The socialism is, as Herzen put it, "Russian socialism." That is to say, it is agrarian socialism, for the peasantry represents and is the mass of the Russian people. Everyone of the programs pays its homage to the narodničesivo, this statement being no less true of the early Marxists than of the adherents of Černyševskii, Bakunin, and Lavrov.
The radical narodniki believed in the peculiar social institutions and the peculiar mission of Russia, according general recognition to the independent evolution of Russia, and contrasting that evolution favourably with the development of Europe.
It was necessary to win over the folk to the cause of its own liberation, to win over the mužik, and thus originated the movement "towards the people," some going towards the people as teachers, others as agitators, the respective aims being to educate and to revolutionise the folk. The revolutionary enthusiasts soon learned by experience that they were officers and generals without an army; they perceived that the masses of the folk were incompetent for action and that no more than small peasant circles, like the small circles of operatives, could be induced to make up their minds for the revolution. Very rarely could a local rising be expected to achieve success, and it was not possible to reckon with certainty upon anything more than the willingness of isolated individuals to sacrifice themselves. More and more did it become evident that a widespread popular rising such as that of which Bakunin had dreamed, must remain in the land of dreams.
The movement "towards the people" was of brief duration. It began in 1872, became considerably more extensive in 1873, but was already checked in the following year, the government having imprisoned or banished hundreds and even thousands of those engaged in it (trying them in great batches, as in "the trial of the one hundred and ninety-three"). Those who had no worse fate were placed under police supervision, and all suffered socially.
Simultaneously the radicals began to grasp the nature of the contrast between country and town, between peasant and operative, and to apprehend the revolutionary significance of this contrast; in the programs of the later seventies we find that the urban proletariat is already declared to be the incorporation of revolutionary ideas and revolutionary
