18 Facts About Georgi Plekhanov

Georgi Plekhanov was an opponent of the Bolshevik state which came to power in the autumn of 1917.

Georgi Valentinovich Plekhanov was born 29 November 1856 in the Russian village of Gudalovka in the Tambov Governorate, one of twelve siblings.

Georgi Plekhanov's mother, Maria Feodorovna, was a distant relative of the famous literary critic Vissarion Belinsky and was married to Valentin in 1855, following the death of his first wife.

Georgi Plekhanov remained a student at the Military Academy, where he was well taught by his teachers and well liked by his classmates, until 1873.

In 1871, Valentine Georgi Plekhanov gave up his effort to maintain his family as a small-scale landlord and accepted a job as an administrative official in a newly formed zemstvo.

On 6 December 1876, Georgi Plekhanov delivered a fiery speech during a demonstration in front of the Kazan Cathedral in Saint Petersburg in which he indicted the Tsarist autocracy and defended the ideas of Chernyshevsky.

Georgi Plekhanov was arrested twice for his political activities, in 1877 and again in 1878, but released both times after only a short time in jail.

Georgi Plekhanov accompanied him in 1880 when he left Russia for Switzerland on what was originally intended as a brief stay.

In 1903, at the Second Congress of the RSDLP, Georgi Plekhanov initially sided with Lenin, ironic given his later politics.

In January 1895, Georgi Plekhanov published his most famous work, The Development of the Monist View of History.

Georgi Plekhanov's book became a very popular defense of the materialistic conception of history.

Later on 8 February 1895, Engels wrote directly to Georgi Plekhanov congratulating him on the "great success" of getting the book "published inside the country".

Georgi Plekhanov was initially dismayed by the February Revolution of 1917, considering it as an event which disorganized Russia's war effort.

In 1879, Georgi Plekhanov married Rozalia Bograd, who accompanied him into exile in Switzerland in 1880.

Georgi Plekhanov trained as a doctor in Saint Petersburg and joined the ranks of the Populists or Narodniks, spending the summer of 1877 in the village of Shirokoe in Samara Oblast where she sought to raise the political consciousness of the local peasantry.

Georgi Plekhanov accompanied her husband back to Petrograd following the February Revolution and was with him when he died of tuberculosis in Finland in 1918.

Georgi Plekhanov returned to Paris where she died in 1949.

Georgi Plekhanov died of tuberculosis in Terijoki, Finland on 30 May 1918.