Nikolay Alexeyevich Nekrasov was a Russian poet, writer, critic and publisher, whose deeply compassionate poems about peasant Russia made him the hero of liberal and radical circles of Russian intelligentsia, as represented by Vissarion Belinsky, Nikolay Chernyshevsky and Fyodor Dostoyevsky. He is credited with introducing into Russian poetry ternary meters and the technique of dramatic monologue. As the editor of several literary journals, notably Sovremennik, Nekrasov was also singularly successful and influential.
Narodnaya Volya was a 19th-century revolutionary political organization in the Russian Empire which conducted targeted killing of government officials in attempt to promote reforms in the country. The organization declared itself to be a populist movement that succeeded Narodniks. Composed primarily of young revolutionary socialist intellectuals believing in the efficacy of terrorism, Narodnaya Volya emerged in Autumn 1879 from the split of an earlier revolutionary organization called Zemlya i Volya.
Osip Vasiliyevich Aptekman was a Russian revolutionary, member of the Land and Liberty, and one of the founders of the Black Repartition.
In the Russian Empire, snokhachestvo referred to sexual relations between a pater familias (bolshak) of a Russian peasant household (dvor) and his daughter-in-law (snokha) during the minority or absence of his son.
Nikolai Vasilyevich Uspensky was a Russian writer, and a cousin of fellow writer Gleb Uspensky. Uspensky wrote extensively about the realities of peasant life in rural Russia around the time of the Emancipation Act of 1861 by Tsar Alexander II, achieving critical and commercial success. After experiencing increasing alienation and career decline, Uspensky died on November 2, 1889, when he committed suicide.
Nikolay Sergeyevich Rusanov, also known under the pseudonyms of K. Tarasov and N. Kudrin, was a Russian revolutionary who connected the revolutionary populist movement of the 1870s with the revolutionary parties of the early twentieth century, particularly the Russian Socialist-Revolutionary Party (PSR).
Vasilii Pavlovich Vorontsov was an influential Russian narodnik economist and sociologist, one of the principal protagonists in the controversy between narodnik and Marxist economists in the 1880s and 1890s.
The Village is a short novel by the Nobel Prize-winning Russian author Ivan Bunin, written in 1909 and first published in 1910 by the Saint Petersburg magazine Sovremenny Mir under the title Novelet (Повесть). The Village caused much controversy at the time, though it was highly praised by Maxim Gorky, among others, and is now generally regarded as Bunin's first masterpiece. Composed of brief episodes set in its author's birthplace at the time of the 1905 Revolution, it tells the story of two peasant brothers, one a brute drunk, the other a gentler, more sympathetic character. Bunin's realistic portrayal of the country life jarred with the idealized picture of "unspoiled" peasants which was common for the mainstream Russian literature, and featured the characters deemed 'offensive' by many, which were "so far below the average in terms of intelligence as to be scarcely human."
Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov was a Russian revolutionary and a Marxist theoretician. He was a founder of the social-democratic movement in Russia and was one of the first Russians to identify himself as "Marxist." Facing political persecution, Plekhanov emigrated to Switzerland in 1880, where he continued in his political activity attempting to overthrow the Tsarist regime in Russia.
The Socialist Revolutionary Party, or Party of Socialists-Revolutionaries was a major political party in early 20th century Imperial Russia.
The Narodniks were a politically conscious movement of the Russian middle class in the 1860s and 1870s, some of whom became involved in revolutionary agitation against tsarism. Their ideology was known as Narodnichestvo (народничество), from the Russian народ, narod, "people, folk", so it is sometimes translated as "peopleism" or, more commonly, "populism". A common slogan among the Narodniks was "хождение в народ", meaning "going to the people". Though their movement achieved little in its own time, the Narodniks were in many ways the intellectual and political forebears of the socialist revolutionaries who went on to greatly influence Russian history in the 20th century.
State serfs or state peasants were a special social estate (class) of peasantry in 18th–19th century Russia, the number of which in some periods reached half of the agricultural population. In contrast to private Russian serfs, state serfs were considered personally free, although attached to the land.
Gevorg Harutyuni Gharadjian, also known as S. T. Arkomed, was an Armenian political activist and revolutionary, one of the founders of Social Democrat Hunchakian Party.
The Village was a debut novel by Dmitry Grigorovich, first published by Otechestvennye Zapiski in 1846. It had strong impact upon the Russian literary society and was praised for being "the first work in the Russian literature to face the real peasants life" by Ivan Turgenev.
Agrarian socialism is a political ideology which combines an agrarian way of life with a socialist economic system.
Pyotr Petrovich Pertsov was a Russian poet, publisher, editor, literary critic, journalist and memoirist associated with the Russian Symbolist movement.
Varfolomey Alexandrovich Zaytsev was a Russian journalist, essayist, publicist, translator and literary critic, one of the leaders of the nihilist flank of the Russian literary left of the time.
"Peasants" is an 1897 novella by Anton Chekhov. Upon its publication it became a literary sensation of the year, caused controversy but in retrospect is regarded as one of Chekhov's masterpieces.
The All-Russian Peasant Union was a mass revolutionary organization uniting the peasantry and the rural intelligentsia, which arose at the height of the 1905 revolution.
