Sergei Iuzhakov

Born Dec. 17 (29), 1849, in the city of Voznesensk, Kherson Province, in what is now Nikolaev Oblast, Ukrainian SSR; died Nov. 29 (Dec. 12), 1910, in St. Petersburg. Russian publicist and sociologist; liberal Narodnik (Populist). Brother of E. N. Iuzhakova.

The son of a nobleman, Iuzhakov enrolled in the faculty of history and philology at Novorossiia University (Odessa) in 1865, and he took part in the student unrest there in 1868 and 1869. In 1868, Iuzhakov began contributing to democratic journals, such as Znanie, Otechestvennye zapiski, and Delo. From 1876 to 1879, while assistant editor of Odesskii vestnik, he was close to the revolutionary underground. In 1879 he was exiled as a politically suspect person to Eastern Siberia, where he remained until 1882. From 1885 to 1889, Iuzhakov was on the editorial board of the journal Severnyi vestnik, and from 1894 to 1898 he was a member of the editorial board of the journal Russkoe bogatstvo; he took part in the polemics between the Narodniks and Marxists. From 1898 to 1909 he was an editor of the 22-volume Great Encyclopedia of the society Enlightenment.

In his works Iuzhakov advocated a program of reform aimed at supporting the rural obshchiny (peasant communes) and artels, which he believed could serve as the basis for collectivized production in agriculture and cottage industry. In the area of sociology, Iuzhakov was a subjective idealist; he rejected class struggle and attributed the leading role in social progress to “ethnic factors.” Iuzhakov’s views were harshly criticized by V. I. Lenin.