charted, which had a major impact on the development of Russian Marxism. Pipes argued that Marxism, in the hands of radical Populists and notable leaders such as Adrei Zhelyabov (1851-1881), Georgi Plekhanov (1856-1918) and Petr Tkachev (1844-1886), transitioned into a movement primarily of terror with the end goal of the violent seizure of national power post-autocracy. 132 Ultimately, where political liberalisation failed, violence prevailed. A number of these, in effect, terrorists had a profound effect on constructing Lenin’s own views of Marxism and political revolution. Lenin praised Zhelyabov, famed for devising the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, for his 132 “Instead of participating in the fight for political liberalization which gathered momentum after 1861, the Populists concentrated on the more or less immediate abolition of state power. This strategy came to be questioned in the late 1870's as a result of the revolutionary disappointment with the peasantry and the dismal failure of all efforts at a violent overthrow of the government. The People's Will organization represented a significant phase in the development of Populism by its recognition of the importance of politics and the political struggle. In particular A. I. Zheliabov, a revolutionary well-known for his part in the assassination of Alexander II but rather neglected as an original political thinker, first linked the Populist movement with the broad nationwide struggle for political rights. Henceforth all Populism was in some measure imbued with a political spirit. But by and large on the level of action Populist "politics" tended toward terrorism. The real assertion of the political factor, the rechanneling of revolutionary activity from buntarstvo and violent seizure of power to deliberate manipulation of forces on the political battlefield was the outstanding contribution of that offshoot of Populism which, under Plekhanov's leadership, went over to Marxism”; Richard Pipes, “Russian Marxism and Its Populist Background: The Late Nineteenth Century” in The Russian Review, 13.4, (Oct., 1960), pp. 316-337, p. 237.
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