The members of the “People’s Will” and the Decembrists: the idea of continuity of revolutionary generations in narodniks’ memoirs of the 1920–1930s

Abstract

The article examines the idea of continuity of different periods of revolutionary movement as discussed in the memoirs of revolutionary populists written after 1917. The author draws upon published and unpublished sources, such as old revolutionaries’ memoirs and letters, as well as the transcripts of the meeting of the Society of Former Political Prisoners and Exiles (1930), titled “The Continuity of Revolutionary Generations with the Decembrists”. In the first part the author analyses the attitude of the memoir writers to the idea of narodniks as precursors to the Bolsheviks or the Socialist Revolutionary Party. The second part deals with the discussion of the Decembrists both in the memoirs and special articles by O.K. Bulanova-Trubnikova and V.N. Figner. The third part considers the opinions about the connection between the Decembrists and narodniks, given by historians and narodniks themselves at the meeting of the Society of Former Political Prisoners and Exiles. The author concludes that the narodniks’ memoirs usually avoided the idea of continuity, although it was popular among contemporary historians. Nevertheless, they felt a moral connection to the Decembrists whom they discussed at length in their works. This should be viewed in the context of the close attention to the ethical dimension of populism which was characteristic to narodniks’ memoirs of the 1920-1930s.