Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/327

Rh brought into being conditions of a quite peculiar kind, with which Marxism has to concern itself.

German Marxism has made its way into all the countries of Europe, and its tactical and theoretical principles have been widely adopted. As a socio-political system Marxism had to prove its validity in the struggle with extant social and political conditions, and in competition with other social and socialistic theories. England had its parliamentarism and its trade unionism, and in that country there has been little trace of a revolutionary movement since the days of the chartists. France, on the other hand, possesses the tradition of the great revolution and of several other notable revolutions; it has numerous socialistic systems and parties; it is a republic sui generis. In England and France, therefore, Marxism has made headway slowly, and only by small degrees has it been accepted by the working classes and their leaders. In Russia, Marxism found the field occupied by Russian socialism and its traditions of nihilism and terrorism, the traditions of the revolutionary narodničestvo. The assassination of Emperor Alexander II constitutes, as it were, a boundary stone between Russian socialism and Marxist socialism. In Russia, absolutism is dominant, absolutism in a markedly theocratic form; the country is predominantly agricultural, for manufacturing industry is found as yet in scattered oases only, and we cannot speak here of industrialisation as it is known in western lands. Owing to all these circumstances, Marxism in Russia has had to undertake peculiar tasks.

It was mainly a practical question of tactics which, after the split in the Zemlja i Volja in the year 1879, led a section of the revolutionaries and socialists into the Marxist camp. The supporters of the Černyi Pereděl made it their direct concern to study more closely the socialist movement in foreign countries. Plehanov, the leader of this group, says of himself that by 1880 he had already in large, part become a social democrat (he does not say that he had become a Marxist).

It was not by chance that Plehanov and his followers turned above all to Germany to study social democracy and to learn from the German movement. The Marxist recruits followed in the footsteps of their leaders, and it must be remembered that it had long been customary to supplement Russian culture by studies in Germany. Moreover, at this epoch the labour movement in Germany was extremely vigorous