Menshevik philosopher who broke with Lenin over Machism; émigré memoirist of Lenin
Born Volsky in 1880 into a noble family at Morshansk, he became known by the pen name Valentinov, taken from his wife Valentina's name. In Geneva in 1903 he grew close to Lenin and became a Bolshevik, but broke with him over philosophy and went over to the Mensheviks. He argued for supplementing Marxism with the empirio-criticism of Mach and Avenarius, published E. Mach and Marxism in 1908 and became one of the Machists targeted by Lenin's Materialism and Empirio-criticism. Under the New Economic Policy he was deputy editor of the Supreme Economic Council's newspaper; sent to Paris in 1928, he became an émigré in 1930. In exile he wrote Encounters with Lenin and other books, and he died near Paris in 1964.
Also known as: Nikolai Volsky · Nikolay Valentinov · Nikolai Valentinov-Volski · E. Yurevski
Activities and affiliations
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1903–1904
Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP)
Ideology and propaganda -
1904–1917
Ideology and propaganda
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1907–1908
Scholarship and theory
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1922–1930
Soviet Union state institutionsDeputy editor, Torgovo-Promyshlennaya Gazeta; Paris trade mission editor
Economy, finance and planning
Career Timeline
- 1897–1898Studied at the St Petersburg Mining and Technological Institutes
- 1898Arrested and banished to Ufa
- 1901Held in Butyrka prison for joining a demonstration
- 1903Bolshevik; associated with Lenin in Geneva
- 1904Went over to the Mensheviks
- 1908E. Mach and Marxism; The Philosophical Constructions of Marxism
- 1908–1911Worked at Kievskaya Mysl
- 1911–1913De facto editor of Russkoye Slovo
- 1917Broke with the Mensheviks
- 1922–1928Deputy editor of Torgovo-Promyshlennaya Gazeta
- 1928–1930Editor of the Soviet trade mission's journal in Paris
- 1930Became an émigré
- 1953Encounters with Lenin