Narodnaya Volya was a late 19th-century revolutionary socialist political organization operating in the Russian Empire, which conducted assassinations of government officials in an attempt to overthrow the autocratic Tsarist system. The organization declared itself to be a populist movement that succeeded the Narodniks. Composed primarily of young revolutionary socialist intellectuals believing in the efficacy of direct action, Narodnaya Volya emerged in Autumn 1879 from the split of an earlier revolutionary organization called Zemlya i Volya. Predecessor groups had already started using the term "terror" positively and Narodnaya Volya in similar fashion self-identified as terrorists and venerated dead terrorists as "martyrs" and "heroes" as part of a propaganda driven campaign to attract attention to their moral justifications for using political violence.
Boris Kustodiev, Liberation of peasants (1907). Painting of peasants hearing the reading of the Emancipation reform of 1861 from the steps of the local manor.
Alexander Dmitrievich Mikhailov (1855–1884), was one of the founders of Zemlya i Volya, predecessor of Narodnaya Volya.
Mark Andreyevich Natanson (1851–1919) was one of the leading members of the Zemlya i Volya.
The assassination of Alexander II of Russia, 1881
The Narodniks were members of a movement of the Russian Empire intelligentsia in the 1860s and 1870s, some of whom became involved in revolutionary agitation against tsarism. Their ideology, known as Narodism, Narodnism or Narodnichestvo, was a form of agrarian socialism, though it is often misunderstood as populism.
Arrest of a Propagandist (1892) by Ilya Repin.