Russian Populist
Member of a 19th-century socialist movement in Russia.
In the 1860s and '70s the movement attracted intellectuals who believed that political propaganda among the peasants ( narod , "people") would lead to their revolt and the liberalization of the tsarist regime. Attempts to arouse the peasants produced police persecution and arrests, which drove the socialists to more radical methods, including terrorism. The revolutionary group Land and Freedom, led by Georgy Plekhanov , was formed in the mid-1870s and continued to work among the peasantry until it split in 1879. The movement's populist ideology was revived in the 20th century by the Socialist Revolutionary Party .