Georgi Plekhanov

Plekhanov started as a populist before founding the Emancipation of Labour group in 1883, Russia's first Marxist political organization. His theoretical writings converted revolutionaries including Lenin to the cause, earning him the title "father of Russian Marxism". In 1900 he partnered with Lenin to launch the party paper Iskra, and at the 1903 congress briefly sided with the Bolsheviks before breaking over what he saw as excessive centralism, becoming a Menshevik leader instead. During the 1905 revolution he argued Russia was only ready for bourgeois democracy, not proletarian power. World…