Marx's greatest rival: founder of collectivist anarchism, at the center of the First International's great split
At the 1869 Basel Congress: 'Take the most fervent revolutionary and give him absolute power — within a year he'll be worse than the Tsar' — cited in Statism and Anarchy
A Tver nobleman, founder of collectivist anarchism. He opposed Marx's statism in the First International, was expelled at the 1872 Hague Congress, and codified stateless federalism in Statism and Anarchy (1873).
Career timeline
1829–1835St. Petersburg Artillery School — commissioned ensign, dismissed for insubordination; joined Stankevich Circle, Moscow
1840–1842Berlin University — joined Left Hegelians, published 'Reaction in Germany' as Jules Elizard
1843–1847Paris and Brussels — befriended Proudon and Marx, expelled from France after pro-Polish speech
1848–1849Pan-Slav Congress, led Prague and Dresden uprisings — death sentences in Saxony and Austria, commuted to life
1851–1861Extradited to Russia — 6 years in fortresses, Siberian exile, escaped via Japan and the United States
1861–1864London exile — joined Herzen's Kolokol, failed expedition for the 1863 Polish uprising
1864–1868Italy — built revolutionary socialist organizations, wrote 'Revolutionary Catechism', founded International Brotherhood
1868–1872Joined First International, formed Alliance of Socialist Democracy — fought Marx, expelled at 1872 Hague Congress
1872–1876Lugano and Locarno — Statism and Anarchy (1873), unfinished God and the State; died in Bern
Russian revolutionary who organized the Paris Commune's Women's Union
She organized cooperative workshops to give women control over their labor.
Born Elizaveta Kusheleva, she later used the married name Tomanovskaya. She took part in the Geneva section of the First International and met Marx in London in 1870. Sent to Paris in 1871 as the International's representative, she founded the Women's Union and organized cooperative workshops for women workers. Wounded while fighting on the barricades during the suppression of the Commune, she escaped to Geneva, returned to Russia, and later followed her second husband, Ivan Davydovski, into Siberian exile. Her date of death is unknown; it has been placed probably between 1916 and 1918.
Career timeline
1867Married Mikhail Tomanovski to gain access to her inheritance and funded revolutionary organizations.
1868–1869Financed and co-edited the Russian-language journal Narodnoye delo and helped found the First International's Russian section in Geneva.
1870Went to London as an envoy of the Geneva section and met Karl Marx.
1871Founded the Women's Union during the Paris Commune and promoted cooperative workshops and labor rights for women.
1871–1877Returned to Russia after the Commune's defeat, then married Ivan Davydovski and followed him into Siberian exile.
Theorist of the mass workers' party: the argument that lost to Lenin's vanguard
Trotsky recalled: 'An atmosphere of simplicity and sincere comradely participation reigned in the Akselrod household.'
A former narodnik, he co-founded the Emancipation of Labour group (1883) with Plekhanov and Zasulich, the first Russian Marxist organisation. As an Iskra editor (1900) and, after the 1903 RSDLP split, the central theoretician of Menshevism, he argued for a mass, democratic workers' party against Lenin's vanguard model. He served on the Petrograd Soviet executive in 1917 but opposed the October Revolution and spent his final decade in exile, active in the Second International.
Career timeline
1872–1874Narodnik in the Chaikovsky circle, Kiev; joins the 'Going to the People'
1876–1879Land and Liberty, then Black Repartition leadership
1881–1883Converts to Marxism in exile; works with German SPD leaders
1883Co-founds Emancipation of Labour in Geneva
1900–1903Editorial board member of Iskra and Zarya
1903–1905Key Menshevik theorist; first to warn Lenin's vanguard risks Jacobin degeneration
1906–1914Active in Second International; defends liquidationism; elected to OK Foreign Secretariat
Co-author of permanent revolution who arranged Lenin's sealed train: the 'merchant of revolution'
In December 1917, Lenin refused Parvus's request to return to Russia with the words: 'the cause of the revolution should not be touched by dirty hands.'
A Marxist theorist and journalist in the German SPD who co-developed the theory of permanent revolution with Leon Trotsky in 1904–1905. During World War I, he built a revolutionary network inside Russia with German government funding and played the decisive role in arranging Lenin's return via the 'sealed train' in April 1917. After the Bolsheviks took power, Lenin refused his request to return, declaring that 'the cause of the revolution should not be touched by dirty hands'; Parvus remained in Germany and became an advisor to early Weimar Republic leaders. Criticized for commodifying his principles between revolutionary Marxism and realpolitik, he remains one of the most controversial figures of 20th-century socialism.
Career timeline
1891PhD from Basel, joins German SPD
1894–1897Writer for Die Neue Zeit, adopts pseudonym Parvus
1897–1898Editor of Sächsische Arbeiterzeitung
1900Helps Lenin and Martov launch Iskra
1904–1905Co-formulates permanent revolution with Trotsky
1905Strategist of the St. Petersburg Soviet, authors Financial Manifesto
1915Presents revolutionary plan to German Foreign Ministry, builds Copenhagen network
Anarchist writer who served 14 years for the Frick assassination attempt, then broke with the Soviet state
At his farewell banquet in Chicago, told of Frick's death, Berkman remarked: 'Frick had been deported by God.'
Russian-born anarchist revolutionary and writer who emigrated to the United States in 1888. Outraged by the repression of striking Homestead steelworkers, he attempted to assassinate industrialist Henry Clay Frick in 1892, served 14 years in prison, and chronicled the experience in Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (1912). After his release he became editor of Emma Goldman's Mother Earth and a central figure in the American anarchist movement; in 1919 he was deported to Soviet Russia for anti-war activism. Initially enthusiastic about the Bolshevik Revolution, he became disillusioned after witnessing the Kronstadt rebellion's suppression and documented the early Soviet state's authoritarianism in The Bolshevik Myth (1925); in French exile he wrote the anarcho-communist primer Now and After (1929).
Career timeline
1888Immigrates to US, joins anarchist movement as typesetter for Johann Most's Freiheit
1892Attempts to assassinate Henry Clay Frick during Homestead strike; serves 14 of 22 years
1907–1915Editor of Mother Earth, builds it into the leading US anarchist journal
1916Launches his own journal The Blast in San Francisco
1917Imprisoned for anti-draft organizing; deported to Soviet Russia in 1919
1921Witnesses Kronstadt suppression, breaks with Bolsheviks, leaves Russia
1925Publishes The Bolshevik Myth, a diary-based critique of early Soviet rule
1929Publishes Now and After, classic introduction to anarcho-communism
