NARODNIKI. – A type of pre-Marxist socialism in Russia; it was particularly widespread between 1870 and 1880.
The N. believed that they could discern in the rural communes (obščina) the germ of an agrarian socialism that would have permitted, in Russia, an immediate transition to the socialist system, avoiding a prior capitalist phase. The movement assumed a revolutionary character with the foundation of the organization Zemlja i Volja («Terra e libertà»; 1876), which later divided into a more radical section, Narodnaja Volja («Libertà del popolo»), and a more moderate section, Cernyj peredel («Ridistribuzione della terra nera»). The Narodnaja Volja organized a series of attacks on prominent political figures, until in 1881 Tsar Alexander II became one of its victims. Marxism entered public life in Russia above all through its polemical writings 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; concerning the role of the individual in history and the problem of the path of development peculiar to Russia, the Marxists upheld the thesis that a capitalist evolution was necessary in Russia as well.