The Jacobin Orientation in Russian Social Thought: From the Decembrists to Lenin

FAIN: FA-10884-74

Rolf Theen
Purdue University (West Lafayette, IN 47907-2040)

To demonstrate the existence and development of a Jacobin orientation in Russian revolution thought in the nineteenth century; to examine how aspects of this orientation surfaced in the political ideas of central figures like Cheryshevsky, Bakunin, Plekhanow and, most important, Lenin; to illuminate the general nature and character of Russian Jacobinism, its intellectual origins and antecedents, its pyschological characteristics, its relationship to European radicalism, and its place as an important current in Russian political thought.