The Roots of Revolution

In 1972, Venturi wrote a comprehensive survey of the latest Russian and Western studies on the subject which is reproduced in full here. As Isaiah Berlin remarks in his Introduction, 'Professor Venturi's work on the Russian Populist movement is the fullest and most authoritative account in any language of a decisive phase in the history of the Russian revolutionary movement.' Taking as his starting date the 1848 revolution which crystallized Populist ideology in the minds of Herzen, (the true founder of Populism) Bakunin, Chernyshevsky and other intellectuals, Venturi examines Russia's internal and external problems and the ideals and beliefs of her subjects in so far as they touch on the formation and development of populism. The core of the book concentrates on an account of the conspiracies and struggles through which Populism expressed itself.The book ends on March 1st 1881 with the assassination of Alexander II by the Executive Committee of Narodnaya Volya.