ABSTRACT
Socialism reached Russia in the 1860s. While main sources were West European, chiefly French, German and English, Russian socialism was not simply a carbon-copy of any imported socialism. From 1861 up to the first Russian Revolution in 1905 the dominant revolutionary tradition was Populism, which while it drew some inspiration from Marx, was not a socialist movement in the Marxist sense. The Populists envisaged a rural socialism based on the survival of the peasant commune. The revolutionary movement was to be led by the intelligentsia with the support of the peasantry and the proletariat. Industrialization and urbanization were to be avoided.
