David Ryazanov

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David Ryazanov (Russian: Дави́д Бори́сович Ряза́нов) (March 10, 1870–21 January 1938) was a Russian Marxist and Marxologue.

[edit] From the Narodniks to the October Revolution

Born in Odessa, Ryazanov, at the age of 15, joined the Narodnik revolutionaries, for which he was arrested and passed five years in prison. He adhered to socialism in 1887, then to Marxism. At 19 years old, he entered in contact with Russian Marxist circles. Two years later, in 1891, he was sent in a katorga (Russian labour camp) by the Okhrana, the Czarist political police. He stayed there for four years. In 1900, he went into exile and devoted himself to the diffusion of Marx's texts. He returned to Russia during the 1905 Revolution, which failed. He was then deported, and then went again in exile, during which he started writing a history of the First International.

David Ryazanov then fought in 1914 during World War I and participated to the 1915 Zimmerwald Conference of the Second International. He returned to Russia following the February Revolution in 1917, and joined the Bolsheviks who were supporting the Soviets (workers' councils) against the temporary government. Ryazanov then participated in the October Revolution.

[edit] Under the Soviet Union

David Ryazanov later founded the Marx-Engels Institute, which became one of the main institution of Soviet philosophy, and was named its director in 1920. He dedicated himself to the publication of their works, of which numerous inedit manuscripts. Ryazanov also created "MEGA" (Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe), which was to publish the complete works (Gesamtausgasbe) of Marx and Engels. He also edited others authors such as Diderot, Feuerbach or Hegel.

During this period, "he unceasingly participated in the life of the party and trade unions as a conscious marxist, a democratic communist, in other words, opposed to any dictatorship over the proletariat" (Boris Souvarine, David D. Ryazanov, 1931). Defending the trade unions' autonomy against the will of the party, he was excluded from any political responsibility in 1921, at the end of the "war communism" period and the beginning of the NEP ("New Economic Policy"). David Ryazanov was then sent to a labour camp in 1930 by the Stalinist police. He was then freed, but finally executed under Stalin's orders in 1938. Ryazanov left many annotations and commentaries on Marx and Engels' works.