Opposition: Individual, Radical & Liberal

VIDEO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wt4JaK9FZY

●1.5 - Opposition: ideas & ideology, individual, liberal & radical groups and Tsar reaction

Moderate Liberal Opposition

Made up of the intelligentsia

Sought the truth via philosophical ideas:

Nihilism - belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known

Anarchism - belief in self-governed institutions

• Westernisers

• Wanted to catch up with the West

• Abandon Slavic traditions, adopt modern Western values

• Ivan Sergeyevich Turgenev

• Russian novelist and playwright

• Developed Westernising ideas whilst traveling in Europe

• Father and Sons, 1862 - addressed problems of contemporary Russian society

• Slavophiles

• Favoured a superior Russian path to a better future

• Believed Russia had a unique culture, which needed to be preserved

• Count Leo Tolstoy

• Started in the army

• Wrote whilst traveling

• Set up a school for peasant children

• War and Peace, 1965 - concerned with the meaning of life

• Later years, advocated simplicity and anti-violence

Radical Opposition

Nikolai Chernyshevsky

• Author of radical journal The Contemporary

• Author of book What is to be done? - 1862 whilst confined the Peter and Paul Fortress in St Petersburg.

• suggested that peasants had to be made leaders for revolutionary change

Aleksandr Herzen

• Editor of radical journal The Bell

• Produced abroad, smuggled into Russia illegally

• Advocated a new peasant-based social structure

Mikhail Bakunin

• Anarchist and socialist

• Private ownership of land should be replaced by collective ownership

• Introduced Marxism into Russia by translating Marx’s The Communist Manifesto

Sergei Nechaev

• Student radical activist

• Fled from Russia after calling on students to assassinate Tsar

• Catechism of a Revolutionary - published in Switzerland, smuggled into Russia

The Tchaikovsky Circle

• Named after prominent member, Nikolai Tchaikovsky - 1868

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