Georgi Plekhanov

Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov (; – 30 May 1918) was a Russian revolutionary, philosopher and Marxist theorist. Known as the "father of Russian Marxism", Plekhanov was a highly influential figure among Russian radicals, including Vladimir Lenin.

Born to a Tatar noble family, Plekhanov joined the Narodnik movement as a student. He was twice arrested and fled to Switzerland in 1880, where he continued his political activity and became a Marxist. In 1883, he helped found the first Russian Marxist group, Emancipation of Labour, and from 1900 co-edited the journal ''Iskra'' with Lenin. Though he supported Lenin's Bolshevik faction at the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903, Plekhanov soon rejected his idea of democratic centralism, and became one of Lenin and Leon Trotsky's principal antagonists in the 1905 Revolution and Saint Petersburg Soviet.

During World War I, Plekhanov rallied to the cause of the Entente powers against Germany. He returned to Russia following the February Revolution of 1917, and was an opponent of the Bolshevik state which came to power in the October Revolution, considering the revolution "unprincipled" and a "violation of all the laws of history". Plekhanov died the next year of tuberculosis in Finland. Despite his vigorous and outspoken opposition to Lenin's political party in 1917, Plekhanov was held in high esteem by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union following his death as a founding father of Russian Marxism and a philosophical thinker. Provided by Wikipedia