Illegal Literature for the Masses: The Imaginary and Real Reader

ABSTRACT This article is devoted to the illegal literature for the masses published in the 1870s by members of the populist movement known as the Narodniki. Here, we examine this literature as a product of imagination: guided by their own conceptions of the masses, the authors of illegal brochures wrote for readers they imagined to be incapable of comprehending serious scholarly writing and needing socialist ideas to be specially adapted for them. Such preconceptions of the mass reader existed within the context of a debate about literature for the masses involving not just liberal members of the intelligentsia, but also their ideological opponents, including government officials. The article’s second half examines how actual rather than the imagined readers reacted to the socialist literature that had been specially tailored to them. Unless there was a member of the intelligentsia to explain the meaning of these publications, they were unlikely to serve their purpose: they were handed over to children, priests, or rural authorities, or simply used to roll tobacco.