ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the evolving relationship between Narodism and Russian Marxism, showing why they separated into two distinct trends within a common revolutionary socialist movement during the late 19th century and how they interacted with one another during the revolutionary events of 1905 and 1917 and the early Soviet period. Narodism, or Russian Populism, was a non-Marxist socialist doctrine, the principles of which were first outlined by Alexander Herzen during the early 1850s. The basic ideas of Narodism would acquire a small but significant layer of Russian supporters during and after the crisis which Russian society passed through during the latter part of the 1850s, which resulted in the abolition of serfdom. For the Narodniks, the People was always equated with the peasantry, a feudal estate made up of smallholders, handicraft workers and a part, but by no means all of the country’s factory, mining and metalworking proletariat.
