Watershed Spaces as Radicalizers of the Political Life in Stable Large-City Cores

Abstract

A river catchment is not only a physical-geographical system, but also a canvas of a territorial social system. The watershed periphery is a producer of courageous individuals with a heightened sense of independence, ready to take decisive action. This paper reveals the confinement to watershed lines of the birthplaces of many figures of the revolutionary movement of the second half of the 19th to the early 20th centuries. This coincidence is especially noticeable when considering the biographies of Russian women who were part of revolutionary groups (Narodnaya Volya, Union of Socialists-Revolutionaries

Maximalists, etc.) and took part in individual terror acts. Most of them come from the periphery of the Volga catchment area. The natives of the periphery, by their impulsive actions, initiated changes in capital centers.