Georgi Plekhanov

Georgi Plekhanov
Unknown authorUnknown author · Public domain · source
Name	Georgi Plekhanov
Native name	Гео́ргий Плехано́в
Birth date	1856-11-29
Birth place	Tsarskoye Selo, Russian Empire
Death date	1918-05-30
Death place	Geneva, Switzerland
Occupation	Revolutionary, philosopher, writer
Movement	Marxism
Notable works	"Our Differences", "The Development of the Monist View of History"

Georgi Plekhanov

Georgi Plekhanov was a Russian revolutionary, Marxist theoretician, and publicist whose work helped introduce Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels to Russian intellectual life and shaped the Russian socialist movement. He played a formative role in the formation of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party and engaged with figures across European and Russian politics, including debates with Vladimir Lenin, Julius Martov, Alexander Herzen, and Mikhail Bakunin. Plekhanov's writings influenced discussions in cities such as Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Geneva, and Zurich and intersected with institutions like the Paris International Workingmen's Association and the Second International.

Early life and education

Born into a noble family in Tsarskoye Selo near Saint Petersburg, Plekhanov attended local schools before entering the Pskov Gymnasium and later studying under influences linked to Alexander Herzen's émigré tradition. His early environment connected him to intelligentsia networks that included readers of Nikolay Chernyshevsky and admirers of Vissarion Belinsky and Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin. Encounters with literature by Nikolai Nekrasov, poetry of Alexander Pushkin, and radical journals associated with Zasulich and Stepan Radkevich shaped his intellectual outlook. He later traveled to Western Europe, engaging with circles in Geneva, Zurich, and Paris where debates influenced by Ludwig Feuerbach, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Auguste Comte were current.

Political development and Marxist conversion

Plekhanov's political evolution moved from populist sympathies typical of the Russian intelligentsia toward scientific socialism after encountering translations of Marx and Engels and reading journalistic work in Iskra and other periodicals. He rejected the tactics of Nikolay Chernyshevsky-inspired agrarianism and sympathies for the Narodniks like Pyotr Lavrov and Lev Tikhomirov, arguing instead for proletarian organization in industrial centers such as Luga and Kovrov. Influenced by debates at the First International and exchanges with émigrés linked to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Mikhail Bakunin, he embraced Marxist historical materialism as articulated by Friedrich Engels in works addressing the Industrial Revolution and class formation in Great Britain and Germany.

Exile and intellectual work

During prolonged exile in Western Europe, Plekhanov established editorial and publishing ventures in Geneva, Zurich, and Paris producing journals, pamphlets, and translations of Capital (Marx) and other texts. He collaborated with émigré socialists linked to the Second International, exchanging correspondence with Karl Kautsky, Eduard Bernstein, Rosa Luxemburg, Jean Jaurès, and Friedrich Engels' circle. His salons and editorial offices hosted figures including Vera Zasulich, Pavel Axelrod, Lev Deich, and David Riazanov while he debated strategy with individuals from Socialist Revolutionary Party circles and anarchist thinkers connected to Errico Malatesta. Plekhanov's publications circulated among workers in St. Petersburg, Baku, Riga, and Yekaterinoslav and informed academic discussions at University of Geneva and archives like those of International Institute of Social History.

Role in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party

As a founder of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP), Plekhanov acted as a theoretician and mentor to activists including Julius Martov, Pavel Axelrod, Alexander Potresov, and later critics like Vladimir Lenin. He helped draft programmatic documents influenced by policies debated at the RSDLP Congresses and linked to factions associated with the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks. Plekhanov's organizational work connected émigré centers in Berlin and London with underground committees in Saint Petersburg and Moscow and engaged printers and typographers in Geneva and Paris to produce illegal literature. He corresponded with international socialist organizations including the German Social Democratic Party (SPD), the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO), and activists in the Austro-Hungarian Social Democratic Workers' Party.

Views on Bolshevism and later political stance

Following the 1903 split, Plekhanov sharply criticized the organizational and insurrectionary methods attributed to Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction, aligning more with leaders like Julius Martov and elements of the Mensheviks. He opposed the April strategies and later the tactics surrounding the October Revolution, expressing sympathy with constitutionalist and parliamentary approaches favored by figures such as Alexander Kerensky and legalists in the Constitutional Democratic Party. During World War I he supported the Entente position, echoing positions debated by Kautsky and Eduard Bernstein and contrasting with Rosa Luxemburg and Lenin on questions of internationalism and defeatism. His later writings entered polemics with Leon Trotsky and influenced debates among émigrés in Paris and Geneva.

Literary and philosophical contributions

Plekhanov produced influential essays and books on the development of materialist philosophy, Marxist historiography, and literary criticism, engaging with the works of Hegel, Feuerbach, Marx, Engels, and contemporaries like Karl Kautsky and Rosa Luxemburg. He wrote on Russian literature, critiquing novelists and poets such as Fyodor Dostoevsky, Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev, and Nikolai Gogol from a Marxist standpoint, and engaged with critics like Vissarion Belinsky and Nikolay Chernyshevsky. His theoretical works influenced scholars at institutions including the University of Zurich and libraries in Saint Petersburg and were cited by historians of socialism such as Isaak Deutscher and Moshe Lewin. Plekhanov's translations and editorial work helped transmit Marxist theory into Russian, shaping curricula in informal study circles in Moscow and St. Petersburg and informing debates at conferences of the International Socialist Congress.

Death and legacy

Plekhanov died in Geneva in 1918, shortly after the upheavals of 1917, leaving a legacy debated by Bolshevik, Menshevik, and Western socialist historians including Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Isaak Deutscher, E.H. Carr, and Richard Pipes. His writings remain studied in archives and libraries such as the Marx-Engels-Lenin Archive and the International Institute of Social History, and his role is discussed in biographies by scholars linked to Harvard University, Oxford University, and Columbia University. Commemorations and critical studies have appeared in journals connected to Russian Review, Slavic Review, and the American Historical Review.

Category:Russian Marxists Category:Revolutionaries from the Russian Empire