ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the conceptual and historical background of the polarizations in imperial Russia throughout the nineteenth century with a strong focus on how narod, “the people”, was understood by the Russian intelligentsia. The political and economic consequences of the uneven encounter of imperial Russia with bourgeois Europe, the accelerating disintegration of the traditional societal structures and norms parallel with the rise of capitalism in Russia, and the emergence of new status groups and social classes partly in response to and partly thanks to Russian modernization already laid out a fertile ground for a radical public with flourishing revolutionary organizations, clubs, societies, ideologies, and journals. The word narod never had a clear-cut meaning; rather, it acquired different and overlapping meanings in the nineteenth century as a consequence of diverse attempts at defining Russian national identity.
