The Barin of Russian Marxism

Georgy Plekhanov – revolutionary, Marxist philosopher, Populist and later Menshevik – went from being Vladimir Lenin’s mentor and ally to one of his chief rivals. Born on December 11, 1856 in the village of Gudalovka (Voronezh region) into an aristocratic family, Plekhanov died 80 years ago this month.

At the age of 18, in the fall of 1874, Plekhanov enrolled in St. Petersburg’s Gorny Institute, but he was forced to leave in 1876 for participating in the revolutionary movement. At that time, he was attracted by the idea of Populism – which advocated “going to” the oppressed and illiterate Russian people. The young Plekhanov actively disseminated revolutionary propaganda in St. Petersburg and was arrested several times. He also spent nearly a year “among the people” with the Don Cossacks.

In 1876, the Populists created their own organization “Land and Freedom,” and Georgy Plekhanov was among its leaders. The main aims of “Land and Freedom” were the organization of a peasant revolution, the nationalization of land and the replacement of the government by a federation of commons. But after only three years, the organization split into opposing camps – those who advocated the use of terror and those who opposed it. Plekhanov and his allies Pavel Axelrod and Lev Deich actively opposed terrorist tactics, maintaining that they led nowhere: one tsar would replace another.

In 1879, “Land and Freedom” split into two organizations – “Black Partition,” which included Plekhanov and other proponents of long-term and painstaking revolutionary agitation,  and “Will of the People” (formed by such proponents of political terror as Andrei Zhelyabov and Sofia Perovskaya), which eventually succeeded in assassinating Alexander II {RL, April 1998}.

The revolutionary movement continued to grow, and Plekhanov understood that Russia needed a revolutionary party. The works of Marx and Engels were almost impossible to find in Russia at that time, and Plekhanov, who was then living illegally under a false passport, did not have the opportunity to work in libraries or to study. And so, in January of 1880, the 24-year old Plekhanov left Russia and ended up in Switzerland. Plekhanov’s time abroad in Switzerland, France and Britain, though intended to be short, lasted 37 years. During this time, he would play the role of theorist, philosopher and ideologue of Russian Marxism in exile, but would have no direct participation in the revolutionary movement.

Shortly after he arrived abroad, at the end of 1881, Plekhanov came to the conclusion that capitalism was developing in Russia and that the revolutionary movement should develop according to the same objective laws as in Western Europe. Its moving force had to be the proletariat, and Plekhanov concluded that it was high time to form a party based on Marxism.

Over the course of 1882 and 1883, Plekhanov worked on developing the theoretical basis for such a party. In 1883, he founded the famous social-democratic Emancipation of Labor Group. From the beginning, this group consisted of five Russian revolutionaries – Pavel Axelrod, Vera Zasulich, Lev Deich, Vasily Ignatov and Plekhanov. Their first meeting took place on September 25, 1883, in a cafe on the banks of the Rhone in Geneva. They set themselves the tasks of spreading the ideas of scientific socialism (mainly by translating the most important works of Marx and Engels into Russian) and identifying the most important issues in Russian public life. Plekhanov set down the group’s aims in the brochure “Socialism and Political Struggle,” which Lenin called “the first confession of the faith of Russian social democracy.”

Plekhanov and Lenin met for the first time in 1895, when the Emancipation of Labor Group established close contact with revolutionary workers’ organizations in Russia. One of the largest such organizations was the St. Petersburg-based “Union of Struggle to Free the Working Class,” headed by Lenin. At that time, Lenin and Plekhanov agreed on most important issues of revolutionary theory and strategy. Nadezhda Krupskaya [Lenin’s wife] later wrote: “He loved Plekhanov. Plekhanov played a great role in the development of Vladimir Lenin, helped him to find the correct revolutionary path, and because for him, Plekhanov was for a long time encircled by a halo, he took the most insignificant differences with Plekhanov extremely badly.”

These differences began in 1900, when Lenin went abroad after a prison term and exile in Siberia and worked on a plan to create a proletarian party of a new kind. On returning from exile, he sought to create a nationwide social democratic newspaper, which came to be called Iskra (Spark). Lenin and Plekhanov disagreed over who would be in charge of Iskra and also over a temporary alliance with liberals in the interests of the revolution, which Plekhanov supported and Lenin opposed. The two men also disagreed over their reactions to the Russian involvement in the First World War.

At the end of his life, Plekhanov finally returned to Russia. He arrived in February of 1917, during the February Revolution, and died on May 30, 1918. On the initiative of Lenin and later Maxim Gorky, Russian revolutionaries derided  Plekhanov after his death as a condescending “barin” (noble) and criticized his distance from the practical affairs of the revolution.

These days in Russia, many ask what would have happened if Plekhanov’s idea had won out over Lenin’s. For Plekhanov believed that, in 1917, Russia was not yet ready for a socialist revolution, which could take place only in a highly developed capitalist country – and then only along with simultaneous revolutions throughout the world. One can only wonder. In any case, Plekhanov will go down in history as one of the founding fathers of Marxism in Russia. As doctor of historical studies Boris Orlov rightly said, many sad words could be uttered about the founding fathers of Russian Marxism. “One could erect on their graves a humble monument with the laconic inscription: “They meant it to be the best ever.” To which one can quote Ex-Premier Viktor Chernomyrdin: “But it turned out the usual way.”

In Brief

With May comes sunshine, flowers, longer days ... and some more important anniversaries in Russian life. To begin with, May 7 is Radio Day, which workers from all branches of Russian communications traditionally celebrate. On this day in 1895, Alexander Popov first demonstrated the radio receiver he had invented. At first, his instrument had a range of only 600 meters, but by the summer of 1897, its range had increased to 5 km, and by 1901, to 150. Popov’s invention won a gold medal at the Paris World’s Fair in 1900. However, it was the Italian Guillermo Marconi who received the patent for a radio receiver remarkably similar to Popov’s in 1897.

The same day, May 7, also marks the 95th anniversary of the birth of Soviet poet Nikolai Zabolotsky (1903-1958). The author of the anthology Columns (1929), Zabolotsky was repressed in the late 1930s and early 1940s before being rehabilitated in the 1950s.

May 11 marks 175 years since the birth of Nikolai Mayevsky (1823-1892), founder of the Russian school of ballistics. Besides being an artillery general and a corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, Mayevsky was the first in the world to create a scientifically based theory of firing oblong projectiles from a rifle barrel. He proved that air resistance depends on the ratio between the speed of the projectile and the speed of sound.

On May 12, 120 years ago, another great scientist Ilya Borschov (1833-1878), died. Borschov was a botanist, chemist and professor at Kiev University. In his fundamental work Materials for the Botanical Geography of the Aral-Caspian Region (1865), he published a general description of the region and analyzed its flora botanically and geographically, mapping out the natural habitats of 66 plant species for the first time. Borschov also did outstanding work in the field of colloid chemistry.

Also on May 12, 55 years ago, Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt met in Washington and confirmed their intentions not to launch a second front in Western Europe in 1943. This meeting represented a decisive point in the history of the Second World War, whose burden fell especially heavily on the Soviet people.

May 15 marks 150 years since the birth of Russian artist Viktor Vasnetsov (1848-1926), whose paintings are classic examples of Russian realism. Vasnetsov studied under the great artist Ivan Kramsky, then at the Academy of Artists, of which he became a member in 1893. He began his creative life as a genre painter, depicting scenes of street life and the lives of small-time merchants, bureaucrats and peasants in grayish brown colors. The best of these works – From Apartment to Apartment and War Telegram – can be found in the Tretyakov Gallery. Starting in the 1880s, Vasnetsov began to paint monumental works based on Russian fairy tales, epics and folklore. Some of the most famous of these works (also on display at the Tretyakov) are Tsarevich Ivan on the Grey Wolf, Bogatyrs (see page 9) and Tsar Ivan the Terrible. Viktor Vasnetsov also designed the facade of the Tretyakov Gallery, which was completed in 1902.

On May 21, 270 years ago, scholar and engineer Ivan Polzunov (1728-1766) – one of the inventors of the heat engine – was born. During Polzunov’s time, work at Russian factories was done entirely by hand. Polzunov invented the “fire machine,” which, in his own words, would “deal with what is required according to our will ...” However, the machine failed to catch on during Polzunov’s lifetime. It operated for 43 days, blowing ore-smelting furnaces, and produced enormous profits. But, inexplicably, the machine was later dismantled and the name of its inventor forgotten for many years.

Last but not least, May 26 marks 180 years since the death of Russian Field Commander Prince Mikhail Barclay de Tolly (1761-1818), who led one of two Russian armies during the War of 1812 (the other was commanded by Prince Peter Bagration). During the war, Russian troops, who were badly outnumbered by Napoleon’s invading army, showed remarkable tenacity and spirit. This, along with Napoleon’s poorly organized supply lines and the Russian winter, eventually helped them to drive out the invaders.