In the competition between Narodnaya Volya and Black Redistribution after 1879, immediate success was all, and all-important. In terms of practical activity, Black Redistribution could do nothing. Its members either fell into inactivity, or defected to Narodnaya Volya. There was historical justice in that, because, as Plekhanov would later stress, Narodnaya Volya had moved ahead of them in the necessary turn to politics.
Fifth in a series of articles around the anniversary of the death of Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin) in 1924 In December 1877 an explosion occurred at one of the St Petersburg armaments factories. The workers there believed it to be due to the negligence of the management. Six workers were killed. An organised group of politically conscious workers had existed in the factory for some years. Stepan Khalturin, who would be the main organiser of the Northern Union of Russian Workers and who would be hanged for an attempt to kill the Tsar, had worked there.
Fifth in a series of articles around the anniversary of the death of Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin) in 1924 In December 1877 an explosion occurred at one of the St Petersburg armaments factories. The workers there believed it to be due to the negligence of the management. Six workers were killed. An organised group of politically conscious workers had existed in the factory for some years. Stepan Khalturin, who would be the main organiser of the Northern Union of Russian Workers and who would be hanged for an attempt to kill the Tsar, had worked there.
Third in a series around the anniversary of the death of Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin) in 1924 Franco Venturi (in his book Roots of Revolution) quotes a police report on the state of things in the St Petersburg working class after the impact of the populists (Narodniks. “The gross, vulgar methods employed by factory employers are becoming intolerable to the workers. They have obviously realised that a factory is not conceivable without their labour. Without workers [the employers] can do nothing.
Second in a series around the anniversary of the death of Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin) in 1924. In the first instalment of this series (Solidarity 697) I traced in broad outline the populist revolutionary environment in and from which Russian Marxism emerged.