Narodniks in the context of "Socialist Revolutionary Party"

Anarchism in Russia developed out of the populist and nihilist movements' dissatisfaction with the government reforms of the time.

The first Russian to identify himself as an anarchist was the revolutionary socialist Mikhail Bakunin, who became a founding figure of the modern anarchist movement within the International Workingmen's Association (IWA). In the context of the split within the IWA between the Marxists and the anarchists, the Russian Land and Liberty organization also split between a Marxist faction that supported political struggle and an anarchist faction that supported "propaganda of the deed", the latter of which went on to orchestrate the assassination of Alexander II.

Bolshevism (derived from Bolshevik) is a revolutionary socialist current of Soviet Leninist and later Marxist–Leninist political thought and political regime associated with the formation of a rigidly centralized, cohesive and disciplined party of social revolution, focused on overthrowing the existing capitalist state system, seizing power and establishing the "dictatorship of the proletariat".

Bolshevism originated at the beginning of the 20th century in Russia and was associated with the activities of the Bolshevik faction within the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party led by Vladimir Lenin, Bolshevism's main theorist. Other theoreticians included Joseph Stalin, Leon Trotsky, Nikolai Bukharin and Yevgeni Preobrazhensky. While Bolshevism was based on Marxist philosophy, it also absorbed elements of the ideology and practice of the socialist revolutionaries of the second half of the 19th century (Sergey Nechaev, Pyotr Tkachev, Nikolay Chernyshevsky) and was influenced by Russian agrarian socialist movements like the Narodniks.

Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov (Russian: Георгий Валентинович Плеханов [ɡʲɪˈorɡʲɪj vəlʲɪnʲˈtʲinəvʲɪtɕ plʲɪˈxanəf] ; 11 December [O.S. 29 November] 1856 – 30 May 1918) was a Russian Marxist theorist, philosopher, and revolutionary. After beginning his revolutionary career as a populist, in 1883 Plekhanov established the Emancipation of Labour group, the first Russian Marxist political organisation. He is widely regarded as the "father of Russian Marxism", and his theoretical works were instrumental in converting a generation of revolutionaries, including Vladimir Lenin, to the cause.

Plekhanov was a prominent leader in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) and the Second International. In 1900, he collaborated with Lenin in founding the party newspaper Iskra, and at the party's Second Congress in 1903, initially sided with Lenin's Bolshevik faction. However, he soon broke with the Bolsheviks over their organisational principles, which he criticised as overly centralist, and became a leading figure in the opposing Menshevik faction. During the 1905 Russian Revolution, Plekhanov maintained that Russia was only ready for a bourgeois-democratic revolution and argued against what he saw as premature attempts to seize power by the proletariat.

Anarchism in Ukraine has its roots in the democratic and egalitarian organization of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, who inhabited the region up until the 18th century. Philosophical anarchism first emerged from the radical movement during the Ukrainian national revival, finding a literary expression in the works of Mykhailo Drahomanov, who was himself inspired by the libertarian socialism of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. The spread of populist ideas by the Narodniks also lay the groundwork for the adoption of anarchism by Ukraine's working classes, gaining notable circulation in the Jewish communities of the Pale of Settlement.

By the outbreak of the 1905 Revolution, a specifically anarchist movement had risen to prominence in Ukraine. The ideas of anarcho-communism, anarcho-syndicalism and individualist anarchism all took root in Ukrainian revolutionary circles, with syndicalism itself developing a notably strong hold in Odesa, while acts of anarchist terrorism by cells such as the Black Banner became more commonplace. After the revolution was suppressed, Ukrainian anarchism began to reorganize itself, culminating in the outburst following the February Revolution, when Nestor Makhno returned to the country and began to organize among the peasantry.

Land and Liberty (Russian: Земля и воля, romanized: Zemlya i volya or Zemlia i volia; also sometimes translated Land and Freedom) was a Russian clandestine revolutionary organization in the period 1861–1864, and was re-established as a political party in the period 1876–1879. It was a central organ of the Narodnik movement.

Narodnaya Volya (Russian: Наро́дная во́ля, romanized: nɐˈrodnəjə ˈvolʲə, lit. 'People's Will') was a late 19th-century revolutionary socialist political organization operating in the Russian Empire, which conducted assassinations of government officials in an attempt to overthrow the autocratic Tsarist system. The organization declared itself to be a populist movement that succeeded the Narodniks. Composed primarily of young revolutionary socialist intellectuals believing in the efficacy of direct action, Narodnaya Volya emerged in Autumn 1879 from the split of an earlier revolutionary organization called Zemlya i Volya ("Land and Liberty"). Similarly to predecessor groups that had already used the term "terror" positively, Narodnaya Volya proclaimed themselves as terrorists and venerated dead terrorists as "martyrs" and "heroes", justifying political violence as a legitimate tactic to provoke a necessary revolution.

Based upon a secret society apparatus of local, semi-independent cells co-ordinated by a self-selecting Executive Committee, Narodnaya Volya espoused acts of political violence in an attempt to destabilize the Russian Empire and spur insurrection against Tsarism, justified "as a means of exerting pressure on the government for reform, as the spark that would ignite a vast peasant uprising, and as the inevitable response to the regime's use of violence against the revolutionaries". This culminated in the successful assassination of Tsar Alexander II in March 1881—the event for which the group is best remembered. The group developed ideas—such as the assassination of the "leaders of oppression"—that were to become the hallmark of future small anti-state groups, and were convinced that new technologies such as dynamite enabled them to strike the regime powerfully and precisely, minimising casualties.

Nikolay Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky (24 July [O.S. 12 July] 1828 – 29 October [O.S. 17 October] 1889) was a Russian literary and social critic, journalist, novelist, democrat, and socialist philosopher, often identified as a utopian socialist and leading theoretician of Russian nihilism and the Narodniks. He was the dominant intellectual figure of the 1860s revolutionary democratic movement in Russia, despite spending much of his later life in exile to Siberia, and was later highly praised by Karl Marx, Georgi Plekhanov, and Vladimir Lenin.

Emancipation of Labour (Russian: Освобождение труда) was the first Russian Marxist group. It was founded in exile by Georgi Plekhanov, Vasily Ignatov [ru], Vera Zasulich, Leo Deutsch, and Pavel Axelrod, at Geneva (Switzerland) in 1883. Deutsch left the group in 1884 when he was arrested and sent to Siberia and Sergei Ingerman [ru] joined in 1888. The group published the first Russian language translations of many works by Karl Marx and distributed them. It became the major adversary to the Narodniks on the left wing of politics in the Russian Empire.

Two drafts (1883 and 1885) of a program for the Russian Social Democrats, written by Plekhanov, were also published by the group, marking an important step to what would become the building of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP). At the first congress of the Second International in Paris (1889) onwards, the group represented the RSDLP.