ABSTRACT
The first self-styled Russian Marxist revolutionary group was founded in Switzerland in 1883. It called itself the Group for the Liberation of Labour, and was composed of only four people, all expopulists: George Plekhanov (1856-1918), Paul Axelrod (18501928), Leo Deutsch (1855-1941) and Vera Zasulich (1851-1919). It would be wrong, however, to believe that Marxism was unknown in Russia before that date. Indeed, it was familiarity with Marx’s analysis of the political economy of industrial capitalism in Europe that had led many of the populists to seek an alternative, Russian path to socialism. However, as faith in the revolutionary potential of the peasantry began to fade, increasing numbers of radical intellectuals and, later, industrial workers in Russia became ‘converted’ to Marxism. As capitalism and industrialization progressed, they gradually adopted Marx’s view that society must first pass from the feudal through the capitalist stage of development before the revolutionary proletariat could overthrow its ‘bourgeois’ government and establish a socialist workers’ state. There were, however, problems with this theory as applied to Russia. As we know, Russia was an autocratic state with no political freedom, no
economically powerful, politically conscious middle class (bourgeoisie), and a tiny undeveloped proletariat. At first, therefore, it seemed inappropriate to think in terms of a ‘bourgeoisdemocratic’, still less a ‘proletarian-socialist’, revolution in Russia. However, the social and economic changes brought about by Witte’s industrialization convinced the early Russian Marxists that they were right, that capitalism would displace feudalism, and that just as surely the Russian working class would eventually destroy capitalism. In fact Marx himself had not discounted the populist notion that the peasant obshchina might serve as the starting point for socialism in Russia, and he had great personal admiration for some populist theoreticians, especially Chernyshevsky. However, the members of Liberation of Labour, particularly Plekhanov, devoted their theoretical skills to repudiating the populists’ case, arguing that the obshchina did not provide the model for a socialist society and that the development of capitalism leading to a proletarian socialist revolution in Russia was inevitable.
