Georgi Plekhanov
Russian revolutionary and a Marxist theoretician
1856 CE to 1918 CE
Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov (November 29, 1856 – May 30, 1918) is a Russian revolutionary and a Marxist theoretician
He is a founder of the social-democratic movement in Russia and is one of the first Russians to identify himself as "Marxist".
Facing political persecution, Plekhanov emigrates to Switzerland in 1880, where he continues in his political activity attempting to overthrow the Tsarist regime in Russia.
Although he supporta the Bolshevik faction at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in 1903, Plekhanov soon rejects the idea of democratic centralism, and becomes one of Lenin and Trotsky's principal antagonists in the 1905 St. Petersburg Soviet.
During the first World War Plekhanov rallies to the cause of the Entente powers against Germany and he returns home to Russia following the 1917 February Revolution.
Plekhanov is an opponent of the Soviet state that comes to power in the autumn of 1917.
He dies the following year.
Despite his vigorous and outspoken opposition to Lenin's political party in 1917, Plekhanov will be held in high esteem by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union following his death as a founding father of Russian Marxism and a philosophical thinker.
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It becomes even more oriented toward terrorism three years later, renames itself the People's Will
(Narodnaia volia), and in 1881 is responsible for the assassination of Alexander II.
In 1879, Georgi Plekhanov forms a propagandist faction of Land and Liberty called Black Repartition (Chernyi peredel), which advocates reassigning all land to the peasantry.
This group studies Marxism, which, paradoxically, is principally concerned with urban industrial workers.
The People's Will remains underground, but in 1887 a young member of the group, Aleksander
Uyanov, attempts to assassinate Alexander III and is arrested and executed.
Another Ulyanov, Vladimir, is greatly affected by his brother's execution.
Influenced by Chernyshevskys writings, he also joins the People's Will and later, under the influence of Plekhanov, will convert to Marxism.
The younger Ulyanov will later change his name to Lenin.