Russian Villagers in Revolutionary Fire, 1902–1907: Generation’s Factor

The paper studies the role of the "revolutionary turning point" generation in the Russian revolutionary movement of 1902-1907.The source base for the study includes documents from central and regional archives and periodicals.Representatives of this generation were peasant children, adolescents and young people.The participation of children and adolescents in agrarian protests was established on the basis of gubernatorial reports, police reports and court chronicles.Young peasants or people from the peasant environment, who often had the city life experience, actively participated in revolutionary propaganda and creation of revolutionary cells in the village.The authors explore the specifics of their social experience on the basis of archival materials, including memories and questionnaires, which allows to consider the historical context not only from the perspective of a chronicle, but also in the framework of historical memory of social experience.The authors found that the participation of children in agrarian protests most often manifested themselves in passive forms of resistance and were spontaneous in nature.In turn, it was young people aged 16 to 24 years (the "revolutionary turning point" generation) who provided the most active assistance to the revolutionary cause.This was largely facilitated by the fact that rural youth, who managed to break away from the care of family and community, were more susceptible to the influence of left-wing radical ideas.Leaving for work in the cities and entering educational institutions, many people from peasant families easily fell under the influence of revolutionary ideas.The romanticization of the "heroic" image of a revolutionist, combined with youthful maximalism and a relatively low level of education, quickly turned young peasants into active participants of the revolutionary movement, in contrast to children and teenagers who rebelled mainly spontaneously, together with their community.At the same time, many of those who left for the cities subsequently worked secretly in rural revolutionary cells stimulating the spread of revolutionary influence in the village.