Active minority and power of Russia. Tkachev P.

“We have no right to lay over the people of too big hopes. There is nothing to say stupid things that the people left to themselves can best arrange their fate, ”wrote Pyotr Tkachev (1844-1886), a representative of the“ conspiratorial ”direction in populism.

He argued that in Russian The conditions of the minority of the population are in the advance of the European intelligentsia, and the majority, in the warehouse of the mind and in the way of life, is approaching the state of primitive people. Thus, only an active minority is able to transform Russia's life for the better, and this is done by conspiracy and a coup.

in his articles presented in this book, he substantiates the theory of the coup in detail and outlines the ways to its implementation. Works by P.N. Tkachev serve as a visual illustration of the views of the "Jacobin" part of the Russian intelligentsia of the second half of the XIX century.