ABSTRACT

Karl Marx's philosophy came to Russia not as a surprise or sudden importation, but after the Western thinkers whom he acknowledged as his predecessors had become known in Russia in their own right. By the middle 1840's Marxism was nearing the dimensions of a system. In the Communist Manifesto of 1847 Marx and Engels popularized it for the use of the Communist League, a small and unimpressive association of West European radicals. Among the intelligentsia in Russia, Marxism acquired immense prestige, especially in the 1890's. Russian socialists who described themselves as Marxists attempted to found a Russian Social Democratic Labor Party at an abortive meeting held in Minsk in 1898. The meeting was dispersed by the police; it was considered, however, to be the I Congress of the party—in a series that continued into the 1980s. Lasting organization, however, came only from the II Congress held in 1903 in Brussels and London—which promptly split into two factions, Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.