Everything about Land And Liberty Russia totally explained
Land and Liberty, was a Russian
clandestine revolutionary organization of
Narodniki (middle- or upper-class revolutionaries attempting to spread socialism in rural areas) in the
1870s. In
Russian, it's Земля и воля, transliterated
Zemlya i volya or
Zemlia i volia, and translated usually as
Land and Liberty or
Land and Freedom. It shouldn't be confused with the 1862
"Land and Liberty" movement co-founded by
Alexandr Herzen, which advocated Polish independence.
Land and Liberty received its name in the late 1878 with the creation of the
printing shop with the same name. Its former names were
Severnaya revolyutsionno-narodnicheskaya gruppa (Северная революционно-народническая группа, or The
Northern Revolutionary Group of Narodniki) and
Obschestvo narodnikov (Общество народников, or The
Society of Narodniki).
Program
The formation of Land and Liberty, in
Saint Petersburg in 1876, was preceded by the analysis of the
Call to the people campaign (
Хождение в народ, or Khozhdeniye v narod) of
1873-
1875. As a result, the members of Land and Liberty defined the basics of the
political platform, which would be called
narodnicheskaya (народническая, or "close to the people",
populist). They admitted a possibility of a special, non-
capitalist way of development of
Russia with
peasantry as its basis. The members of Land and Liberty considered necessary to adapt the purposes and slogans of the movement to independent revolutionary aspirations that had already existed among the
peasants, as they believed. These requirements, generalized in the slogan "Land and Liberty!", were designed to allow for the transition of all the lands "into the hands of the rural working ", even distribution of the land, "full communal self-management" and division of the
Russian empire into parts "in accordance with the desires of the locals". Land and Liberty stood for the creation of permanent "revolutionary settlements" in the countryside for the purpose of preparing a people’s
revolution.
The members of Land and Liberty saw peasantry as the principal revolutionary force, as opposed to the
working class, which would have to play a part of the "second fiddle". Proceeding from the inevitability of a "forced
coup d'état", the revolutionaries considered
agitation and organization of
revolts,
demonstrations and
strikes to be very important. Land and Liberty represented a "rebellious" current of the revolutionary movement of the 1870s.
Vladimir Lenin said that Land and Liberty’s merit was its desire to "...attract all of the discontent and direct the organization towards decisive struggle against
autocracy". Discipline, mutual comradely control,
centralism and
conspiracy became this organization’s principles.
Members
Land and Liberty’s most prominent members from the times of its inception were
Mark Natanson,
Alexander Mikhailov,
Aleksei Oboleshev,
Georgi Plekhanov,
Aleksandr Kvyatkovsky,
Dmitry Lizogub,
Valerian Osinsky,
Osip Aptekman and others. Later,
Sergey Kravchinsky,
Dmitry Klements,
Nikolai Morozov,
Sophia Perovskaya,
Lev Tikhomirov,
Mikhail Frolenko (all of them -
Chaikovtsi) would later join Land and Liberty The club of
Vera Figner shared the views of and cooperated with Land and Liberty The organization had close ties with the revolutionaries in
Kiev,
Kharkov and
Odessa.
History
The revolutionaries chose to "settle" in the provinces of
Saratov,
Nizhny Novgorod,
Samara,
Astrakhan,
Tambov,
Pskov,
Voronezh, the
Don region and others. They also attempted to spread their revolutionary activities in the Northern
Caucasus and the
Urals. Land and Liberty organized clandestine
publishing and distribution of the revolutionary
literature, conducted
propaganda among workers and took part in several strikes in Petersburg in
1878-
1879. It also influenced the development of the student movement by organizing or supporting demonstrations in Petersburg and other cities, including the so-called
Kazan demonstration of 1876, where they'd openly admit the organization’s existence for the first time.
The Program of Land and Liberty also envisioned a course of actions, aimed at "disorganization of the state", in its members opinion. In particular, it allowed for physical elimination of "the most harmful or prominent members of the government". The most famous
terrorist act of Land and Liberty was the
assassination of the Chief of the
Gendarmes
Nikolai Mezentsov in 1878. However, Land and Liberty didn’t yet consider terror as means of political struggle against the existing
regime, perceiving it as revolutionary
self-defense and their
revenge towards the government.
Land and Liberty’s disappointment with the revolutionary activity in the countryside, intensification of the governmental
repressions and political discontent during the
Russo-Turkish War, 1877-78 and ripening of the revolutionary situation favored the conception and development of the new sentiments in the organization itself. By spring of 1879, the faction of political terrorists was formed in Land and Liberty
Disagreements between the supporters of the former strategy of inciting the countryside called
derevenschiki, or "villagers" (
Georgi Plekhanov,
Mikhail Popov, Osip Aptekman etc.) and defenders of transition towards political struggle by means of systematic terrorist methods called
politicians (Aleksandr Mikhailov, Aleksandr Kvyatkovsky, Nikolai Morozov, Lev Tikhomirov etc.) led to the
convocation of the Voronezh Congress of Land and Liberty in June of 1879, where the two rival groups would reach a short-term compromise.
In August of 1879, however, Land and Liberty broke up in two independent organizations:
Narodnaya Volya and
Chernyi Peredel.
Further Information
Get more info on 'Land And Liberty Russia'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://land_and_liberty__russia.totallyexplained.com">Land and Liberty (Russia) Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
