Abstract

In the context of the history of populist movements is impossible to ignore the activities of political parties - the People’s Party, plays an important role in the political and public life of the United States in the last decade of the XIX century. It is also known as the Populist Party, a widely used and contemporaries, and in the literature., the People’s Party was a party to a specifi time of intense political competition, participated in the presidential campaign. An important feature of socio-economic development of the United States in the decade after the Civil War was, in the context of a general scale of economic growth, urbanization and industrial upgrading, the concentration of capital, the formation of huge states, previously impossible nor in America, nor in the Old World. Campaign rhetoric of populists were characterized by «conspiracy» and, sometimes, anglofobski and anti-Semitic motives. However, anti-Semitism did not affect the formation of the People’s Party program. From our point of view, the American populists the end of the XIX century. with populist parties and movements of the twentieth century. Excess value that at some point the People’s Party began offering one of the provisions of its program, also has appeared to be features of populist methods of «simple solutions». A relatively modern requirements and populists are expanding elements of direct democracy in general mechanism of political decision-making. In general, from our point of view, the populist party made a radical reformist organization «political vanguard» wide reform movement, which often resorted to populist rhetoric and argumentation system.