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Tkachev and the Marxists

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Deborah Hardy
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Extract

Interest in Peter Tkachev, the angry young man of the Russian revolutionary movement in the 1860s and 870s, has generally been focused on his role as a “forerunner of Lenin.” Indeed, that is what Professor Michael Karpovich called him in an article published several decades ago. More recently Professor Albert L. Weeks has gone so far as to dub Tkachev “the first Bolshevik.” In his Tkachev biography Professor Weeks has included a study of similar Soviet opinions, that is, of the great debate in the early 1920s centering on the relationship of Lenin, Tkachev, and Auguste Blanqui, from whom Tkachev drew much of his inspiration.

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Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 29 , Issue 1 , March 1970 , pp. 22 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1970

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References

1. Michael, Karpovich, “A Forerunner of Lenin : P. N. Tkachev,” Revieiv of Politics, 6 (1944) : 336–50.Google Scholar

2. Weeks, Albert L., The First Bolshevik : A Political Biography of Peter Tkachev (New York and London, 1968).Google Scholar

3. Kozmin wrote prolifically on Tkachev and other radicals of the 1870s. His book was entitled P. N. Tkachev i revoliutsionnoe dvizhenie 1860-kh godov (Moscow, 1922). Also to the point are hjs introductory essay on Tkachev in Tkachev, P. N., Isbrannye sochineniia na sotsial'no-politicheskie temy, 6 vols. (Moscow, 1932-37), 1 : 9–56Google Scholar (hereafter this work is cited in the text and footnotes by volume and page numbers), and the article “K voprosu ob otnoshenii P. N. Tkacheva k marksizmu,” Literatumoe nasledstvo, 7-8 (1933) : 117-23.

4. Weeks, The First Bolshevik, pp. 129-35 and passim.

5. Pokrovsky, M. N., Ocherki russkogo revolixitsionnogo dvisheniia XIX-XX w. (Moscow, 1924), p. 62.Google Scholar See also, for example, Piksanov, N. K., Dva veka russkoi litera' tury (Moscow and Petrograd, 1923), p. 142, Google Scholar and Kravtsov, N, “P. N. Tkachev : Pervyi kritik-marksist,” Na literatumom postu, 1927, no. 3, pp. 22–26.Google Scholar

6. These references are found in Tkachev, 1 : 69-70, 2 : 148, and 6 : 161.

7. Ibid., 1 : 69-77. Zhukovsky wrote for Sovremennik and Tkachev (at this time) for Pisarev's nihilist journal, Russkoe Slovo.

8. Ibid., 1 : 69-70.

9. Reuel, A, “Ekonomicheskie vzgliady P. N. Tkacheva,” Problemy ekonomiki, 1938, no. 4, pp. 142–61.Google Scholar

10. See his review of Malthus, in Tkachev, 5 : 446-60, also 1 : 60.

11. Ibid., 5 : 320-26, 1 : 67; review of Adam Smith, 5 : 391-407.

12. Ibid., 5 : 320 ff., 1 : 66-67.

13. Reuel, “Ekonomicheskie vzgliady,” p. 148; Tkachev, 5 : 310-11.

14. Ibid., 5 : 177-89, 312-26, 2 : 67.

15. Ibid., 1 : 340-41 and 347-48.

16. Tkachev was for a time fascinated by medieval history and wrote several long articles about it : see ibid., 1 : 101-72 and 5 : 104-52. In a long essay, not published during his lifetime, he anticipated Max Weber in his identification of Protestantism with capitalism : “Ocherki iz istorii ratsionalizma,” 5 : 104-52, particularly part 2.

17. Ibid., 2 : 30-34.

18. These difficult, unclear, and often contradictory articles were written in 1872 and may be found in Tkachev, 2 : 224-57, 258-319, and 320-59.

19. Kozmin did not include this review in his collection of Tkachev's works, but he discussed it, with quotations, in 5 : 470-71, n. 6. Tkachev's references are in 5 : 24, 41.

20. See Kozmin's notes 31 and 32, ibid., 2 : 443.

21. Ibid., 6 : 5-104, especially parts 5 through 8. Similar analyses are found in Marx's Capital, volume 1, chapter 15.

22. In 1868. See ibid., 1 : 398.

23. Bentham's ethics, he said, belong “without argument among the greatest and most fruitful doctrines to which human reason at any time has risen.” Ibid., 5 : 389.

24. Ibid., 5 : 172, to give one of many examples.

25. Reuel (p. 146) calls this “hairdressing Marx with the comb of Bentham.“

26. See Kozmin's note 136, in Tkachev, 3 : 473.

27. See his review of Zimmerman's history of the peasant wars, ibid., 1 : 234-57. Tkachev's conviction that history does not operate by predetermined laws is most clearly expressed in a long article on Quinet, 2 : 69—118. See also 1 : 69 and 260-61.

28. These articles are printed in Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, Werke (Berlin, 1961), 18 : 536–45.Google Scholar

29. Ibid., 18 : 542.

30. Ibid., 18 : 663.

31. Ibid., 34 : 5.

32. Three of these articles were published separately by Engels in a little volume entitled Soziales aus Russland (Leipzig, 1875).

33. Marx and Engels, Werke, 18 : 557, 560.

34. Ibid., pp. 563-65.

35. Weeks, The First Bolshevik, p. 118.

36. Marx later, in his famous letter to Vera Zasulich, himself cast doubt on Engels' interpretation.

37. The notes and introduction to this translated book, which was by the Lassallian Ernst Becher, may be found in Tkachev, 1 : 403-29.

38. In his journal, Nabat, Tkachev considered the writings of the anarchists in great detail. On one occasion he reviewed documents from the anarchist section of the International ; Tkachev, 3 : 338-59. He spoke of the English and German sections as “reactionary“ (3 : 389).