MIA > Archive > Riazanov > Plekhanoc/ELG
The grave into which G.V. Plekhanov’s mortal remains were laid is still fresh, and it is not yet time to take stock of all that he did for the working class. There is just one thing I wish to say at this very moment: how and why it came to pass that the working masses, who had followed G.V. Plekhanov for so long during his lifetime, did not follow his coffin.
G.V. Plekhanov began his active political life with a speech during the famous demonstration, organised by workers and rebels in Kazan Square on 6 December 1876, when, in a passionate speech, he protested against the Tsarist government, which was plucking the finest elements from the ranks of the Russian people to throw them into dungeons or send them to distant Siberia. From that time onwards, he took a very active part in the movement, as one of the finest propagandists amongst factory workers. In March 1878 he worked as an agitator amongst the strikers at the New Paper Mill; in November of the same year, amongst the strikers at König’s spinning mill beyond the Narva checkpoint; and in January 1879 he helped the workers at the same New Paper Mill and at the Schau factory to formulate their demands, which they then presented to the employers. At that time, he became close to Khalturin, the chief organiser of the North Russian Workers’ Union. Forced to leave Russia in early 1880, Plekhanov continued for a long time to draw on the life-giving forces of the revolutionary movement, which multiplied one’s strength tenfold, transformed simple ability into talent, talent into genius, and ordinary courage into heroism.
The experience gained through direct contact with the working class in Russia, and a closer acquaintance with the Western European labour movement, helped Plekhanov to quickly free himself from the old Narodnik prejudices. Having recognised, together with his comrades in the ‘Black Reorganisation’ group – Vera Zasulich, Pavel Axelrod, and Lev Deich – that the struggle against autocracy was the most pressing task of the Russian revolutionary movement, he simultaneously put forward another task: the organisation of the working class into a distinct party with a defined programme, and the propagation of socialism amongst its ranks. It was in this direction that the new revolutionary and first Social-Democratic group in Russia – the ‘Emancipation of Labour’ group, whose most prominent representative was G.V. Plekhanov – was working.
In the early 1880s, among the young Marxists – including Lafargue and Kautsky – there was not a single person who could offer the proletariat what Plekhanov provided in the new group’s first publication – his brilliant work Socialism and Political Struggle, which immediately propelled him to one of the foremost positions in the international Social-Democratic movement.
And yet, Plekhanov was soon forced to cede his place to Kautsky, who was undoubtedly inferior to him in talent but who, from 1883 onwards, had the opportunity to work within the ranks of the German labour movement, then the vanguard of international Social Democracy. Whilst Plekhanov was increasingly compelled by the circumstances of his work to concentrate on general issues and was losing his direct link with the revolutionary movement and the working masses in Russia, Kautsky, on the contrary, had to carefully work out all the programme issues raised by the complex practical realities of the German labour movement. It was precisely for this reason that, for the Russian Social Democrats of the 1890s, Kautsky proved to be no less a teacher than Plekhanov.
Following the International Congress in Paris in 1889, where Plekhanov represented Russia for the first time, and where, after Lavrov – who had spoken on behalf of the old revolutionary intelligentsia – declared that the Russian revolutionary movement would triumph only as a workers’ movement, he was compelled to take a more active part in the international labour movement as a theorist and frequent speaker at congresses. In Zurich, in 1893, he spoke out against the anarchists on the issue of the struggle against militarism, expressing himself in the most decisive manner against the general strike then advocated by the anarchists, and particularly vividly portrayed the danger posed to the European labour movement by Russian tsarism. In 1896, at the London Congress, Plekhanov led the first Social-Democratic delegation. In 1900, at the Paris Congress, Plekhanov waged a struggle against ministerialism, thereby continuing his polemic with German Bernsteinism, which by that time had found followers in Russia, particularly amongst the representatives of Russian legal Marxism. In 1904, the year of the Russo-Japanese War, he appeared at the international congress in Amsterdam as a resolute ‘defeatist’ and, in a courageous and demonstrative manner, expressed the will of the Workers’ International to bring the war to an end and establish international peace.
We shall not dwell on the struggle he waged alongside Lenin against the Russian ‘economists’. It should be noted, however, that without the resolute support which Plekhanov, together with the ‘Emancipation of Labour’ Group, gave to the ‘Iskra people’, the current within Russian Social Democracy that became known as ‘Leninism’ or ‘Bolshevism’ could never have acquired the authority it enjoyed and continues to enjoy amongst the working masses. Consequently, Plekhanov’s struggle against Bolshevism often degenerated into a polemic against the conclusions drawn by the ‘practitioners’ – the revolutionaries – from premises either of their own devising or which they defended with no less passion than the Bolsheviks had previously done.
The estrangement between Plekhanov and the activists, which had been noticeable even before 1905, intensified particularly during and after the first revolution. Plekhanov found it increasingly difficult to maintain direct contact with the working masses. This was far less his fault than it was a misfortune. Following the defeat of the revolutionary movement, Plekhanov – who, in his struggle against the ‘extremes’ of revolutionary practice, had often found himself on the far-right wing of Russian Social Democracy – resolutely turned to theoretical and literary work. It is true that, during the period 1907–1910, he devoted part of his energies to polemics against anarcho-syndicalism, and at international congresses in Stuttgart (1907) and Copenhagen (1910) he spoke on issues relating to the trade union movement; yet all his speeches indicate that even this form of the labour movement interested him more from the point of view of its philosophical underpinnings. But all the energy of the old fighter was reawakened when he had to take up the struggle against liquidationism, and he waged this struggle in alliance with the Bolsheviks. Having parted ways with Lenin once more, he founded a new group, ‘Unity’, which, shortly before the outbreak of the war, set itself the aim – alongside Trotsky’s group – of reconciling the hostile factions.
But Plekhanov devoted most of his time to preparing and editing a major work in which he intended to present a history of Russian social thought from the standpoint of the materialist conception of history. In this work, he intended to summarise his many years of literary activity, in which his brilliant articles on the history of Russian criticism and literature occupy one of the foremost places.
For one must never forget that Georgy Valentinovich Plekhanov emerged from a generation inextricably linked to all the traditions of the Russian revolutionary intelligentsia. This connection is felt more deeply and strongly by the older Social Democrats – who, together with the entire intelligentsia, were schooled by Belinsky, Dobrolyubov, Chernyshevsky and Pisarev, feel more deeply and strongly than the Social Democrats of the new generation and, regrettably, more deeply than the vast masses of workers who have only very recently been drawn into the revolutionary movement.
Meanwhile, the position which Plekhanov has adopted in recent years regarding the war – and which has struck many as unexpected – is largely explained by the reawakening within him of old feelings, once stifled by the influence of the labour movement, but which have recently flared up with renewed vigour.
Plekhanov’s affinity with Romance culture also played a part in this, as did his close friendship with the veteran leaders of the French labour movement – Guesde and Valliant – who, from the very first days of the war, had, under the influence of the thought of the immediate danger that the French bourgeoisie, with Poincaré and Clemenceau, had played no lesser a role in preparing this ruinous war than German imperialism or Russian tsarism.
Plekhanov’s old habit came to the fore here too: having decided that the war, as waged by the Allies, was ‘just’, he, with his usual consistency and fervour, drew all the logical conclusions from this premise. A fierce struggle broke out between them and the Social Democrats, who refused to ‘accept’ the war, leading to a complete break between the founder of Russian Marxism and the overwhelming majority of his former disciples. When Plekhanov, who, whilst abroad, had stopped at nothing – not even the riskiest measures – to destroy his opponents, and who had joined forces with Aleksinsky for this struggle, returned to Russia, he found himself unacceptable even to that section of the Social Democracy which, in its struggle against the imperialist war, had itself become entangled in the webs of the defence movement. To the working masses, the old leader of Russian Social Democracy – who had been extolled in every possible way by representatives of the Russian bourgeoisie, from Milyukov to Purishkevich, and whose name was mentioned in the most bizarre combinations with Savinkov and Kornilov – remained a complete stranger: all that remained in their memory from that period was the “Plekhanov bonus” [1], as one of the futile attempts to reconcile the working class with the brutal devastation with which the policies of tsarism and the bourgeoisie had afflicted Russia, which, to please Anglo-French imperialism and its own great-power ambitions, had consigned the peasant and working masses to years of torment.
Refusing to follow in their wake, unwilling to mix their ranks with those who, in the days when the defencist movement reigned supreme, stopped at nothing – not even the filthiest slander – provided it was directed against the workers, and who concocted the most brutal torments for the working masses, in order to force them to wage war ‘to the bitter end’, the working class, through its entire struggle, and with all its revolutionary will, pays its final tribute to the man who for decades was its leader, who was the first to hand it the banner of revolutionary Marxism, who, thirty-five years ago, before the entire international labour movement, with such brilliant foresight, proudly declared:
‘The revolutionary movement in Russia will triumph only as a revolutionary movement of the workers. We have no other way out, nor can there be any.’
1. The “Plekhanov’s increase” («плехановская прибавка») was a colloquial name for a salary supplement for junior civil servant (lower ranks of the civil service) introduced by the Provisional Government on 5 August 1917.
Last updated on 11 October 2026