UC Berkeley

In the nineteenth century, Russian radicals imagined how they could become “new people.” Inspired by Nikolai Chernyshevskii’s 1863 novel What Is To Be Done?, among other theorists, they sought to reorganize their lives around socialist values. These radicals believed that in order to bring about a revolution that would transform society, they must first apply ideals of egalitarianism and justice in their everyday lives. In debating what it meant to be a revolutionary, and in struggling to give up their own private interests to serve a greater cause, these radicals expressed a vision of a new way to live.

This dissertation explores how the Russian revolutionary Populists of the 1870s implemented socialist ideals in their everyday lives. It asks how these radicals developed senses of themselves as revolutionaries connected to a larger community and dedicated to transforming the political and social order. By looking at the intersection of values and daily life, this work hopes to illuminate a hitherto overlooked dimension of the Populists’ story and better understand the Russian revolutionary tradition.

Chapter 1 examines conversion to the revolutionary cause. It investigates why young people chose to leave their families and careers to join a community tied together by ideas and values different from those of the surrounding society. It goes beyond intellectual influences to look at the interplay between radicals’ deeply personal sense of self and the social world of groups and connections that they inhabited. Chapter 2 looks at one aspect of how radicals began to live a new kind of life based on new values in the revolutionary community: romance. Many radicals believed that devoting oneself to the public good required giving up one’s personal life, and this chapter examines the tension between ascetic ideals and the reality of love and marriage between radicals. Chapter 3 is on the “going to the people” movement of the mid-1870s, when Populists left the cities and went into the countryside to spread propaganda among the peasants in order to spark an uprising. These students took on the everyday lives of peasants, dressing in their clothing, eating their food, and working at their trades. This chapter analyzes how their experiences altered radicals’ identities as revolutionaries and the values that defined them as a community. Hundreds of participants in the “going to the people movement” were arrested and imprisoned, some for decades. Chapter 4 looks at how radicals confronted life in prison. It examines how revolutionaries maintained their sense of identity when unable to engage in political work, and how they maintained their connections to the revolutionary community while isolated in solitary confinement. Together, these chapters show how individuals shaped and reshaped their identities, even as they subordinated themselves to a collective cause.