Georgi Plekhanov

• Plekhanov was the leading figure of the Black Partition which aimed to spread socialist ideas among Russian peasants but was weakened and broken up in 1880-81 by arrests.
• He was exiled in 1880 and settled in Geneva where he read the works of Marx and Engels.
• As he thought Russia would industrialise, he believed that Marx’s ideas should be used to destroy the tsarist autocracy.

  
  

  He translated Marx's writings into Russian.
• Strangely, Marx's writings were allowed into Russia by the Tsar’s censors as they felt that they would distract the peasants from the more dangerous activities of groups such as the People’s Will who had assassinated Alexander II.
• In 1883, Plekhanov formed the group “Emancipation of Labour”.

  
  

  This was to later become one of the groups which merged to form the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (SDs) in 1898 during the reign of Nicholas II.
• Plekhanov remained in exile until 1917 when he briefly returned during the revolutionary period.

  
  

  However, he opposed the Bolshevik seizure of power.
• He died in Finland in 1918.
• Plekhanov provided a link between the radical opposition groups of Alexander II’s reign and the later Marxist groups that opposed Nicholas II.
• Despite his later opposition to Lenin and the Bolsheviks, he was still regarded as the “Father of Russian Marxism” by 20th century Russian Communists.