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Updated: June 12, 2025
Certainly there was only one other writer in the whole international movement who could be named as having an equal title to be considered the greatest Socialist theorist since Marx Karl Kautsky. But Plechanov like Marx himself set reality above dogma, and regarded movement as of infinitely greater importance than theory.
As was inevitable, revolutionary terrorism enormously increased. In the cities the working-men were drawn mainly into the Social Democratic Working-men's party, founded by Plechanov and others in 1898, but the peasants, in so far as they were aroused at all, rallied around the standard of the Socialist-Revolutionists, successors to the Will of the People party.
Their imperative needs at the moment were not conflicting needs, but identical ones. To divide their forces, to refuse to co-operate with each other, was to play the game of the Czar and his associates, argued Plechanov.
Plechanov was not blind to the dangers of compromise which must be faced in basing the policy of a movement of the masses upon this reasoning. He argued, however, that there was no choice in the matter at all; that the iron law of historical inevitability and necessity determined the matter.
The minority faction, which followed Plechanov, though he did not formally join it, was called, in contradistinction, the "Mensheviki" that is, the minority. No question of principle was involved in the split, the question at issue being simply whether there should be more or less centralization in the organization. There was no thought on either side of leaving the Social Democratic party.
The opposition to Plechanov on the part of some of the delegates was an evidence of the extent to which disaffection, defeatism, and the readiness to make peace at any price almost a general peace preferably, but, if not, then a separate peace had permeated even the most intelligent part of the Russian army.
Yet he never joined the Bolsheviki, preferring to remain aloof from both factions and steadfastly and earnestly striving to unite them. When the Revolution of 1905 broke out Trotzky had already attained considerable influence among the Socialists. He was regarded as one of the ablest of the younger Marxians, and men spoke of him as destined to occupy the place of Plechanov.
It must safeguard the interests of the working class, enacting improved social legislation for the protection of labor. It must lead Russia to a speedy and lasting peace worthy of a great people." When Plechanov was introduced to the convention as "the veteran of the Russian Revolution" he received an ovation such as few men have ever been accorded.
The Socialists, adopting the tactics of Plechanov, against the advice of Lenine, his former pupil and disciple, had decided not to boycott the elections this time, but to participate in them. When the returns were published it was found that the Social Democrats and the Socialist-Revolutionists had each elected over sixty deputies, the total being nearly a third of the membership 455.
Orthodoks, number thirty-five on the list, is not a Bolshevik, but one of the most active members of the group of so-called Socialist Patriots, the "Unity" group organized by the late George Plechanov to support the Allied war aims, an organization that did much to strengthen Russian morale in the early stages of the war and which has vigorously and bitterly opposed Bolshevism and all its ways.
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