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The Attitude of the Southern-Russian Workers' Uniontoward the Jews (1880-1881)*M. MISHKINSKYWere it not for its ideological controversies, one would surely assertthat the revolutionary movement in tsarist Russia in the 1870s 1 had anagrarian orientation. To the revolutionary narodniki (populists), thenarod (people) or rabochii narod (working people) comprised aboveall the peasantry, whom they imagined to be rebellious by instinct andtradition. The famous populist motto "Go to the people!" called forgoing out to the villages with enlightening radical propaganda andorganizational work that would stir up rebellion leading to a socialrevolution. The populists regarded the obshchina (village community)as the prototype and embryo of the future socialist society. 2 The ideapersevered, to some extent, even after the going-to-the-people movementdissipated and the torch of revolutionary activity passed on to thepolitically-oriented Narodnaia volia (People's Will).The wage-earning laboring class was considered part of the narod.But in revolutionary potential and in prospects for the socialist transformationof society, the workers were viewed as having less importancethat the peasantry, and the artel, an old form of workers' guild,was not considered to have the potential of the obshchina. "The mainstrength of the people is not in them [the urban workers] but in thepeasantry," 3 read the "Program of Workers, Members of Narodnaia* I am obliged to the Ukrainian Research Institute and the Center for JewishStudies at Harvard University for assistance and research facilities provided duringthe preparation of this study.1Division of stages by decades is widely practiced in the historiography of theRussian revolutionary movement. However, it seems appropriate to lengthen thedecade of the 1870s by considering the last years of the 1860s and the first years ofthe 1880s together with it. Dates are cited according to the Julian calendar (oldstyle).2For the general tenets and history of the Russian revolutionary movement, seeFranco Venturi, Roots of Revolution (London, 1960).3S. S. Volk, ed., Revoliutsionnoe narodnichestvo 70-ikh godov XIX veka, vol. 2:1876-1882 (Moscow and Leningrad, 1965), p. 189.