well as phenomena of consciousness, which are accessible to introspection and give rise to psychology. He viewed the physical sciences as dealing with the concrete phenomena of what exists, but proposed that human beings also strive to realize things that do not yet exist, and insists that this is also part of life that must be studied and taken into account. However, he rejected religion and metaphysics as unprovable.<\/p>\n Like Chernyshevsky, he had an anthropological conception of world, a focus on the human which led him to advance a \u201csubjective method\u201d based on the understanding of man as the studying subject as well as, frequently, the object of study:<\/p>\n Though there are various distinct sciences, there would be no science at all without the human being as an active subject. Man can, of course, objectify himself as an object of scientific study, in physiology, for example, or anthropology or psychology. But it is man who performs the objectifying of himself and who constructs science. In spite, therefore, of their heterogeneity the sciences have a common integrating factor, namely the human being. Obviously, in astronomy the human being is not the object of study, but there would be no astronomy without the human being. The modern world-view should therefore be “anthropological,” in the sense that the human being should be recognized as the creator of and common integrating factor in all the sciences. (Copleston, p. 127).<\/p>\n So how does Lavrov get from this point to a Populist philosophy? As Pozefsky states, from Lavrov’s earliest writing,<\/p>\n By offering his countrymen a more authentic model of the personality, he hoped to facilitate their efforts at social reform. [\u2026] he preached an anthropological philosophy that placed physical man at the foundation of morality. We see a similar conception in the \u201cHistorical Letters,\u201d where nature is unconscious and tradition is semi-conscious, but it is only in the fully conscious being that ideas of betterment for oneself and society can develop, resulting in a desire for social revolution. Thus the human being is an active subject who conceives goals and pursues them. In doing so he perceives himself as free, even if he acknowledges that according to science he is subject to determining laws (the laws of nature); he still considers himself to be freely acting from the subjective point of view, and this feeling is ineradicable (here we see a very different view from that of Chernyshevsky). Freedom is in fact the crucial concept:<\/p>\n Lavrov [\u2026] was a social reformer. He did not believe in the inevitability of progress. Social advances depended on human choice and human action, and the human being, Lavrov was convinced, could not choose and pursue social goals except with the idea of freedom. Social activism and belief in freedom were inseparable. (Copleston, p. 130)<\/p>\n For Lavrov there were two types of philosophy: the theoretical and the practical. The former was concerned with questions such as \u201cwhat is the case?\u201d and the latter with the question of \u201cwhat ought to be the case?\u201d or \u201cwhat ought to exist?\u201d The idea of freedom for Lavrov lies at the base of \u201cpractical\u201d philosophy (i.e. moral philosophy) as what ought to be, but this seems to create a contradiction between the theoretical and practical points of view: he describes freedom as (from the theoretical point of view) an \u201cillusion,\u201d but also as (from the practical standpoint) inescapable and ineradicable. So it is unclear whether he is saying that the human being is a free agent or just perceives himself as such. Possibly he is asserting that man cannot choose without the idea of being free, but there is clearly an unresolved tension here. Nevertheless, the subjective point of view is manifested in thought directed towards the attainment of social ideals, and this involves treating people as free agents pursuing goals and evaluating those goals. This forms the basis of Lavrov’s conception of progress, but it also relates to how he viewed many subjects of study. History, in particular, is \u201ca science which treats of human beings pursuing ends or goals\u201d (Copleston, p. 129), and the historian reflects on history in relation to his own values and ideals, and the extent to which historical events approximate to or diverge from them.<\/p>\n So it is important to understand that Lavrov was not only developing a theory; the practical side of his thinking was equally, if not more, important, and his thinking was constantly directed towards that practical aspect. Thus his denial (however contradictory) of historical laws as inhibiting freedom can be related to his refusal to accept the Marxists\u2019 view of the iron law of historical determinism which said a country had to go through the capitalist phase of development before it could arrive at socialist revolution; Lavrov, like Chernyshevsky, saw the possibility of Russia bypassing this \u2013 and this is a central tenet of Populist thinking. His aim was socialism, and he believed in the power of people \u2013 an elite group at first who help prepare the minds of the narod for revolution \u2013 to achieve that:<\/p>\n His “critically thinking individuals” represented, for him, the conscience of society, and his emphasis on the orientation of critical inquiry to practice, to action, was an expression of his conviction that human reason and will could influence history and determine its course. (Copleston, p. 138)<\/p>\n There are inconsistencies in Lavrov’s ideas, but he was trying to deal with real problems on both philosophical and practical levels: the conflict between freedom and necessity; the problem of reconciling the individual\u2019s good to common good of society; and the arrangement of society to allow individual to develop.<\/p>\n![\"Pyotr](\"https:\/\/sarahjyoung.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/Lavrov-218x300.jpg\")
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\nHis model of the personality had not two parts (body and spirit) but three: consciousness (the higher forms of culture), tradition (the lower forms of culture), and nature. Of these, he privileged consciousness, which allowed human to shape their own lives and distinguished them from other animals. (Pozefsky, p. 28)<\/p>\n
![\"Nikolai](\"https:\/\/sarahjyoung.com\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/N_K_Mikhailovsky-234x300.jpg\")
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