Petr Tkachev

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Russian revolutionary Petr Tkachev
Russian revolutionary Petr Tkachev

Petr Nikitich Tkachev, also spelled Pyotr Nikitich Tkachyov (Russian: Петр Никитич Ткачев ) (June 29, 1844 – January 4, 1886) was a Russian writer and critic who formulated many of the revolutionary principles to later influence and be adopted by Vladimir Lenin. Although Tkachev has sometimes been known as "the First Bolshevik",[1] Tkachev did not figure prominently in the mythology of the Soviet Union, as to do so would have detracted from the Bolshevik claim to originality of Lenin's revolutionary thought.

Chief among the ideas that Tkachev espoused that were influential on the development of Lenin's political philosophies was the idea of a revolutionary vanguard. While not explicitly using this Leninist term, Tkachev argued that - in the absence of a popular, peasant-based revolution - revolutionaries should rise up and defeat a tyrannical government.[2] Tkachev was a proponent of a closely organized revolutionary party, following the ideas of Nechaev, and he was also influenced by the French revolutionary Blanquism movement. In Tkachev's eyes, the principal duty of revolutionary parties was not to engage in propaganda efforts, but to overthrow the government and seize power in the name of the proletariat.

Tkachev was born in a village named Sivistov, which was located in the Russian guberniya of Pskov. [3] He began attending St. Petersburg University in 1861, and took part in a series of violent student protests that year. Arrested by police during a riot on 11 October 1861, Tkachev likely came into contact with radical Russian political philosophy through other inmates during the months he was incarcerated at a Kronstadt prison.[4]

It would be misleading, however, to characterize Tkachev as a doctrinaire Marxist. Historian Andrzej Walicki argued that the form of economic determinism espoused by Tkachev differed significantly with the historical materialism developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels:

This specific "economic materialism" of Tkachev did not amount to Marxism; it constituted rather in a peculiar mixture of some elements of Marxism with a rather primitive utilitarianism, grossly exaggerating the role of direct economic motivation in individual behavior.[5]

[edit] Additional reading

  • Hardy, Deborah. Petr Tkachev: The Critic as Jacobin. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1977.
  • Pipes, Richard A. "Russian Marxism and its Populist Background." Russian Review 19:4 (1960), 316-37.
  • Weeks, Albert L. The First Bolshevik: A Political Biography of Peter Tkachev. New York: New York University Press, 1968.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Lenin and the 'Radiant Future'. New York Review of Books (2001-12-20). Retrieved on 2007-12-12.
  2. ^ Riasanovsky, Nicholas (2000). A History of Russia (sixth edition). Oxford University Press, p. 383. ISBN 0-19-512179-1. 
  3. ^ Hardy, Deborah (1977). Petr Tkachev — The Critic as Jacobin. University of Washington Press, p. 17. ISBN 0-295-95547-3. 
  4. ^ Hardy, Deborah (1977). Petr Tkachev — The Critic as Jacobin. University of Washington Press, p. 24. ISBN 0-295-95547-3. 
  5. ^ Walicki, Andrzej (1969). The Controversy over Capitalism. Oxford University Press, p. 141. ISBN 0-198-21474-x. 
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