Religiosity and religion in the Russian revolutionary populism and terrorism in the 1870s-1880s

The article investigates the influence of religion on the Russian revolutionary populism; and whether religiosity was present in the minds of Russian populists and revolutionary terrorists in the 1870s-1880s. In today's world, most often they connect terrorism with religious fundamentalism. Indeed, international terrorism, which appeared in the 1980s, now has religious ideas in its ideological basis, perverted by fanatics, gaining a radical religious character from here. While investigating this phenomenon, scholars pay attention to the past, to the history of the use of violence and threats of physical elimination as methods of intimidating political opponents. A number of researchers believe that terrorism originates in the Ancient world. In this context, these researchers consider the period of revolutionary terrorism in Russia in the 1860s-1880s and the beginning of the 20th century. Trying to study revolutionary terrorism in Russia as comprehensively as modern terrorism, researchers cannot but deal with the ideological bases of this radical way of political struggle, including influence of religion on Russian revolutionaries and their religiosity. These questions gain more significance and a general character clarifying the connection between religion and religious ideas with violent forms of protest. The article shows that questions of Russian revolutionary populists' religiosity (including terrorists), the influence of religion on the revolutionary environment are not adequately discussed in research papers. Views on these problems appear to be conflicting and inconsistent. The research provides the definition of "religiosity" and identifies distinctive features of this definition in western research publications. It goes on to prove that religiosity was absent in Russian populists' consciousness. It refutes assertions about the religious nature of populists' asceticism, their faith in the people. The study found that the influence of religion on revolutionary populism was indirect. Russian revolutionary populists in childhood and adolescence acquired only moral and ethical perception of the surrounding reality from the Christian teaching, without its religious basis. A conclusion is drawn that populists were not moved by some religious ideas or religious practices consciously or subconsciously. Faith in the people, asceticism, self-sacrifice, etc. should be separated from the religious sphere especially as they had no religious implication in the revolutionary movement. At the same time, it is noted that for some populists the religious, Christian teaching became a source of moral and ethical attitudes which developed in childhood or youth. These attitudes became completely secularized in their consciousness at an adult age, though were understood in the maximalist way due to their young age and particular circumstances.

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