NARODNIKI. - A kind of pre-Marxist socialism in Russia; it was especially widespread between 1870 and 1880.

The N. believed they could discern in the rural communes (obščina) the germ of an agrarian socialism that would have permitted, in Russia, an immediate passage to the socialist order, avoiding a prior capitalist epoch. The movement took on a revolutionary character with the founding of the organization Zemlja i Volja ("Land and Freedom"; 1876), which later split into a more radical part, Narodnaja Volja ("People's Freedom"), and a more moderate part, Cernyj peredel ("Redistribution of the Black Earth"). The Narodnaja Volja organized a series of attempts on the lives of high political figures, until in 1881 Tsar Alexander II was one of the victims. Marxism entered public life in Russia, above all through its polemical campaign against the N., centering the controversy especially on the "subjective method in history and sociology" (P. L. Lavrov, N. K. Michajlovskij), to which the Marxists opposed (v. MATERIALISMO STORICO) an absolute economic determinism; on the role of personality in history and on the problem of the path of development peculiar to Russia, the Marxists upheld the thesis of the necessity of a capitalist evolution in Russia as well.

Bibliography10 works

BIBL.: G. Plechanov, Socializm i političeshnija bor'ba ("Socialism and the Political Struggle"), 1883; Nati razvoglasija ("Our Divergences"), 1885; Osnovanie narodničestva v trudach g. V. Voroncov ("The Foundation of Populism in the Works of Mr. V. Voroncov"), 1896; V. I. Lenin, Čto takve "druž'ja naroda" i kak oni vojniji proti social-demokratov ("What 'Friends of the People' Means and How They Fight Against the Social Democrats"), in Sociacija ("Works"), 4th ed., vol. I; id., Ekonomičeshne sodržanie narodničestva i kritika ego v knige g. Struve ("The Economic Content of Populism and Its Critique in Mr. Struve's Book"), in ibid. (cf. Opere scelte, Moscow, ed. in foreign languages); N. Berdjaev, Sahlektivizm i individualizm v obščestvennoj filosofii ("Subjectivism and Individualism in Social Philosophy"), St. Petersburg 1901; id., Il senso e le premesse del comunismo russo, Rome 1944; T. G. Masaryk, La Russia e l'Europa, II, Rome 1945; E. Lo Gatto, Storia della Russia, 2 vols., Florence 1946 (with bibl.); G. A. Wetter, Il materialismo dialettico sovietico, Turin 1948.

Gustavo A. Wetter

@incollection{ec8_narodniki, author = {Wetter, Gustavo Andrea}, title = {Narodniki}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {VIII}, pages = {1657}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1952}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/narodniki} }

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