An Alternative View of the Peasantry: The Raznochintsy Writers of the 1860s

In: Slavic review: interdisciplinary quarterly of Russian, Eurasian and East European studies, Band 32, Heft 4, S. 693-704

Abstract

The 1860s witnessed an important but somewhat neglected stage in the evolution of intelligentsia attitudes toward the peasantry and other lower strata of society. It is best represented by writers who devoted themselves to portrayals of the narod, urban and rural, and who were known collectively (although they were by no means a cohesive group) as the raznochintsy writers of the sixties. They included F. M. Reshetnikov, N. V. Uspensky, N. G. Pomialovsky, A. I. Levitov, N. A. Kushchevsky, and M. A. Voronov. The biographies of these men are remarkably similar. They were all from uneducated families of the lower classes. Caught up in the ferment of the sixties which penetrated even to the most backward and obscure areas of Russia (from which most of them came), they made their way to St. Petersburg, seeking to free themselves from the age-old restrictions which Russian society had imposed on people of their social origins.