Economy and culture have always been closely related. As Mr. Li Yining believes, reform is not only in conflict with the old economic system, but also with the old culture and old customs forces with a history of two or three thousand years. At the same time, the success of the reform also means the establishment of a new culture, which means the important role and inheritance and innovation of excellent traditional culture among them.
Mr. Li Yining was one of the earliest scholars in China to put forward the theory of shareholding system reform, and also one of the earliest scholars to propose that cultural regulation plays an important role in market regulation. As early as 1955, Mr. Li Yining stayed in Peking University after graduating from the Department of Economics and began to study the issues of cultural economics. Since then, Mr. Li has been combining cultural history, economic history, and economic thought history to make his research distinctive.
Over the decades, Mr. Li Yining has published a number of works on cultural economics. At the end of 2021, his latest book, "Sinking Sand Unintentionally but Becoming a Continent: The Cultural Background of China's Economic Reform", was published. The book gathers Mr. Li Yining's thoughts on exploring China's road in different periods, his important contributions to China's economic reform, and the new direction and new thinking put forward after the rapid development of China's economy.
Today, movable type Jun shares with book lovers the wonderful passage in Mr. Li Yining's new book, "The Evolution of the Slogan of "Go to the Folk": The Differentiation of Russian Narodnik Intellectuals in the Late 19th Century." In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the transformation of the peasant villages of the Russian Narodniks led to the rise of the peasants against these "rural" Members of the Narodniks, and their ideals were completely bankrupt. Looking back at this period of history, we can give us a lot of inspiration.
The evolution of the slogan "Go to the people"
― The divergence of Russian Populist intellectuals in the late 19th century
—
Li Yiningwen
This article was originally published in "Sinking Sand Unintentionally but Becoming a Continent: The Cultural Background of China's Economic Reform"
Sichuan People's Publishing House, 2021
For Russian intellectuals, the 18th century was a period of enlightenment, because from the time Peter the Great turned his attention to the West, the industrial development and technological progress of the Western European countries had an increasing influence on Russia. But in the field of humanities and philosophy, the influence of Enlightenment thought occurred relatively late. This is directly related to catherine II's admiration of the Western European Enlightenment school in the late 18th century. After entering the 19th century, from the failure of the Decembrists' uprising, to the rallies, shouts and formations of various small groups of aristocratic children such as Herzen who were interested in promoting reform in Russia, to the various discussions and political ideas caused by Alexander II's announcement of the abolition of serfdom in the 1860s, Russia was ushered into an era of exploration, reflection and debate. A great storm in the intellectual world is about to be set off.
Makovsky's work "On the Volga River" (Wanderer)
In 19th-century Russia, however, it was the broad masses of the peasantry that determined the direction of Reform in Russia and whether Russian society could be stabilized. The peasants were neither interested nor understood the Western humanistic and philosophical ideas advocated by the intellectual circles. They always wonder: What does this have to do with our real lives? The peasants did not believe that these noble children could really free themselves from the sea of suffering: it was better to believe in the preaching of these noble children than in the tsar, in the bishop's opinion, because in their view theories spread by the intellectuals could only make the peasants' lives more bitter and worse, and the tsar's gifts were affordable, and the bishop's promises could save the peasants' souls.
It is in this context that populists emerge and grow.
Herzen can be called the original populist theorist. He believed that he should go to the people to find the social forces that would transform Russia. He once wrote that there were two Russias, one under the Tsar, "connected by the division of the spoils by seven hundred thousand live machines wearing bayonets", and the other Russia was the Russian people. These two Russias will become "two hostile strongholds."
Herzen (1812–1870) was a Russian thinker, writer, and revolutionary. As a teenager, he was influenced by the ideas of the Decembrists and was determined to take the road against the tsarist autocracy. In 1829 he entered the Faculty of Mathematics and Physics of Moscow University. In 1835, he was exiled on charges of "freethinkers who were extremely dangerous to society." Returning to Moscow in 1842, he immediately returned to battle and was persecuted. In early 1847, Herzen arrived in Europe with his family, became an exile, and never returned to Russia. The defeat of the European revolution of 1848 caused a crisis in Herzen's thinking, which triggered him to rethink the fundamental problems of society. When he arrived in London in 1852, he established the "Free Russian Press", publishing two periodicals, Polaris and Alarm Bells, containing literary works and articles exposing the tsarist autocracy. These publications were secretly transported back to Russia in large numbers at that time, which promoted the development of the liberation movement. In January 1870, Herzen died of illness in Paris. His representative works include "Whose Sin", "The Attitude of Partial Understanding in Science", "Letter on the Study of Nature", "A Brief Introduction to Law and Italy", "From the Other Side", "On the Development of Russian Revolutionary Thought", "Past events and caprice", etc.
The reform of serfdom introduced by Alexander II in 1861 made the boundaries of Herzen's claim of "two Russias" more and more obvious. The division of the populists also began. Herzen's populist ideas were quickly embraced by both forces. One faction still insisted on going deep into the countryside in the form of "going to the people", preaching "land and freedom" to the peasants, and calling for the establishment of a new order of "peasant socialism" to replace the tsarist autocracy. The other faction believes that the results of this strategy are too slow, and that the strategy of gradually awakening the peasantry should be replaced by a call for a peasant uprising. By this time, several years after Herzen's death (1870), his reputation and influence among populists had faded. In 1876, the Land and Freedom Party was founded in Russia. Members of the Land and Freedom Party came to the people to mobilize the peasant uprising. But in practice, they are often sneered at by the peasants, who still do not believe them and alienate them. Although Alexander II did not give land to the peasants while abolishing serfdom, the peasants still regarded the emperor as a "good emperor" and no one was willing to respond to the call of the Land and Freedom Party to rise up and overthrow the tsar. The Land and Freedom Party felt in disappointment that it was necessary to reform the tactics of struggle, that is, to use assassinations to get rid of Alexander II. Thus, in 1879, the Land and Freedom Party split into two organizations: the Agrarian Equalization Branch, which adhered to its original line, and the Popular Opinion Party, which insisted on the practice of personal terror.
In 1881, the Patriots killed Alexander II in Petersburg, and Alexander III succeeded to the throne. Alexander III (1881-1894) adopted a resolute crackdown on the popular will, while also stopping some of the reformist measures that Alexander II was carrying out, and the tsarist system became more centralized and authoritarian. After the suppression of the public opinionists, their strength weakened a lot, and apart from continuing to carry out assassinations and other activities, they could no longer set off a big storm in politics.
The call for a peasant uprising did not take effect, and the individual assassination provoked a massive crackdown by the Tsarist government, so what could the remaining Narodniks do? Some of them, who renounced violent struggle and advocated legal struggle, were called liberal populists. Later they formed the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, advocating "socialization of the land" and replacing the programme of the past. It was also during this period that the Russian workers' movement grew stronger and Marxism was spreading in Russia. In the struggle against tsarism in Russia, a situation of confrontation between Marxism and populism was formed. The history of the Russian Revolution has since entered a new stage, that is, Marxism has gradually gained the upper hand and the influence of populism has gradually diminished.
Makovsky's "Night-Timer" 1889
Looking back at this period of history, from the reform of serfdom by Alexander II to the suppression of the popular will after Alexander III's succession, the rise and fall of populist forces in Russia can give us a lot of inspiration.
First, the emergence of the Narodniks in the mid-19th century was inseparable from the controversy among the Slavic and Western European factions of Russian intellectuals. The Slavic emphasis on Russia has its own historical traditions and cultural characteristics, and that it is necessary to inherit these historical traditions and cultural characteristics, follow Russia's own path, and not be obsessed with the political system of Western Europe and the ideas of democracy and freedom. Western Europeans believe that if Russia does not learn from Western Europe in its entirety, that is, not only to learn from Western Europe's industrial technology and management models, but also to adopt Western European political systems, Western European ideas of democracy and freedom to examine all kinds of social problems, Russia will always be backward and will not be able to enter the ranks of modern countries. Populists lean more towards Slavism, but also argue that what Western Europeans advocate is not for nothing. They fantasize about building a so-called peasant socialist Russia by relying on the peasant villages, especially the Russian peasant villages. Although this is only a utopian idea, objectively there is no possibility of practice, it can still be seen from this that populism is indeed a product of the vast land of Russia, and it cannot arise in Western Europe at the same time or earlier. Without the old Russian peasant village community system, it would have been impossible to produce Populists.
Second, the first intellectuals who advocated populism and peasant socialism were a small number of intellectuals with a sense of justice and yearning for a better future. They threw themselves into the revolutionary tide that overthrew the tsarist autocracy. But later, the composition of those who joined the ranks of the populists became more and more complex, with careerists, schemers, people who wanted to climb up the ladder by any means. In propagating populism, these people often played the sign that they were the successors of Herzen's cause or the successors of the doctrine of another revolutionary democratic thinker, Chernyshevsky, but in fact their work was so far removed from Herzen and Chernyshevsky that it was later said in Russian society that the populists were nothing more than meeting places for politicians advocating assassination and violence. The kind of enthusiastic people in the early days of the Populists who advocated "going to the people" to do enlightenment work to transform society became increasingly rare. This also shows from another perspective that the differentiation of populists is also the deterioration of populism.
Nikolai Chernyshevsky (1828-1889) was a great Russian thinker, writer and critic. He has made outstanding contributions in many fields such as philosophy, political economy, and history, and has always occupied a prominent position in the history of Russian literature with his fighting aesthetic theory, literary criticism and literary creation. As a democrat, he resolutely opposed reform, advocated a peasant revolution, and propagated the idea of struggle to overthrow all old rights. Author of the novel "What to Do?" Prologue and aesthetic papers, etc.
Finally, it should also be noted that the ultimate fate of the Narodniks after the Russian Revolution was deplorable. In this regard, it is necessary to begin with the establishment of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party. Since the assassination of Alexander II and the harsh suppression of the Psychittas by Alexander III, the division of populists has accelerated. Organizations that adhere to populist ideals have been set up everywhere, with different names and different tactics of action, some still not giving up terrorism, and some demanding the abandonment of violence and legitimate struggle. At the end of 1905, the First Congress of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party was convened, and the Socialist-Revolutionary Party was formally formed from this time, although before that some local organizations of populists had already operated under the name of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party.
Makovsky's work "January 9, 1905"
After the formal establishment of the Socialist Revolutionary Party, due to the complexity of its members and great differences in political tendencies, it actually formed three factions: left, center, and right. The left opposes the use of legal means of struggle to carry out activities, advocates the continuation of violent revolution, and even uses terrorist means such as assassination. The Right, on the other hand, opposed the secret existence of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, and believed that since the legitimate struggle was to be waged, it was necessary to abandon all forms of violence, assassination and incitement to peasant revolts. The main idea of the Centrists is to insist that Russia should socialize land as the main line of social transformation, regard land as the collective property of the peasants, and realize the socialization of land in the old form of peasant village communities. As a result, the Left and the Right successively withdrew from the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, which became the political organization of the centrist Socialist-Revolutionaries.
In 1917, after the success of the February Revolution in Russia, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party became one of the parties that played an important role in the new government established after the February Revolution. The influence of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party is greater than that of other revolutionary parties. Then came the October Revolution, with the Bolsheviks gaining the upper hand, and the Socialist-Revolutionaries standing with the Mensheviks and in opposition to the Bolsheviks.
The end result is conceivable. In 1918, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party and the Mensheviks were officially declared counter-revolutionary by the Soviet power established after the October Revolution. After the abolition of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, some of its members remained in the country to carry out the struggle against the Bolsheviks, and some were arrested, executed or exiled abroad.
Viktor Mikhailovich Chernov (1873-1952) was a Russian revolutionary and one of the founders of the Russian Socialist-Revolutionary Party. He is the "brain" of the main party theorist or party and is more analytical than political leaders. After the February Revolution of 1917, Chernov served as Minister of Agriculture in Russia's Provisional Government, advocating immediate land reform. Later, he served as chairman of the Constituent Assembly of Russia.
Chernov (1873-1952), the leader of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party, who served as Minister of Agriculture of the Provisional Government of Russia after the February Revolution, thought that he could put into practice the idea of socializing the land, but after the October Revolution he fled abroad and later served as a member of the government-in-exile in Belarus. What influence can the Socialist-Revolutionaries, or rather, the Narodniks, which were originally based on Russian peasant society, have in the Russian countryside once they have been expelled from Russian society and have gone into exile in Western European countries? The Narodniks are finished, the Socialist-Revolutionaries are finished, and the "Russian theory of peasant socialism", which has been active for decades, is finished.
Makovsky's work "Optimists and Pessimists" 1893
Many of the early theoreticians and their followers of the Narodniks were revolutionary democrats who aspired to overthrow the Russian tsarist system, abolish serfdom, and transform traditional Russian society. Peasant socialism is an ideal of theirs, but how to build peasant socialism, after several generations of hard work, they have never found the correct answer. Later, the Narodniks were divided, the Popular Party rose and fell rapidly, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party was combined and divided several times, and finally, after the February Revolution of 1917 and the October Revolution of the same year, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party was finally banned by the Soviet government, and its members were suppressed or exiled abroad. This process, which has lasted for several generations, is very enlightening and enlightening. Today, as we ride the vast land of Russia by train, looking back at the history of rural change in the 1930s, it is difficult to describe the situation in one or two short sentences, and it can only be said that such a good land produced a great famine and a great escape. What does this mean?
(2010)