born Dec. 11, 1856, Gudalovka, Russia
died May 30, 1918, Terioki, Fin.
Russian Marxist theorist.
From 1874 he was active in the Populist movement and became a leader of the Land and Freedom group (187780). To avoid arrest, he went into a long exile in Geneva (18801917). In 1883 he founded the first Russian Marxian revolutionary organization, Liberation of Labour, which became the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party (1898). In Socialism and Political Struggle (1883) and Our Differences (1885), he described a two-phase revolutionary scheme that influenced Russian Marxist thought. Followers in the 1890s included Vladimir Ilich Lenin . After the party split (1903), Plekhanov joined the Menshevik s but spent years trying to reunite the party. He supported the Allies in World War I and opposed the Bolshevik seizure of power. After returning briefly to Russia in 1917, he died in exile in Finland.