The People's Will and the City's Freedom: Modernity, Urbanization and Radical Violence in Reform-Era Russia (Research Brief)

At the height of Imperial Russia’s first wave of populist violence (1878-1881), radical “terrorists” engaged in violent acts were at their least ideologically united. Since radical populism is typically explained as the result of inflamed ideological passion, this essential disjuncture between idea and act prompts the need for further explanation. My research suggests that radical populist violence cannot be understood apart from its environment: the rapidly changing and expanding cities in which the populists associated with one another, disseminated information, recruited new members, and carried out violent attacks. In short, I argue that the new urban environment facilitated, and in many ways brought about, their turn to “propaganda by deed.”

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Christopher Ely, of Florida Atlantic University, was a 2009-10 Short-Term Travel Grants (STG) fellow.