Sergei Prokopovich

Sergei Nikolaevich Prokopovich (Russian: Серге́й Николаевич Прокопович; 1871–1955) was a Russian economist, sociologist, "Revisionist" Social-Democrat and liberal politician.

Prokopovich was born into a noble family in Tsarskoe Selo in 1871. In the early 1890s he became involved in radical student politics and was at first attracted to populist ('narodnik') ideas, but by 1894 he had embraced Marxism. In 1895 he went to study in Western Europe, graduating from the University of Brussels in 1899. During that period Prokopovich joined the 'Union of Russian Social-Democrats Abroad', one of the groups from which the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party (RSDRP) emerged. Under the influence of the German Revisionist Social-Democrat Eduard Bernstein, the British Fabians, French Possibilism and the emerging Russian trade union movement, Prokopovich and his wife, E.D. Kuskova (1869–1958), moved away from 'orthodox' Marxism toward a position their critics (Georgi Plekhanov, Vladimir Lenin and others) criticised as 'Economism'. In fact, these critics used the term 'Economism' rather loosely and also applied it to revolutionary syndicalist currents within the Social-Democratic party. Peshekhonov's thesis was basically that, since the coming revolution would (according to 'orthodox' Marxism) be 'bourgeois-democratic, the struggle for political emancipation should be led by, and largely left to, the bourgeoisie, while the Russian working class should concentrate on organising itself economically and winning social and economic improvements.

The 'Economist' controversy in Russian Social-Democracy was quite vehement and in some ways foreshadowed the later split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks (not all Mensheviks were former 'Economists', but many were). The dispute can also be seen as part of the controversy over Revisionism and Possibilism which raged in European Marxist parties around the turn of the century.

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