Collected Works of V. I. Lenin - Vol. 13 - From Marx to Mao

NOTES5135455of Labour group were an important step towards the building of aSocial-Democratic Party in Russia. Plekhanov’s book The Developmentof the Monist View of History (1895) “served to rear a wholegeneration of Russian Marxists” (Lenin, see present edition,Vol. 16, “The Vperyod Faction”). It played a very important rolein spreading Marxist views and stating the case for dialecticaland historical materialism. The group published and distributedin Russia four volumes of the symposium Sotsial-Demokrat, aswell as a series of popular pamphlets for the workers.Engels welcomed the appearance of the Emancipation ofLabour group “which sincerely and without reservations acceptedthe great economic and historical theories of Marx” (Karl Marx,Friedrich Engels, Ausgewählte Briefe, Berlin, Dietz Verlag, 1953,S. 455). Plekhanov and Vera Zasulich were personal friends ofEngels and corresponded with him for many years. The groupestablished contacts with the international labour movement, and,beginning with the First Congress of the Second International(Paris, 1889) and throughout the whole period of its existence, itrepresented Russian Social-Democracy at all congresses of theInternational.The group played an important part in developing revolutionaryconsciousness of the Russian working class, although the grouphad no practical ties with the workers’ movement in Russia. Leninpointed out that the group “only laid the theoretical foundationsfor the Social-Democratic movement and took the first steptowards the working-class movement” (see present edition, Vol.20, “The Ideological Struggle in the Working-Class Movement”).Moreover the members of the group were guilty of serious errors.They overestimated the role of the liberal bourgeoisie andunderestimated the revolutionary role of the peasantry as a reserveforce of the proletarian revolution. These errors contained the germof the future Menshevik views adopted by Plekhanov and othermembers of the group.On the initiative of the group, the Union of Russian Social-Democrats Abroad was founded in 1894. The members of the groupwithdrew from the Union in 1900 and founded the revolutionaryorganisation Sotsial-Demokrat. Members of the group on theeditorial boards of Iskra and Zarya were Plekhanov, Axelrod, andVera Zasulich. The Emancipation of Labour group announced itsdissolution at the Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P. in August1903. p. 94St. is V. V. Starkov, R. is S. I. Radchenko, K. is R. E. Klasson.p. 98Novoye Slovo (New Word)—a monthly scientific, literary, andpolitical magazine, published by liberal Narodniks in St. Petersburgfrom 1894, and by the “legal Marxists” from the spring of 1897.It published two articles by Lenin, “A Characterisation ofEconomic Romanticism” and “About a Certain Newspaper Article”.The magazine was closed down by the tsarist authorities inDecember 1897. p. 98