ABSTRACT
The early Russian Marxists experienced considerable intellectual travail: the prophet himself was quite uncertain as to the degree of applicability of his oracular theory to Russia. Vera Zasulich, in 1881, asked him to reveal to his Russian disciples what he thought about the future of the agrarian commune – one of the crucial questions separating the 'Marxists' from the 'populists'. Marx indicated that he did not know the 'Marxists' about whom Zasulich was speaking: the Russians he knew held opposite views. During the nineties, the Marxist group under Plekhanov's leadership was outspokenly critical of the commune, rejecting the romantic notion that the decrepit institution could possibly act as a forerunner to socialism. It is impossible to determine whether those Russians who called themselves Marxists actually were Marxists or even whether Marx, had he been a Russian, would have become and remained a Marxist.
