Yekaterina Shcherbakova

POINT OF VIEW

Yekaterina Shcherbakova
Repin as the Mirror of the "People’s Will". REFLECTIONS OF THE "NARODNAYA VOLYA" MOVEMENT IN THE ARTIST’S WORKS

#1 2019 (62)

Ilya Repin was keenly sensitive to the reformist context of his time, and reflected the political nuances of Russian society in a number of his most important paintings, most significantly “They Did Not Expect Him”. Particularly revealing are those works associated with the “Narodnaya Volya”, or “People’s Will” organization, which was an integral part of the much wider sociopolitical “Narodnik” movement - from narod, “the people” - of the 1870s-1890s.