Socio-demographic portrait of political prisoners of the “revolutionary turning point” generation at the beginning of XX century

Abstract

Study is devoted to analysis of social and demographic features of generation of the revolutionary turning point, which took an active part in the events of all-Russian revolutionary movement at the beginning of XXth century. The actuality of work is determined by necessity of study image of the left radical part of young peoples borned in 1890s. The biggest part of domestic and foreign researchers studying the similar issues take their attention on representatives of some parties or national groups, while the study of revolutionary movement through the "generational" section is resting poorly explored. According to author`s viewpoint using of generational approach will give possibility possible to deeply penetrate into the studying era, to understand the internal world and reasons of radicalization of moods of revolutionary turning point generation, which is the purpose of this study. The main source for writing the article was the biographical directory of the All-Union Society of Political Prisoners and Exiles, composed from personal profiles. The biographical data of participants in revolutionary movement formed basis for creation database table which gave possibility to analyze their main sociographic features. In order of study motivations for joining revolutionary organizations and reasons for radicalization of moods of young peoples, were studied the memories and autobiographies of political prisoners, preserved in the funds of the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF). In context of specific aim of study the authors were guided in the same time by historical-comparative, retrospective, and quantitative methods. In result of analysis of the personalized electronic database, the authors made some conclusions. Firstly it was distincted the heterogeneous national composition of the revolutionaries in which largest share was represented by Jews. Secondly it was shown that largest part of studied group joined in revolutionary movement at the age of 15-17 and in this context it wasn`t surprising that the high point of their revolutionary activity felt on years of the first Russian revolution. Thirdly, the analysis of the structure of class origin indicates about predominance of people from the petty-bourgeois class, while the children from peasant families felt under the influence of revolutionary ideas, as a rule, already in the cities. The educative level of young revolutionaries was low, but their radicalism non-rarely served as reason for expulsion from educational institution. Big part of young people was spontaneously involved to revolutionary movement, thus expressing their dissatisfaction by existing regime.