After the assassination of Alexander II, which never led to the destruction of the monarchy, the revolutionaries decided to revise the principles of their struggle with tsarist power. In 1883, the first Russian Marxist organization, the Emancipation of Labor, was established in Switzerland. The group included members of Narodnaya Volya and Black Repartition.
Institution
Interestingly, the creation of the Emancipation of Labor group was initiated by only five people: Georgy Plekhanov, Vasily Ignatov, Vera Zasulich, Lev Deutsch and Pavel Axelrod. They became the only participants in the organization, with the exception of Sergey Ingerman, who joined in 1888.
Because of the failure of the Narodniks, the revolutionaries began to search for a new theory that could become the basis of their activity. Plekhanov plunged into acquaintance with West European socialism. The creation of the Emancipation of Labor group came about after the leaders of the Russian revolutionary movement adopted the ideas of Marxism set forth in the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The group set itself an important task - to translate the books of these theorists into Russian. The former populism was over.
Program
The ideas that Plekhanov's group promoted were not new. Russian socialists gleaned them from foreign sources. It was on their basis that the program of the Emancipation of Labor group was drawn up. An important foundation for her was criticism of populism. In his publications, Plekhanov argued that Russia had already embarked on the path of development of capitalism. This meant that the decisive force in the future revolution would not be the peasantry, on which the Narodniks relied, but the proletariat.
The political demands of the Social Democrats boiled down to general democratic transformations. After them, the authorities had to make concessions to the workers. The SDG program “Emancipation of Labor” was analyzed by Lenin in his journalistic articles, later included in the classical works of the Bolshevik leader. The value of this document was not only in its requirements. The program of Plekhanov and his supporters was the first program of the Russian Social Democrats. It appeared before a similar document of the RSDLP, written by Lenin and his editors Iskra.
The heirs of Chernyshevsky
Plekhanov and other members of the group were "children of Chernyshevsky." The ideas and works of this particular Russian writer had the greatest influence on them even before the creators of Emancipation of Labor became acquainted with Marxism. The author of Capital died in 1883, the year the Plekhanov group was founded. Russian socialists even managed to briefly communicate with the founder of their new ideology.
More prolonged was communication with Engels, who died in 1895. It was for the period 1883-1895. accounted for the first Marxist publications of Plekhanov. On the basis of a new ideology, he rethought the legacy of the "sixties-populists."
The first successes of Plekhanov
The impetus for new studies of Chernyshevsky’s heritage was Plekhanov’s death of the writer in Saratov in 1889 and subsequent student unrest that swept through many large cities of Russia. Against the background of these events, the founder of the Emancipation of Labor began to collect material for his new fundamental work devoted to the cult personality of the domestic socialist movement.
Plekhanov managed to get the memoirs of the revolutionary Pyotr Lavrov written specially at his request . The Emancipation of Labor group published four articles on Chernyshevsky, in which for the first time in the history of Russian socialism the ideas and philosophy of the writer were examined from a Marxist perspective. The appearance of these materials and their wide distribution among the reading public has become an important milestone for the distribution and propaganda of the teachings of the author of Capital.
Further activities
Although the Emancipation of Labor group is, first and foremost, an organization rallied around Plekhanov, all its members in one way or another took part in the dissemination and popularization of Marxist ideas. In 1884, Axelrod wrote The Labor Movement and Social Democracy, and in 1888 the efforts of the entire organization brought to light the compilation Social Democrat.
In addition, in 1890-1892. published a literary review. Within its framework, four books were published. The review served three purposes: it propagated Marxism, criticized populism, and also disseminated information about the activities of supporters of social democracy in foreign countries.
The fight against economism
Time has shown that the creation of the Marxist Emancipation of Labor group not only helped propagate Marxism in Russia, but also served as the beginning of the unification of the Russian Social Democrats who lived in exile. It was not so easy to rally left-wing supporters. To this end, the Plekhanov group systematically fought against the ideas of economism. Supporters of this movement, under the influence of Eduard Bernstein, began to oppose the workers making political demands.
According to economists, the proletariat should have fought only for its social and economic interests. However, for completely different purposes, the creation of the Emancipation of Labor group was initiated. The date of its appearance (1883) is a reference point in the proletarian confrontation with tsarism due to political differences. In the end, economists were defeated. One of the most striking episodes of the struggle against them was the publication in Vademekum of a protest of the Social Democrats, compiled by Lenin, who was in exile.
The defeat of the opportunists and revisionists
In Russian Marxism, there was another movement that quarreled revolutionaries among themselves. The stumbling block was opportunism. Among Marxists, this word has become a cliché that has stigmatized opponents of the Social Democrats program. Right-wing opportunists advocated a rejection of revolutionary methods of struggle. They believed that social justice could be achieved through the cooperation of all classes, including the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. Opportunism was also left. Proponents of this theory believed that it was necessary to bring revolutionary violence to the maximum.
Both right and left opportunists were criticized first by Plekhanov in the "Emancipation of Labor", and then by the Bolsheviks led by Lenin. The ideological conflict in the social democratic environment led to the appearance of revisionists. They disputed the conclusion of Marx that the crisis of capitalism is inevitable for objective and independent reasons. Therefore, the revisionists proposed to cooperate with other parties in order to achieve socialism. Despite the existence of many different ideological groups, it was Plekhanov's supporters who secured the support and attention of the largest number among the left. The success was largely achieved thanks to the active journalistic and propaganda activities of the Emancipation of Labor group.
Supporters at home
Although the Plekhanovites experienced many organizational and financial difficulties, they were able to quickly establish contacts with activists throughout the Russian Empire. The socialists of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kharkov, Kiev, Vilnius, Riga, Odessa, Minsk, Nizhny Novgorod and other large cities had direct contacts with an organization formally existing in Switzerland. It was such a wide reaction that caused the creation of the Emancipation of Labor group. From year to year, the influence of Plekhanov and his supporters only grew.
In 1895, the Union for the Emancipation of the Working Class established the closest connection with the group. This collaboration has had far-reaching implications. In 1896, the International Socialist Congress was held in London. Lenin's “Union” made Plekhanov his delegate at that event. A few months later, Vladimir Ulyanov was arrested and sent into exile. After that, the "Union for the Emancipation of the Working Class" became the stronghold of economists, and the connection between the two organizations was lost.
In the international arena
The Emancipation of Labor collaborated not only with Russian supporters, but also with socialists in Europe. The group has contacted organizations and parties in France, Germany, Poland, England, Switzerland, Bulgaria and Austria-Hungary. Bright leaders of the European socialist movement collaborated with the Plekhanovites. Eduard Aveling, Antonio Labriolu, August Bebel, Wilhelm Liebknecht, Clara Zetkin, etc. can be added to this series of names.
Representatives of the Emancipation of Labor participated in several international events of the European Left. They attended congresses in Paris, Zurich, London.
Abolition
In 1901, the Emancipation of Labor group merged with the Iskra editors, headed by Lenin. Within the Russian socialist movement , a period of fruitful cooperation began. The main figures in it were Lenin and Plekhanov. In 1903, an ideological conflict began between them. The decisive chord in this dispute was the Second Congress of the RSDLP. The newly created party split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks.
Plekhanov and some other socialists, including Martov, believed that in the fight against tsarism one could rely on the support of the bourgeoisie. Lenin was much more radical. He considered the bourgeoisie the main class enemy of the proletariat. The Mensheviks also opposed giving the Central Committee of the Party too much authority, for which the Bolsheviks advocated. The gap has become apparent. And although the Russian socialists continued to maintain relations with each other, it was then that the prerequisites for the defeat and death of the Mensheviks after 1917 were laid. The Emancipation of Labor group supported Plekhanov and went to Martov, after which he virtually ceased to exist.
Value
The consequences of the creation of the Emancipation of Labor group became clear much later than the cessation of this organization. After the revolution, Lenin declared that the Plekhanovites laid the foundations of Russian socialism and were the first to meet the aspirations of the proletariat. Also, the leader of the Bolsheviks believed that the creation of the Emancipation of Labor group made it possible to put an end to the Narodniks, anarchists, revisionists, and other "wrong" leftists.
Thanks to the organization founded in 1883, the Russian revolutionaries were finally able to look at socialism as a scientific theory with its own evidence base and convincing logic. Lenin believed that the beginning of the history of domestic Marxism was precisely the creation of the Marxist group “Emancipation of Labor”. The year 1883 can be considered this important point for the history of Russia. In the USSR, much attention was paid to the study of the Emancipation of Labor activity. Soviet historians recognized that without this organization, the fate of the 1917 revolution could have been completely different.