Peter Tkachev
| Pyotr Nikitich Tkachev | |
|---|---|
Pyotr Nikitich Tkachev
|
|
| Born |
June 29, 1844 Sivtsovo, Pskov Governorate, Russian Empire |
| Died | January 4, 1886 (aged 41) Paris, France |
| Nationality | Russian |
| Occupation | Writer, critic, revolutionary theoretician. |
Pyotr Nikitich Tkachev, also spelled Tkachyov (Russian: Петр Никитич Ткачев) (June 29, 1844 — January 4, 1886) was a Russian writer, critic and revolutionary theorist who formulated many of the revolutionary principles that would later be further developed and put into action by Vladimir Lenin.
Although Tkachev has sometimes been known as "the First Bolshevik", he 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.
Tkachev was born in 1844 to a minor gentry family. He was born in the village of Sivistov, which was located in the Pskov Governorate. His sister, Alexandra Nikitichna Annenskaya, was a writer for young adults.
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. After being his arrest due to participating in the student strikes of 1861, Tkachev later spent several years in Peter and Paul Fortress.
Tkachev praised Chernyshevsky's novel What Is To Be Done?, calling it the 'gospel of the movement'.
Populists like Tkachev argued against waiting indefinitely for the social revolution, while also in the meantime condemned revolt and terrorism by the vanguard; he believed it risked allowing the tsarist government to stabilise itself by the advancement of capitalism. Only the establishment of a revolutionary dictatorship through seizure of power made it possible to ensure the correct political conditions for a transition to socialism. This would become the 'guiding principle' of Lenin's theory of revolution.
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