Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov (1856-1918)

The earliest Marxist theorist in Russia; a famous leader in the International Workers’ Movement. He was born in a small aristocratic landlord family in Gudalovka village, Lipetsk county, in Tambov Governate. He went to Voronezh Military Academy. He joined the St. Petersburg Institute of Mining in 1874, in 1876 he joined the Narodniks. He was arrested three times during his political activities. In the early 1880, he fled abroad and began his 37-year exile life outside the Soviet Union. He remotely knew Marx and Engels in Europe. In 1882 he translated the Manifesto of the Communist Party into Russian language. Soon after he received the preface to the Russian edition of 1882 written by Marx and Engels, the Russian edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party was printed and distributed. Studies and translations of important Marxist documents have made Plekhanov transform from a Narodnik to a Marxist. In 1883, he founded the Emancipation of the Labor Group, the first Marxist group in Russia. In 1889, as the representative of Russian socialists, Plekhanov attended the founding conference of the International Workers’ Congress (the “Second International”). After the conference, he went to London to visit Engels and was warmly received by Engels.

From the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century, Plekhanov actively defended Marxism in theory and struggled against various erred ideas.

He made debates against Bernsteinism, criticized the Russian Bernsteinists—the economist faction, after translating the third Russian translation of Manifesto of the Communist Party, he fought back the economist attempts to defame this work. In 1900 he supported Lenin in founding the periodical newspaper Iskra and wrote 37 articles for it, clarified many theoretical and policy issues which paved the way for the establishment of the Marxist political party. At the Second Congress of Russian Social-Democratic Labor Party in 1903, he supported Lenin’s proposals and stood on the side of Bolsheviks.

But after the end of the Second Congress of RSDLP, Plekhanov’s attitude on the party’s organization and strategy wavered and he began to reconcile with the Mensheviks. In 1905, when the Russian Revolution erupted, he wrote the article “March Separately But Strike Together”, explaining how the Bolsheviks’ tactic thinking should be under the new conditions, advising that the proletariat should form an alliance with the democratic bourgeoisie, however he had completely ignored the role of the peasants.

In a statement issued on May 29, 1905, he withdrew from the newspaper Iskra and the general committee of the party and began to take the so-called special position of “standing outside factions”. During the Stolypin’s reactionary reforms period (1907-1911), his followers advocated the preservation of Bolshevik secret organizations and secret work. However, after the Prague Congress in 1912, he opposed the expulsion of the liquidationists from the party, accused Bolsheviks of splitting RSDLP, and tried to convince the revolutionaries and opportunists in the party to “glue” again in order to achieve party unity. After the outbreak of the World War I, he opposed Lenin’s slogan of “Turn Imperialist War into Civil War”, instead he advocated “Defend the Motherland”, which caused Lenin to call him “Social-Patriot”.

After the Russian Revolution overthrew the Tsar government in February 1917, Plekhanov returned to Russia. He advocated to carry out Russia’s war against Germany till the end and publicly called on the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to cooperate, otherwise both would perish and then the whole country would perish. He held a negative attitude towards the October Revolution and argued that the proletariat could seize the power only when it would constitute the majority of the population. However, when Plekhanov was urged to take part in the overthrow of the Soviet regime and was asked to head the new government, he firmly refused. On May 30, 1918, Plekhanov died of lung disease during his cure at a sanatorium in Terijoki (Zelenogorsk) in Finland.

Lenin thought that Plekhanov was an outstanding Marxist philosopher, and all his philosophical works “should be listed as a must-read textbook of communism”. His most influential works are Socialism and Political Struggle, Our Differences (1884), Unaddressed Letters, Art&Social Life (1899-1900), N.G. Chernychevsky (1890-1892), The Development of the Monist View of History, Anarchism and Socialism (1894), The Materialist Conception of History (1897), On the Role of the Individual in History (1898). His main theoretical contribution to Marxist philosophy is the outstanding and original interpretation and development of Marxist historical materialism, including exploring the theoretical source of historical materialism, and considering historical materialism as the completion of the materialist system. The emergence of historical materialism is the unity of inheritance and transformation in historical development and it is the greatest revolution in the history of human thought; starting from the basic theory of social existence determining social consciousness, he made a concise explanation and exertion of the power of social development, and pointed out that the production and reproduction of material wealth is the basis of social life, while opposing the idea of distorting historical materialism into “economic materialism”, by elaborating production relations into technical relations and property relations, social consciousness into social psychology and ideological system, he introduced the “five factors” formula of social structure; he studied the interaction of various forms of social consciousness and their special regularity, emphasized the relative independence of social consciousness, and attached great importance to the great role of advanced thought and theory.

Starting from the basic principle of historical materialism, he comprehensively and systematically elucidated the role of geographical environment in social development, and pointed out that the role of geographical environment in social development is mediated by the productive forces , which varies according to the nature, scale and level of productive forces; he creatively developed the principles of historical materialism regarding the individual’s role in history, and systematically analyzed the individual’s role in history through the profound discussion of freedom and necessity, contingency and necessity; he criticized the “exceptionalism theory” which opposed the history of Russia to that of Western Europe at that time, and proved that the path of Russia’s transition from feudalism to capitalism was the same as that of other European countries, etc.