Marxism in Russia

• Within Russia itself, Marxist activity was limited.

  
  

  There were some small Marxist cells in major cities in the late 1880s and early 1890s which mostly involved students.

  
  

  However, they were too small to achieve much in the way of active opposition.
• In 1893, a young lawyer called Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov who would later be known as Vladimir Lenin joined a St Petersburg group of Marxists but it was not until 1898 that there would be any wider organisation of Russian Marxists beyond small groups.
• In the early 1890s, Marxist groups rejected the use of terror as counterproductive and concentrated on propaganda and industrial agitation.