Public moods of peasants and agrarian utopia in the works of Russian Neo-Narodniks

Abstract

The ideas of the Neo-Narodism’s intelligentsia about the socio-political moods and psychology of the Russian peasantry and building on the basis of these ideas and the basic provisions of the classical populism of agrarian utopia are studied. The relevance of the study lies in the creation of a theoretical base for studying in the field of generational (generation of “revolutionary turning point”) and intellectual (phenomenon of agrarianism in Russian thought) history. The purpose of this research is to study the problem of the historical role of the peasantry and the fate of the Russian village in the ideology of Neo-Narodism. During the study, analytical and historical-comparative methods were used. As a result of the analysis of historical sources, it is concluded that the Neo-Narodism’s ideas about the Russian peasantry, despite the sharply changing socio-cultural and revolutionary political circumstances, remained mainly in line with the ideas of classical populism. Adepts of folk studies turned to the problem of the growth of protest moods in the peasant sphere and found out that it was caused by the problem of land shortage that worsened during the revolutionary turning point. Neo-Narodnik V.G. Bogoraz notes the conservatism of a significant part of rural residents who were distrustful of revolutionary ideas. A.V. Chayanov’s utopian project went beyond the boundaries of purely populist thought, entered into an alliance with scientific agrarianism and took into account the political circumstances that developed after the establishment of Bolshevik power and the domination of Marxist ideology.