ABSTRACT
The true social democrat is an elusive creature. In so far as political labels have any meaning, however, it seems clear that the majority of the Russians in the First International clearly merit the designation of social democrats, and they, rather than Plekhanov and his group, were the first Russians to bear that title. The overwhelming majority were of course émigrés, but they were a vital force in the revolutionary movement. As one prominent émigré of a later generation pointed out,
It is superficial and erroneous in the highest degree to imagine the Russian political emigration of the Tsarist period as something wrenched out of Russian realities and alien to them. The emigration of this period was not a broken-off chunk of the Russian revolutionary intelligentsia, but a vitally necessary constituent element. 1
