Introduction

This chapter introduces the reader to Feliks Volkhovskii, providing a brief overview of his life, and setting it within the broader development of the Russian revolutionary movement from the 1860s down to the First World War. While Volkhovskii is best-known for his role in mobilising support from western sympathisers against the tsarist government, editing publications like Free Russia, he was also a significant figure within the Russian revolutionary movement. As a young man, while still in Russia, he was a key figure in the development of Russian revolutionary populism (narodnichestvo). In later life he played an important role within the Socialist Revolutionary Party, editing several of its publications, including some that sought to foment unrest among soldiers and sailors. The chapter suggests that Volkhovskii’s commitment to the revolutionary movement was driven above all by his loathing of the tsarist regime, as well as the injustices faced by many of its people, rather than by a coherent ideology.