Emancipation of Labour
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Emancipation of Labour group (Освобождение труда) was the first Russian Marxist group. Founded by Georgi Plekhanov, Vera Zasulich, Pavel Axelrod, Vasily Ignatov and Leo Deutsch in Geneva (Switzerland) in 1883. Leo Deutsch left group at 1884 due to arrest. Sergey Ingerman joined group at 1888. The group did a great deal to translate Marxist works into Russian and distribute them, and later became the major adversary to the ideology of Narodism.
Two drafts (1883 and 1885) of a program for the Russian Social Democrats were written by Plekhanov and published by the group marking an important step to what would become the building of the Russian Social-Democratic Party. From the first congress of the Second International in Paris (1889), the group represented Russian Social-Democrats at all congresses following.
Lenin later wrote that the group "laid the theoretical foundations for the Social-Democratic movement and took the first step towards the working-class movement in Russia." The group was later followed by League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class (Союз борьбы за освобождение рабочего класса).
