The founder of Russian Marxism, Georgy Plekhanov, who was at first allied with Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks, parted ways with them by 1904.

Lenin, who was trying to establish a permanent majority against Plekhanov within Iskra, expected Trotsky, then 23, to side with the new guard and wrote in March 1903:

However, later doubt was cast on this theory by Georgi Plekhanov.

For example, Russian geographer Georgi Plekhanov argued that the reason his nation was still in the feudal era, rather than having progressed to capitalism and becoming ripe for the revolution into communism, was that the wide plains of Russia allowed class conflicts to be easily diffused.

Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov () ( November 29, 1856 – May 30, 1918 ) was a Russian revolutionary and a Marxist theoretician.

Plekhanov was hostile to the Bolshevik party headed by Vladimir Lenin, however, and was an opponent of the Soviet regime which came to power in the autumn of 1917.

Despite his vigorous and outspoken opposition to Lenin's political party in 1917, Plekhanov was held in high esteem by the Russian Communist Party following his death as a founding father of Russian Marxism and a philosophical thinker.

Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov was born November 29, 1856 ( old style ) in the Russian village of Gudalovka in Tambov province, one of twelve siblings.

Georgi's father, Valentin Plekhanov, was a member of the hereditary nobility of Tatar ethnic heritage.

There in 1875 he was introduced to a young revolutionary intellectual named Pavel Axelrod, who later recalled that Plekhanov instantly made a favorable impression upon him:

Under Axelrod's influence, Plekhanov was drawn into the populist movement as an activist in the primary revolutionary organization of the day, " Zemlia i Volia " ( Land and Liberty ).

Thereafter, Plekhanov was forced by the fear of retribution to lead an underground life.

" Plekhanov was so certain of the correctness of his views that he determined to leave the revolutionary movement altogether rather than to compromise on the matter.

Plekhanov was manifestly unsuccessful in this effort.

It was during this period that Plekhanov began to write and publish the first of his important political works, including the pamphlet Socialism and Political Struggle ( 1883 ) and the full-length book Our Differences ( 1885 ) These works first expressed the Marxist position for a Russian audience and delineated the points of departure of the Marxists from the Populist movement.

In the latter book, Plekhanov emphasized that capitalism had begun to establish itself in Russia, primarily in the textile industry but also in agriculture, and that a working class was beginning to emerge in peasant Russia.

It was this expanding working class that would ultimately and inevitably bring about socialist change in Russia, Plekhanov argued.

Throughout the 1890s, Plekhanov was involved in three tasks in revolutionary literature.

In this series of writings, Plekhanov was careful to place special emphasis on the revolutionary nature of the Marxists ' philosophy.

During the Russian Revolution of 1905, Plekhanov was unrelenting in his criticism of Lenin and the Bolsheviks, charging that they failed to understand the historically-determined limits of revolution and to base their tactics upon actual conditions.

Despite their sharp differences, Plekhanov was recognized, even in his own lifetime, as having made a great contribution to Marxist philosophy and literature by V. I.

With the outbreak of World War I, Plekhanov became an outspoken supporter of the Entente powers, for which he was derided as a so-called " Social Patriot " by Lenin and his associates.

Martov became one of the outstanding Menshevik leaders along with George Plekhanov, Fedor Dan and Irakli Tsereteli.

Plekhanov always insisted that Marxism was a materialist doctrine rather than an idealist one, and that Russia would have to pass through a capitalist stage of development before becoming socialist.

His close relationship with Plekhanov led Rakovsky to a position between the Menshevik and Bolshevik factions of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party, one he kept from 1903 to 1917 ; the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin was initially hostile to Rakovsky, and at one point wrote to Karl Radek that " we Bolsheviks do not have the same road as his kind of people ".

For instance, one might be referred to as Comrade Plekhanov or Comrade Chairman, or simply as Comrade.

Georgi Plekhanov, who was one of the organisers of the demonstration, gave a passionate speech during the demonstration, indicting the autocracy and defending the ideas of Chernyshevsky, who was then in exile.

The organizers of BR ’ s central body in Saint Petersburg were Georgi Plekhanov, Pavel Akselrod, Osip Aptekman, Lev Deich, Vera Zasulich and others.

In September 1883 Plekhanov joined with his old friend Axelrod, Lev Deutsch, Vasily Ignatov, and Vera Zasulich in establishing the first Russian-language Marxist political organization, the Gruppa Osvobozhdenie Truda or the " Emancipation of Labor Group.

Plekhanov, Deich, Zasulich and other ex-members of BR took sides with Marxism and created the first Russian Marxist organization called Emancipation of Labor ( Освобождение труда, or Osvobozhdeniye truda ) in Geneva in 1883.

Following the end of his political career, Khasbulatov returned to his earlier profession as a teacher of economics as founder and head of the Department of International Economy at the Plekhanov Russian Academy of Economics ( REA ).

" Facing political persecution, Plekhanov emigrated to Switzerland in 1880, where he continued in his political activity attempting to overthrow the Tsarist regime in Russia.

When the question of terrorism became a matter of heated debate in the populist movement in 1879, Plekhanov cast his lot decisively with the opponents of political assassination.

During the next three years, Plekhanov read extensively on political economy, gradually coming to question his faith in the revolutionary potential of the traditional village commune.

Plekhanov also became a committed centralist in this period, coming to believe in the efficacy of political struggle.

It seems that Plekhanov, although a revolutionary figure, had not taken the view that art must serve political ends.

Plekhanov lent support to the idea that Lenin was a " German agent " and urged the Provisional Government of Alexander Kerensky to take severe repressive measures against the Bolshevik organization to halt its political machinations.

It was evident that Plekhanov and Lenin disagreed in terms of commitment to political action, as well as direct guidance to the working class.

Georgi Plekhanov in Paris had adopted a violently anti-German stand, while Helphand supported the German war effort as the best means of ensuring a revolution in Russia.

During World War I Plekhanov rallied to the cause of the Entente powers against Germany and he returned home to Russia following the 1917 February Revolution.

Plekhanov left Russia again after the October Revolution due to his hostility to the Bolsheviks.

* The Plekhanov House in The National Library of Russia

In 1903, following the death of his father, Rakovsky again lived in Paris, where he followed developments of the Russo-Japanese War and spoke out against Russia, attracting, according to Rakovsky himself, the criticism of both Plekhanov and Jules Guesde.

* Plekhanov Russian Economic University, a university in Moscow, Russia