Pavel Axelrod

Pavel Borisovich Axelrod (; 25 August 1850 – 16 April 1928) was an early Russian Marxist revolutionary. Along with Georgi Plekhanov, Vera Zasulich, and Leo Deutsch, he was one of the members of the first organization of Russian Marxists, Emancipation of Labor. After the 2nd Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, he was part of the Menshevik faction, with which he was identified until his death. Early life and career Pavel Axelrod was the son of a Jewish innkeeper. His parents lived in the Jewish poorhouse. He was forced to work for a living from a young age; though while still in his early teens, he produced his first political essay, on the condition of the Jewish poor in the Mogilev Region, in modern-day Belarus. At the age of 16, he discovered the writings of the German socialist Ferdinand Lasalle, which had a major influence on him. Later, he obtained a place at Kiev University, with financial help from wealthy Jews, and organised a political discussion group, based on the ideas of P.L.Lavrov. In 1874, he was one among hundreds of idealistic students who left the cities to work among the peasants. When that experiment failed, he emigrated to Geneva, where he was converted to anarchism and joined a circle of Russians who followed the ideas of Mikhail Bakunin. He returned to Ukraine briefly later in 1875, joined the Land and Liberty (Земля и Воля) party. He devoted himself to propaganda work among factory workers in Kiev, where in 1879, he and Yakov Stefanovich, founded the Workers' Union of South Russia. Unlike other anarchist groups, as well as aiming for the eventual transformation of society on anarchist foundations, they also advocated immediate reforms such as democratic freedoms, shorter working hours etc. The Union disintegrated when Axelrod moved to St Petersburg, at the time when Zemlya i Volya split over the issue of whether to assassinate the Tsar Alexander II. He was a founder the populist Black Repartition group, another of whose leading members was Georgi Plekhanov. Axelrod was a 'moderate' within the Russian revolutionary movement, with an instinctive dislike of revolutionary violence. In 1878, he warned against the possibility of the movement degenerating into Jacobinism.