George Plechanoff

Anarchism and Socialism (Dodo Press) George Plechanoff

Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov (George Plechanoff) (1857-1918) was a Russian revolutionary and a Marxist theoretician. He was a founder of the Social-Democratic movement in Russia and was the first Russian Marxist. As a prolific writer he dealt with several aspects of Marxist thought. He was one of the organizers of the first political demonstrations in Russia. After a fiery speech during the Kazan demonstration in 1876, indicting the tsarist autocracy and defending the ideas of Chernyshevsky, Plechanoff led an underground life. He was arrested twice, in 1877 and again in 1878, and faced with increasing persecution he emigrated in 1880. It would be 37 years before he returned to Russia. He returned to Russia after the February Revolution and formed Yedinstvo. However, he left Russia again after the October Revolution because he was hostile toward the Bolsheviks. Plechanoff used the pseudonym of N. Beltov in his most famous work, The Development of the Monist View of History. Furthermore, in an article on A. L. Volynsky in an issue of Novoye Slovo in April, 1897, he used the pseudonym of N. Kamensky.