Genesis of Populism

Abstract

The article discusses the dominant approaches to populism and, in particular, the origins of the term and the practice of the Russian movement that embodied it. From the sources, it reconstructs the genesis and logic of the concept in a historical-conceptual perspective and the journey of the concept from Russia through China to Latin America. The legitimacy of Russian populism emerges from the relationship between the concept and factual history. In the Russian historical structure (end of the eighteenth century—first decades of the twentieth century), elements such as the preponderance of the concept of “people” over that of “class,” the rejection of politics, society conceived as a confrontation between the people and a tiny minority, and others that have been updated, without being identical, in today’s world, can be observed. Taking into account this updating reveals the historicity of the concept and its current legitimacy.