Eklof, Ben Saburova, Tatiana A Generation of Revolutionaries: Nikolai Charushin and Russian Populism from The Great Reforms to Perestroika (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 577 like Conta and Eminescu are directly intertwined with, if not dependent on, Western philosophical models. As she states in her conclusion, Romanian philosophy’s focus on questions of self-identity in fact represent not a closingoff from Western traditions but ‘a very European contribution’ to a common set of problems and a general phenomenon of self-interrogation. Folschweiller’s work could have engaged slightly more with existing secondary literature: other studies on the contribution of different academic disciplines to the development of theories of Romanian identity, including the history of sociology, historiography and literary theory, are only intermittently referenced. Comparison with contemporaneous developments elsewhere in Eastern Europe would also have been useful to readers. And overall, the strong emphasis on Maiorescu’s admittedly dominant school perhaps occludes other traditions: we hear little, for example, either about theology or folklore, or about the discussion of socialist ideas which was quite active and fruitful already before World War One, even if they were excluded from the mainstream university curricula. Otherwise, Folschweiller’s is a detailed and accurate account of major philosophical trends and debates in Old Kingdom Romania. University of Amsterdam Alex Drace-Francis Eklof, Ben and Saburova, Tatiana. A Generation of Revolutionaries: Nikolai Charushin and Russian Populism from The Great Reforms to Perestroika. Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 2017. xi + 394 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Notes. Biographical sketches. Selected bibliography. Index. $40.00: £33.00 (paperback). Many historians of nineteenth-century Russia will be familiar with the memoirs of Nikolai Charushin, who was a member of the Chaikovskii circle of the early 1870s, which played such an important role in shaping the character of Russian Populism (narodnichestvo). Charushin’s memoirs were written in the 1920s and early 1930s as part of a ‘second wave’ of testimonies designed to secure the place of the narodniki in the struggle against tsarism, at a time when the Bolshevik regime was increasingly trying to create a revolutionary narrative congruent with its own conceptions of the past and ambitions for the future. At the heart of A Generation of Revolutionaries is an attempt to understand whether there was a distinctive revolutionary ‘generation’ of the 1870s, bound together both by personal experience and intellectual affinity, or whether it was instead a more disparate group of men and women whose shared identity was constructed later as part of a struggle to create a collective memory of the past. Ben Eklof and Tatiana Saburova’s book deftly weaves together material SEER, 96, 3, JULY 2018 578 drawn from the archives with a judicious reading of the memoir literature to offer new and valuable insights into the nature of Russian Populism. The structure of the book is broadly chronological. After an initial chapter that traces Charushin’s upbringing in Viatka province, the following chapters examinehisroleintheChaikovskiicircle,histimeinprisonandhisexperiences inexileinSiberia,wherehewascondemnedtohardlabourinKarafollowingthe trial of the 193. There is also an interesting chapter on the role played by female members of the Chaikovskii circle, including Charushin’s own wife, Anna Kuvshinskaia. These chapters mainly rely on a careful reading of the memoir literature and a large range of published primary sources (the archival material for this period is much scantier than for the later period). Eklof and Saburova take the line that there was a common core to the ideology of the Chaikovtsii, rooted less in definite views about the radical character of the peasant mir or the potential for Russia to bypass a capitalist stage of development, and more in a shared commitment to a kind of ethical rationalism (albeit one that was often only semi-articulated). The ‘populism’ of men and women like Charushin and Kuvshinskaia appears from this perspective to be a kind of personal stance — a useful reminder that previous generations of historians have perhaps focused too much on ideas alone when trying to define the character of narodnichestvo. The chapter on Siberia is of particular interest in its focus on the complex and contradictory nature of exile. Charushin wrote surprisingly positively about his time in Siberia, describing how the exiles there created their own distinctive communities, while also praising the way in which some tsarist officials treated both prisoners and exiles. Charushin himself when released from hard labour status...