Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov ( ; – 30 May 1918) was a Russian Marxist theorist, philosopher, and revolutionary. After beginning his revolutionary career as a populist, in 1883 Plekhanov established the Emancipation of Labour group, the first Russian Marxist political organisation. He is widely regarded as the "father of Russian Marxism", and his theoretical works were instrumental in converting a generation of revolutionaries, including Vladimir Lenin, to the cause.
Plekhanov was a prominent leader in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) and the Second International. In 1900, he collaborated with Lenin in founding the party newspaper Iskra, and at the party's Second Congress in 1903, initially sided with Lenin's Bolshevik faction. However, he soon broke with the Bolsheviks over their organisational principles, which he criticised as overly centralist, and became a leading figure in the opposing Menshevik faction. During the 1905 Russian Revolution, Plekhanov maintained that Russia was only ready for a bourgeois-democratic revolution and argued against what he saw as premature attempts to seize power by the proletariat.
During World War I, Plekhanov adopted a staunchly nationalist position, "defensism", in support of the Allied cause, a stance that separated him from most international socialists. He returned to Russia after the 1917 February Revolution and supported the Provisional Government. He was a fierce opponent of the Bolsheviks, denouncing their leader Lenin and warning that their seizure of power in the October Revolution would be a disaster for the country. Plekhanov died of tuberculosis in Finland the following year.
Despite his political opposition to the Bolsheviks, Plekhanov was held in high esteem by Lenin and was posthumously enshrined in the Soviet Union as a founding father of Russian Marxism. His contributions to philosophy, historical materialism, and aesthetics made him one of the most important Marxist thinkers of his era. His legacy remains contested, with some viewing him as a democratic, orthodox Marxist alternative to Leninism, while others focus on his theoretical groundwork that paved the way for the Bolsheviks.
Early life and education
Family and youth Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov was born on in the Russian village of Gudalovka in the Tambov Governorate. He was born into a noble family of Volga Tatar ancestry. Plekhanov's father, Valentin, was a member of the lower stratum of the landed gentry. He possessed about 270 acres of land and some 50 serfs. Valentin was a military man who had served in the Crimean War and in the suppression of the 1863 Polish uprising. In later life, he managed his estate and was described by his children and former serfs as severe and sometimes violent. Despite his opposition to the emancipation reform of 1861, which freed the serfs and deprived him of half his estate, Valentin attempted to adapt to the new conditions of capitalism. He sought to instill in his children the values of manliness, courage, self-reliance, and activity, and discouraged idleness.
Plekhanov's mother, Maria Feodorovna, was distantly related to the famed literary critic Vissarion Belinsky. She was Valentin's second wife; they married in 1855, and Georgi was the first of their five children. Maria was a gentle and compassionate woman who undertook the early education of her children. She encouraged Georgi's intellectual interests, teaching him to read at an early age. Plekhanov later recalled that it was she who instilled in him a sense of altruism and justice. His relationship with his mother was warm, while his relationship with his father was more reserved.
Education and radicalization When he was ten years old, Plekhanov's family enrolled him in the Voronezh Military Academy. At the academy, he was influenced by his teacher, N. F. Bunakov, a proponent of liberal pedagogical ideas who instilled in Plekhanov a love of literature and a sense of responsibility to the Russian people. Bunakov introduced him to the writings of radical literary critics like Belinsky and Nikolay Chernyshevsky, giving the young Plekhanov his first acquaintance with the ideas of the intelligentsia. Under the influence of the radical poet Nikolay Nekrasov, he developed a deep sympathy for the suffering of the Russian people. During his time at the academy, Plekhanov also broke with his mother's Orthodox faith and became an atheist, challenging the priest who taught sacred law with probing questions.
In 1873, after graduating from the academy, Plekhanov registered at the Konstantinovskoe Military School in Saint Petersburg. While in the capital, his interest in military drills waned as he spent more time with Russian literature and literary criticism. He soon decided against a military career and, after only one semester, withdrew from the school to prepare for the entrance examinations to the Mining Institute. Plekhanov's decision to pursue a career in mining engineering rather than social studies was likely influenced by the radical spirit of the 1860s and 1870s, which was characterized by utilitarianism, positivism, and a high regard for the natural sciences.
Revolutionary career
Populism and Zemlia i Volia
Plekhanov arrived in St. Petersburg in 1873, just as a revolutionary populist movement, later known as Narodism, was burgeoning. This movement, inspired by the ideas of Alexander Herzen and Chernyshevsky, saw the collectivistic peasant commune as the nucleus of a future socialist Russia. The populists, or Narodniks, were divided between two main factions: one, following Mikhail Bakunin, believed that the peasants were natural revolutionaries who could be immediately called to rebellion; the other, following Pyotr Lavrov, argued for a period of propaganda to prepare the peasantry for revolution.
In the winter of 1875–76, Plekhanov was introduced to the revolutionary movement by Pavel Axelrod, a returned revolutionary who was hiding from the police. Although initially hesitant to commit fully, Plekhanov was gradually drawn into the cause. He began attending clandestine meetings of revolutionary students and workers, and by early 1876, his room was being used for meetings. The academic year of 1875–76 was decisive for his transformation into a revolutionist. As he devoted more time to revolutionary activity, his studies declined, and he was expelled from the Mining Institute at the end of his second year.
In the autumn of 1876, Plekhanov joined the newly founded populist organization Zemlia i Volia (Land and Liberty). On 6 December 1876, he delivered a fiery speech at a demonstration in front of the Kazan Cathedral, denouncing the autocracy and defending the ideas of Chernyshevsky. This act put him "outside the law" and forced him to flee abroad. During his time in Berlin and Paris, he became acquainted with the German Social Democratic Party, but his Bakuninist convictions led him to view their "moderation and regularity" with disdain. He returned to Russia in mid-1877 and devoted himself to the revolutionary cause with tireless energy. He worked among peasants, students, and factory workers in Saratov and St. Petersburg, carried brass knuckles, and slept with a revolver under his pillow. His activities included writing inflammatory leaflets, agitating among workers during strikes, and delivering a eulogy at the funeral of the poet Nekrasov.
Schism and exile Beginning in 1878, a new trend of political terrorism gained momentum within Zemlia i Volia, a response to government repression and the failures of rural agitation. This led to a split in the organization between the proponents of terrorism and the Derevenshchiki (villagers), who advocated for continued mass agitation in the countryside. Plekhanov became the leading spokesman for the Derevenshchiki. While not opposed to violence in principle, he argued that a focus on political assassinations was a distraction from the more important work of building a mass movement among the people. He feared that a program of terrorism would exhaust the party's resources and provoke even harsher government repression, violating his conviction that revolutionary action must be guided by a rational system and grounded in objective reality.
The conflict came to a head at the Voronezh Congress in June 1879. The terrorists, led by figures like Andrei Zhelyabov, argued for a campaign to assassinate Tsar Alexander II, while Plekhanov insisted that such a move would be a betrayal of the populist cause. Finding himself isolated and his own faction willing to compromise, Plekhanov walked out of the congress in protest. The split in Zemlia i Volia became final in October, with the terrorist faction forming the new organization Narodnaya Volya (The People's Will) and Plekhanov's faction establishing Chernyi Peredel (Black Repartition).
Plekhanov's hopes for Chernyi Peredel were short-lived. The group failed to attract recruits or gain influence, as most radicals were drawn to the more dynamic and dramatic struggle of Narodnaya Volia. His populist convictions were further shaken by his reading of sociological studies that suggested the Russian peasant commune was in a state of decay. Facing political isolation and the threat of arrest, Plekhanov and his associates left Russia for Geneva in January 1880, beginning what would become a 37-year exile.
Father of Russian Marxism
Conversion to Marxism After emigrating to Western Europe, Plekhanov undertook an intensive study of the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. His populist faith had been shaken by the failures of the Narodnik movement, and he was now seeking a new theoretical foundation for the Russian revolutionary cause. He was particularly struck by Engels's polemic against Pyotr Tkachev and his reading of the Communist Manifesto, which led him to reject the core tenets of populism. Plekhanov did not see his conversion as a radical shift in his fundamental worldview, but rather as a change in his political strategy. He became convinced that Russia, like the West, would have to pass through a stage of capitalism before it could achieve socialism.
In his 1883 work Socialism and Political Struggle, Plekhanov laid out a new program for the Russian revolutionaries, based on the principles of Marxism. He argued that the struggle for socialism in Russia must be preceded by a "bourgeois" revolution that would overthrow the Tsarist autocracy and establish a democratic republic. This revolution, he believed, would be carried out by a coalition of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The task of the socialists was to organize the nascent working class and instill in it a socialist consciousness, so that it could play an independent and leading role in the struggle. In his 1885 book Our Differences, Plekhanov elaborated on these ideas, presenting a detailed Marxist analysis of Russian social and economic conditions and a critique of the populist program, asserting that Russia had already entered the path of capitalist development.
Emancipation of Labour Group
In 1883, in Geneva, Plekhanov, along with Axelrod, Vera Zasulich, and Leo Deutsch, founded the Emancipation of Labour group, the first Russian Marxist political group. The group's primary aim was to propagate Marxist ideas among Russian revolutionaries and to provide a theoretical foundation for a future Russian Social Democratic party. They undertook the translation and publication of the works of Marx and Engels, as well as their own analyses of Russian social and economic life.