ABSTRACT
Russian populism must be considered the first populism ever and the one that gave origin to the term. In order to understand Russian populism, it is necessary to follow the development of utopian socialism in tsarist Russia from its beginnings in the second half of the nineteenth century to its disappearance after the rising of the Bolshevik movement. Aleksandr Herzen's theories were based on an idealization of Russian communities as natural guarantors of equality and social harmony, and expression of a natural communism. Following the failure of the 1848 European revolutions, the emergence of the socialist debate and the dissemination of Marxist ideas, the Russian socialist front experienced a profound internal transformation, while at the same time receiving a strong incentive. In support of the hypothesis of a Russian way to socialism in the absence of industrial evolution, Herzen's theory of the natural communism of Russian rural communities came to help.
