On Russian Populism To the memory of Allan K. Wildman (original) (raw)

1996, UCLA Historical Journal

To the memory of Allan K. Wildman M. AsiM Karaomerlioglu / was increasingly convinced that in Populism lay the roots, the deepest and truest origins, of contemporary Russia. Franco Venturi, Studies in Free Russia, p. 221 Z^'^^^E INFLUENCE of Russian Populism in and outside of Russia has been # g^^^^indeed. This is due to at least three important factors. First, as JL Venturi points out, the study of Popuhsm constitutes the sine qua non of any investigation of Russian history since it contributed to the foundation of Soviet Russia. Secondly, any elaborate understanding of Russian Marxism, which tremendously affected the course of the twentieth-century history, requires a meticulous historical account of Populism, from which Russian Marxism was born. And finally, as Venturi points out in the preface to his magnus opus. Roots of Revolution, Russian Popuhsm must be regarded as part of a wider European sociahst intellectual tradition.^Although Russian Popuhsts usually endeavored to prove how and why Russia was different from the West, usually their arguments were reactions and responses to the poUtical controversies then prevailing in the European socialist milieu, especially within the First International. In this paper, I intend to problematize the widely-accepted definition of Russian Populism. Instead of a "backward-looking," peasant-oriented and classreductionist definition, I propose to understand Russian Popuhsm by looking at the tension between the inteUigentsia and the Russian state. I shall discuss some basic features of Russian Popuhsm in broad terms in order to understand the motivations and ideological positions of the Russian inteUigentsia. In particular, I will concentrate on the work of Peter Lavrov, the highly influential PopuUst revolutionary of the late nineteenth century Russia. I shall also discuss 131 132 UCLA Historical Journal the Russian Populists' attitude towards liberal democracy and the peasant commune which constituted quite important elements of their ideology. My analysis begins with a critique of V. I. Lenin's widely-accepted definition of Populism as elaborated and supported by Andrzej Walicki: It was Lenin who gave it a more concrete historical and sociological connotation by pointing out that Populism was a protest against capitalismyro;n the point of view of the small immediateproducers who, being ruined by capitalist development, saw in it only a retrogression but, at the same time, demanded the abolition of the older, feudal forms of exploitation... It enables us to see Russian Populism as a particular variant of an ideological pattern which emerges in different backward societies in periods of transition and reflects the characteristic c/ass position of the peasantry. It does not mean, of course, that Populism can be regarded as a f/i'rec/ expression of peasant ideology; it is an ideology formulated by a democratic intelligentsia who in backward countries, lacking