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This book presents an analysis of classical Russian Populism, shown as an ideological structure within which many positions were possible. Walicki studies the confrontation of Populism and Marxism: changing attitudes toward Marxism in the Populist milieu and the controversy between Populists and Marxists over the future of Russia.
The Controversy over Capitalism, available here in paper for the first time, reinterprets the ideology of Russian Populism. Andrzej Walicki argues that Populism is a reaction to the development of capitalism in Russia and a response to the capitalist economy and socialist ideologies of the West.
Walicki's sophisticated and perceptive analysis reveals the structure of Populist patterns of thought and sheds welcome light on the intellectual presuppositions and philosophical implications of such basic notions as Mikhailovskii's idea of progress or Tkachev's activism. —Marc Raeff, Columbia University
Walicki draws a number of important conclusions concerning the meaning and significance of Russian populism: the apparent peculiarities of populism correspond, in fact, to those of a developing rural state, such as Russia, peculiarities which are typical of "all the backward countries in the process of modernization"; Populists were the first to postulate the noncapitalist industrial development of a backward agrarian country; in carrying out this historical mission, classical populism "was not only defined, and not merely influenced, but, in a sense, called into being by Marxism"; and populism, in turn, influenced Marx and the reception of Marxism both in Russia and, by extension, in the whole eveloping rural world.—Slavic Review
"The rich and important issue of the mutual relationship between Marxist and Populist theories of the socio-economic development of the so-catted 'peripheral countries' has still not been sufficierltly explored. The present study, although dealing only with nineteenth-century Russia, can, I hope, serve as one of the legitimate preliminary approaches to this large and topical treme." -Andrzej Walicki, from the new preface
"This study decidedly merits attention. It is markedl by a sensitive appreciation of important insights in the work of Lavrov, Nfikhailovskii, Voronitsov, and Danielson — men usually subjected to scathing criticism by Marxist writers." —The American Historical Review
" This volume, Walicki's first in English, consists of three essays written during his stay at Oxford in 1966-67. The unifying theme is the populists' effort to base an economic and social theory upon the opposition to capitalism." —The Journal of Modern History
"Well and interestingly written, this volume is a significant contribution to the study of Russian prerevolutionary social philosophies." —American Academy of Political and Social Science
"Notoriously, classical Marxist doctrine fails to provide any theoretical justification for the fact that Marxism, the creed of the industrial proletariat, has had its greatest success in peasant countries. But Mr. Walicki seeks to show how the interaction of Russian Populist thought and Marxism did in fact anticipate the 20th-century problem of underdevelopment." —Slavonic and East European Review
"The author canvasses Tkachev's polemic with Engels; the contrast between the views of Marx and Engels on the future course of Russia, Russian Populism, the peasant commune, et al.; their views on Russia's potential role as the spark igniting European revolution; the influence of the classical Russian Populists on Marx's and Engel's attitudes toward Russia." —The Russian Review
Andrzej Walicki was the O'Neill Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame, is the author of Legal Philosophies of Russian Liberalism, Philosophy and Romantic Nationalism: The Case of Poland, and numerous other books.