Pavel Axelrod - Marxist Revolutionary

Marxist Revolutionary

Influenced by Mikhail Bakunin in his youth, he remained an Idealist even after adopting the Marxist philosophy of historical materialism. Axelrod co-founded the Marxist group Emancipation of Labor in Switzerland with his lifelong friend Georgi Plekhanov and Vera Zasulich in 1883. In 1900, Axelrod, Plekhanov and Zasulich joined forces with younger revolutionary Marxists Julius Martov, Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Potresov and the six edited Iskra, a Marxist newspaper, from 1900 to 1903. When Iskra supporters split at the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party in 1903, Axelrod sided with the Menshevik faction against Vladimir Lenin's Bolsheviks.

In 1917, after the February Revolution Axelrod returned to Russia. By then some Mensheviks had already joined Kerensky's Provisional Government and supported government war policy. Despite all his efforts Axelrod failed to gain Mensheviks' support for a policy of immediate peace negotiations with the Central Powers. After the Bolshevik victory, which Axelrod called a "historical crime without parallel in modern history", he toured the world rallying socialist opposition to the Bolsheviks.