Plekhanov Georgy Valentinovich (1856–1918), a leading theoretician of the Russian revolutionary movement and the father of Russian Marxism. Exiled from his native Russia for most of his adult life, in 1883 he founded in Switzerland the first Russian Marxist association – the Emancipation of Labor, a forerunner of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ party. In philosophy he sought to systematize and disseminate the outlook of Marx and Engels, for which he popularized the name ‘dialectical materialism’. For the most part an orthodox Marxist in his understanding of history, Plekhanov argued that historical developments cannot be diverted or accelerated at will; he believed that Russia was not ready for a proletarian revolution in the first decades of the twentieth century, and consequently he opposed the Bolshevik faction in the split (1903) of the Social Democratic party. At the same time he was not a simplistic economic determinist: he accepted the role of geographical, psychological, and other non-economic factors in historical change. In epistemology, Plekhanov agreed with Kant that we cannot know things in themselves, but he argued that our sensations may be conceived as ‘hieroglyphs,’ corresponding point by point to the elements of reality without resembling them. In ethics, too, Plekhanov sought to supplement Marx with Kant, tempering the class analysis of morality with the view that there are universally binding ethical principles, such as the principle that human beings should be treated as ends rather than means. Because in these and other respects Plekhanov’s version of Marxism conflicted with Lenin’s, his philosophy was scornfully rejected by doctrinaire Marxist-Leninists during the Stalin era. See also RUSSIAN PHILOSOPH. J.P.Sc.