Georgi Plekhanov

Lore & Background

Georgi Plekhanov was born into a noble family of Volga Tatar ancestry in the village of Gudalovka, Tambov Governorate. His father, a former military man, managed a small estate, while his mother, distantly related to critic Vissarion Belinsky, encouraged his early intellectual interests. After attending the Voronezh Military Academy, where he was influenced by liberal teacher N. F. Bunakov, Plekhanov moved to Saint Petersburg, abandoned a military career, and enrolled at the Mining Institute. There he was drawn into the revolutionary populist movement, joining the organization Zemlia i Volia in 1876 and delivering a fiery speech at the Kazan Cathedral that forced him into temporary exile.

Plekhanov became a leading spokesman for the Derevenshchiki faction within Zemlia i Volia, opposing the turn toward political terrorism. After walking out of the Voronezh Congress in June 1879, his faction formed Chernyi Peredel. In 1883, he established the Emancipation of Labour group, the first Russian Marxist political organisation. He later collaborated with Lenin in founding the newspaper Iskra in 1900, and at the RSDLP's Second Congress in 1903 initially sided with the Bolsheviks before breaking with them over their centralist organisational principles, becoming a leading Menshevik.

During World War I, Plekhanov adopted a nationalist 'defensist' position supporting the Allied cause. He returned to Russia after the February Revolution of 1917, supported the Provisional Government, and fiercely opposed the Bolsheviks, denouncing Lenin and warning that the October Revolution would be a disaster. He died of tuberculosis in Finland the following year.

Reader's Guide

Plekhanov's significance lies in his role as the foundational theorist of Russian Marxism. His establishment of the Emancipation of Labour group in 1883 marked the beginning of organized Marxist activity in Russia, and his writings converted key figures like Lenin to the cause. However, his legacy is contested: he broke with the Bolsheviks over their centralist organisational principles, arguing instead for a more democratic, orthodox Marxist approach. During the 1905 Revolution, he insisted Russia was only ready for a bourgeois-democratic revolution, opposing premature proletarian seizure of power. His World War I defensism and later opposition to the Bolsheviks set him apart from many socialists. Despite this, Lenin held him in high esteem, and the Soviet Union posthumously enshrined him 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. Some view him as a democratic alternative to Leninism, while others focus on his theoretical groundwork that paved the way for the Bolsheviks.

Did You Know?

• Plekhanov was born into a noble family of Volga Tatar ancestry.
• He broke with his mother's Orthodox faith and became an atheist while at the Voronezh Military Academy.
• He delivered a fiery speech at the Kazan Cathedral in December 1876 that put him 'outside the law'.
• He died of tuberculosis in Finland in 1918.