Revolt from the Right: Russia’s Right-Wing Students Between Conservatism and Radicalism

Abstract

The article examines the Academist movement between 1900 and 1914 – the student branches of a number of right-wing groups that emerged in the Russian Empire between 1900 and 1905 and endured throughout the late imperial period. It will argue that these groups arose separately from the Russian autocracy, and formed part of an independent, ‘right-wing’ approach to the problems facing Russian society in the late imperial period. It is particularly concerned with the idea, widely present on the right, that the Russian present was in a period of crisis and a more drastic approach to moral and spiritual renewal was needed. It will consider the nature of the Academists’ conceptions of moral education, spiritual renewal of society, and also their violence, anti-Semitism and emergence of an ethno-populist politics. The contention is that the emergence of an independent right-wing movement contributed to the wider instability in the Russian autocracy in the late imperial period.