Generation of Revolutionaries

Ben Eklof is Professor of History at Indiana University. He is author of Russian Peasant Schools and a coeditor along with John Bushnell and Larissa Zakharova of Russia's Great Reforms, 1855-1881 (Indiana University Press 1994). Tatiana Saburova is Visiting Professor of History at Indiana University, Professor of History at Omsk Pedagogical University, and a Research Fellow at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. Her books and articles focus on the Russian intelligentsia, collective biography, memory, and on the history of photography.

"By tracing the complex lives of Charushin and his generation Eklof and Saburova have made an important contribution to the history of Russian society in the volatile years before and after 1917."—The Russian Review" A Generation of Revolutionaries will be of value to all historians interested in the longue durée of the Russian Revolution. It deserves to be read widely."—Slavonic and East European Review"The book is engagingly written and well sourced, the product of extensive archival research, including in provincial Russian archives. . . . Highly recommended. "—Choice"This excellent work deserves a broad audience."—The Russian Review"Anyone interested in digging deeper into some of the less-examined facets of late imperial and early Soviet Russia will be well rewarded by this wide-ranging generational study."—American Historical Review"This richly researched and compelling study situates the Populists not only in the revolutionary movement of the 1870s and 1880s but also reintegrates them into the wider history of Russia."—Slavic Review"This is certainly a book in Russian studies in which new archives matter. The encounter of new material and old archetypes of the radical populist intelligentsia offers readers insight at every turn."—American Historical Review"This is a powerful piece of scholarship that will stand for a long time. It transcends previous conceptions of what a history of Populism should be and demonstrates how biography can open doors to so much more than the life of a single individual."—Ab Imperio"Eklof and Saburova lay bare the underlying challenges for biographers in reconstructing and knowing their subjects and, in so doing, provide an elegant and thoroughly modern take on the memoirs they survey, wringing from them questions of meaning, emotion, universality, and significance."—Journal of Modern History

• PrefaceIntroduction: Remembrances of a Distant Past1. Beginnings: How to Become a Revolutionary 2. The Seventies Generation: Young Revolutionaries and the Chaikovskii Circle3. The Male Gaze and Female Profile: Marriage, Family, Populism4. "Punishment Harsh and Cruel:" The Experience of Incarceration (1874-1878)5. Seventeen Years in Siberia: Hard Labor, Exile and Photography 6. Return to European Russia: Family Ties, Networks of Exiles, and the Zemstvo 7. After October: The Downward Spiral of Revolution 8. The Revolution Followed its Own Scenario (1917-1919) 9. Memory Wars and the Search for Meaning after the Revolution 10. In Search of the Real Charushin in the Perestroika Era ConclusionBiographical sketchesSelected BibliographyIndex