Svetlana A. Semeeva

Postgraduate Student of the Department of National and World History

Lipetsk State Pedagogical P. Semenov-Tyan-Shansky University

(Lipetsk, Russia)

DOI: https://doi.org/10.22405/2712-8407-2025-1-38-48

Abstract. The objective of the present article is to provide an analysis of the various perspectives on anarchist terrorism in Russia during the 1905–1907 revolution. In order to achieve this objective, it was necessary to address a number of tasks by means of drawing upon the pre-revolutionary press. The first task is to consider the attitude of anarchists themselves to terrorist attacks. The article's conclusion is that, due to the diversity of the composition of seemingly incompatible life goals (depending on the motivating factor of revolutionary nature, there were distinguished workers, peasants, Jews, students, and criminal forces) crossed at the point of anarchism, the positions of anarchists were polar in many respects. The second task is to study the attitude of other political forces (Social Democrats, SRs, Kadets, Octobrists, conservatives) towards anarchists. The author of the article has concluded that Octobrists and conservatives unequivocally condemned the anarchist terror, while there was ambivalence in the opinion of other parties. This ambivalence was explained by the contradictions of moral categories, political competition and the revolutionary need for joint action. Finally, to consider the opinion of common people, who became particularly vulnerable to terrorist attacks due to the anarchists' assumption of a large number of victims. The article concludes that the people were repelled by the anarchists' spilled anarchist terror directed at everyone, as opposed to the individualised SR terror, which was perceived as revenge on the authorities for the people's suffering. The article further notes the transformation of fear into the phenomenon of acceptance of the terrorist theme as a basis for the development of culture and the strengthening of a cynical attitude to life, which was a consequence of the organism's defence reaction.
Keywords: anarchist, bomb, Kadet, conservative, M. A. Bakunin, Social Democrat, terrorist attack, Khlebovoltsi, Chernoznamensty, SR.

Full text of the article (PDF)

For citation: Semeeva, SA 2025, ‘Attitude to Anarchist Terrorism in Russia at the Beginning of the 20th Century’, Tula Scientific Bulletin. History. Linguistics, issue 1 (21), pp. 38–48, https://doi.org/10.22405/2712-8407-2025-1-38-48 (in Russ.)

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