Underground Petersburg: Radical Populism, Urban Space, and the Tactics of Subversion in Reform-Era Russia

by Christopher Ely

Overview

Although the radical populist movement that arose in Russia during the reign of Tsar Alexander II has been well documented, this important study opens with questions that haven't yet been addressed: How did Russian radical populists manage to carry out a three-year campaign of revolutionary violence, killing or wounding scores of people, including top government officials, and eventually taking the life of the tsar himself? And how did this all occur under the noses of the tsar's political police, who deployed vast resources and huge numbers of officials in an exhaustive effort to stop the killing?

In Underground Petersburg, Christopher Ely argues that the most powerful weapon of populist terrorism was the revolutionary underground it created. Attempts to convey populist ideals in the public sphere met with resistance at every turn. When methods such as propaganda campaigns and street demonstrations failed, populists created a sophisticated urban underground. Linked to the newly discovered weapon of terrorist violence, this base of operations allowed them to live undetected in the midst of the city, produce their own weaponry, and attempt to ignite an insurrection through violent attacks—putting terrorism on the map as a technique of political rebellion. Accessible to non-specialists, this insightful study reinterprets radical populism, clarifying its crucial place in Russian history and elucidating its contribution to the history of terrorism. Underground Petersburg will appeal to scholars and students of Russia, as well as those interested in terrorism and insurrectionary movements, urban studies, and the sociology of subcultures.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780875807447
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	10/30/2016
Series:	NIU Series in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
Edition description:	1
Pages:	324
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Christopher Ely is associate professor of history at the Harriet L. Wilkes Honors College of Florida Atlantic University. He is the author of This Meager Nature and coeditor of Space, Place, and Power in Modern Russia.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 St. Petersburg From Space of Representation to Embattled Public Sphere 29

Chapter 2 Nihilism Self-Fashioning and Subculture in the City 59

Chapter 3 Underground Pioneers 87

Chapter 4 To the People and Back 115

Chapter 5 City Synergy 141

Chapter 6 Organized Troglodytes Building up the Underground 169

Chapter 7 Battleground Petersburg 203

Chapter 8 The Armor of Our Invisibility Underground Terror and the Illusion of Power 231

Conclusion 265

Notes 275

Bibliography 309

Index 319

What People are Saying About This

Robert Weinberg

Christopher Ely has written a timely, cogent, and compelling analysis of political terrorism as it emerged and took shape in Russia at the end of the 1870s. This study is full of valuable insights into the nature of urban life in the two decades after the serf emancipation of 1861 and forces the reader to reconsider the reasons for the embrace of terror tactics by one wing of the Russian revolutionary movement.

Editorial Reviews

This is a book that greatly increases our knowledge of the populist movement and radical politics. It should interest not only those with an interest in the history of late imperial Russia, but those researching urban history and the history of terrorism.

The Slavonic and East European Review

This is a well-written and engaging book that deserves a wide readership and will be of primary interest to historians and other scholars of Russia.

Journal of Modern History

This work contributes much to the history of Russia, Russian radicalism, and terrorism with a fresh perspective that presents the physical space in St. Petersburg, Russia, in a new light.

Choice

This is a fresh, well-written and well-argued study rooted in extensive archival research that convincingly demonstrates the importance of St. Petersburg as a cradle of revolutionary activity, the divorce of that activity from ideology, the malleability of that ideology, and the way the city space actively shaped the radical populist movement. Ely has made a significant and fascinating contribution to imperial Russian history, both methodologically and in shaping our understanding of radical populism in a profoundly new way.

Slavic and East European Journal

A scintillating, well-written examination of the early Populist experience.

The Russian Review

A scintillating, well-written examination of the early Populist experience.

-- "The Russian Review"

This is a book that greatly increases our knowledge of the populist movement and radical politics. It should interest not only those with an interest in the history of late imperial Russia, but those researching urban history and the history of terrorism.

-- "The Slavonic and East European Review"

This is a fresh, well-written and well-argued study rooted in extensive archival research that convincingly demonstrates the importance of St. Petersburg as a cradle of revolutionary activity, the divorce of that activity from ideology, the malleability of that ideology, and the way the city space actively shaped the radical populist movement. Ely has made a significant and fascinating contribution to imperial Russian history, both methodologically and in shaping our understanding of radical populism in a profoundly new way.

-- "Slavic and East European Journal"

This is a well-written and engaging book that deserves a wide readership and will be of primary interest to historians and other scholars of Russia.

-- "Journal of Modern History"

This work contributes much to the history of Russia, Russian radicalism, and terrorism with a fresh perspective that presents the physical space in St. Petersburg, Russia, in a new light.

-- "Choice"

From the Publisher