A.K. Voronsky - G. V. Plekhanov

Plekhanov died in tragic circumstances. Before his death he parted not only from the most advanced detachments of the Russian working class; but even the majority of his recent co-thinkers abandoned him. War and the Russian Revolution hurled Plekhanov into the camp of his enemies of yesterday opportunists, against whom he had waged a merciless and brilliant struggle.

Plekhanov died an intellectual outcast, despite his enormous and unfading contributions to the Russian and Western European workers' movement.

The revolution is ruthless. Like Saturn it devours its children, without slowing its furious pace for even a second. It overthrows yesterday's leaders and authorities, and tomorrow hurls them into the depths of political nonexistence. Our time is a cruel time, merciless and ungrateful. In the whirlwind of events, the human individual disappears like a grain of dust, and the grandiose appears petty and commonplace.

Sometime in the tragic distance, various events which we have passed by indifferently, and various individuals who are forgotten, having been erased by today's hurricane, will arise with all their titanic might out from under the dust of decades and appear before future generations; and the future will give the past its due and restore the proper historical perspective.

And I think that Plekhanov's star will once again radiate with all its brilliance.

It is difficult for us, communist Bolsheviks, to speak about G. V. Plekhanov in the even and dispassionate tone of a researcher, even though Plekhanov is no longer alive, and even though Plekhanov belongs to the past. The events are still too fresh, and the recent struggle of life and death is too easy to remember...

... July 1917. The Provisional Government, along with Mister Aleksinsky, a member of Plekhanovs Unity, creates an absurd provocation, the shameful and vile legend about Lenin and Trotsky, presenting them as agents of the German general staff. A trial is held, and an investigation is launched. Plekhanov knew that this was a foul lie. He was too intelligent, and knew both Lenin and Trotsky too well to believe the slander. But Plekhanov remained silent in his Unity. No one heard his weighty and authoritative words, he didnt drive Aleksinsky out of Unity. This silence was a great sin, Plekhanovs sin before the Russian and Western European workers; and it was greater and more bitter than all the other mistakes and errors Plekhanov committed. Could we really be expected to forget this, to strike it from our memories?...

But we Bolsheviks know yet another Plekhanov...

Plekhanov is the father of Russian revolutionary Marxism. He was the first prophet and seer of the workers movement in Russia and of the Russian proletarian revolution. He was the first to discover the Russian worker as the basis, the foundation and the support of the struggle for socialism in Russia. Now, for us, this is a truism, a well-worn, clichd truth, but forty years ago one needed to have an enormous intellect and sensitivity in order to say what Plekhanov said then: The revolutionary movement in Russia will triumph only as a revolutionary movement of workers. At that time, this statement was by no means obvious. The better part of the revolutionary intelligentsia at that time saw in the worker only the negative, they saw only the scum of capitalism. The Russian obshchina (peasant commune), the spontaneous Pugachev rebellions were the basis, the alpha and omega, of revolutionary tactics. Plekhanov discovered the Russian worker and for the first time in Russia the doctrine of the class struggle was proclaimed, a doctrine which said that every class struggle is a political struggle.

Plekhanov fought for socialism as a product of the workers movement throughout almost the entire forty years of his literary and revolutionary activity. His polemic with N. K. Mikhailovsky and other populists was one of the most instructive and interesting pages in the history of our Russian society. Plekhanov never tired of confirming that all hopes of leaping over this stage of historical development were empty illusions which would be shattered ruthlessly by reality. On this question Plekhanov left us the richest literary heritage, which has by no means lost its value even today, when the struggle is already under way to liquidate capitalist relations.

Plekhanov is not only the father of Russian Marxism, but of Marxism in general. He is a disciple of Marx and Engels, he is their loyal and orthodox follower, but he belongs to the ranks of those disciples who go further than their teacher, dressing theory in the flesh and blood of new phenomena, events and facts working over, perfecting and deepening the constructs of their teacher. Plekhanov completely mastered both the spirit and method of Marxs teaching. Under his pen the revolutionary doctrine became animated with all its flexibility, profundity and merciless severity. Not all pupils are able to accomplish this. We know of examples where disciples have turned the doctrine of their teacher into a dogma, into something ossified and cold. This did not happen with Plekhanov precisely because he first of all mastered the method itself superbly. Plekhanov was not a scholastic, he was not a dry and lifeless dogmatic. From Plekhanov we all must learn how to approach various complex theoretical problems from the standpoint of revolutionary Marxism.

Plekhanov did not remain within the confines of ground already covered. He tirelessly repeated what had been learned, he had favorite propositions and favorite thoughts which he tirelessly repeated in almost every article: it is being which determines consciousness, and not consciousness which determines being, and so forth. But see how this old material appeared in a new way, how it turned into, not a clich, but a fresh thought which found reinforcement and further development from an entirely new point of view. See how before your very eyes a familiar proposition has become bathed in a new light and taken on the living garb of life itself.

None of his contemporaries knew as well as Plekhanov the French materialists of the eighteenth century, or the German philosophers Hegel, Fichte, and Feuerbach. In this realm, Plekhanov knew no equals. Among us Marxists there are few people with a broad philosophical education. With us, philosophical questions are generally kept off to the side; they take a back seat. Marx and Engels made many brilliant and extraordinary statements, but it was Plekhanov who brought everything together into a system. Whoever wants to make a thorough study of the philosophical foundations of Marxism has no other choice, and no other books to read, than the books by Plekhanov. Western European socialist literature is even more wanting than ours in this regard.
In questions of philosophy Plekhanov was a dialectical materialist. Plekhanovs scientific struggle for materialism took on a specific character in the twentieth century. The bourgeoisie had long ago started to decline. It had long ago begun to outlive itself not only in the realm of productive relations, and not only in the realm of politics, but also in the sphere of science and art. In recent years the political reaction and impoverishment of the bourgeoisie has been accompanied by a retrogressive movement in the realm of scientific thought as well. In particular, the past materialism of the eighteenth century and Darwinism have begun to be replaced with attempts to reconcile religion with science, and with ever greater frequency the reactionary side of Kantianism is advanced. We have begun to see tight-rope walkers and sophists of philosophical thought. At first there was Avenarius, then the brilliant and intelligent Bergson, then the obliging James with his pragmatism and so on. Materialism was declared to be an outmoded, naive doctrine. Bourgeois reaction in the realm of philosophical thought found its adherents in the socialist milieu as well. Plekhanovs struggle for materialism was a struggle against demoralizing bourgeois ideology, a struggle against the dominant tendency among scholars. Plekhanov was merciless and entered into this battle fully armed with the knowledge of the history of philosophy. With what annihilating criticism Plekhanov spoke out against our empirio-monists, Bogdanov, Bazarov and Lunacharsky! It is a fact that after Plekhanovs articles the philosophical exercises of Bogdanov, Bazarov and Lunacharsky began to fade and soon they began to attract ever smaller amounts of attention.