1. Alexander Nikolayevich Potresov was a Russian social democratic politician and one of the leaders of the Menshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.
22 Facts About Alexander Potresov
1. 2.
Alexander Potresov was one of six original editors of the newspaper Iskra, under the pen name "Starover".
3.
Alexander Potresov studied physics, mathematics and law at the University of St Petersburg.
4.
In 1896 Potresov helped found the St Petersburg Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class, one of the nuclei of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party.
5.
In 1897, Alexander Potresov was arrested and exiled to Vyatka province.
6.
Alexander Potresov grew close to Pavel Axelrod and Vera Zasulich.
7.
Together with Plekhanov, Akselrod, Zasulich, Lenin and Martov, Alexander Potresov launched the journal Iskra, whose mission it was to defend orthodox Marxism against the various heresies of Economism and Revisionism that were then current among Russian Social-Democrats.
8.
In 1898 Alexander Potresov helped found the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party.
9.
In 1903, when the RSDRP split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks, Alexander Potresov sided with the latter.
10.
Alexander Potresov was invaluable to the Mensheviks because of his good contacts to the German Social-Democrats, and was largely responsible for the fact that most SPD leaders tended to sympathise with the Mensheviks.
11.
Alexander Potresov attended the Menshevik's' party congresses in 1906 and 1907.
12.
Alexander Potresov was one of the editors and contributors to the four-volume The Social Movement in Russia in the Early 20th Century.
13.
Alexander Potresov argued that a victory of the Entente over the Central Powers would be a victory of Western democracy over Prussian militarism and would benefit the socialist movement everywhere.
14.
Alexander Potresov propagated these views in the journal Nache Delo.
15.
Alexander Potresov was nevertheless highly critical of the government for its incompetent conduct of the war.
16.
Alexander Potresov was allowed to live in Moscow and there continued his journalism.
17.
Alexander Potresov sought to assist the war effort by joining the Moscow Military Industrial Committee.
18.
Alexander Potresov lived first in Berlin and then in Paris, battling illness.
19.
Alexander Potresov viewed the Soviet Union not as a socialist state but as a thoroughly reactionary oligarchy, a point of view that alienated him from most Mensheviks.
20.
Alexander Potresov contributed regularly to Alexander Kerensky's journal Dni.
21.
Alexander Potresov expected the imminent collapse of communism and urged all anti-Bolshevik forces to unite.
22.
Alexander Potresov died in Paris on July 11,1934, as a consequence of an operation.