Nikolaj Evgrafovič Fedoseev

Nikolai Yevgrafovich Fedoseyev (; May 9 1871, [ O.S. 27 April] Nolinsk – July 4 [O.S. 22 June] 1898, Verkhoyansk) was a pioneer of Marxism in the Russian Empire.

Fedoseyev started studying the works of Karl Marx in the late 1880s, and he was expelled from the Kazan Gymnasium in December 1887. In 1888, Fedoseyev founded a Marxist study group. He is credited with teaching the basics of Marxist theory to Maxim Gorky. In 1889, Fedoseyev was arrested for having organized an illegal printing press. In 1892, he was arrested again for organizing a factory strike against the Morozov family. While incarcerated, he corresponded regularly with Vladimir Lenin to discuss Marxist theory. In 1895, the exiled Fedoseyev corresponded with Leo Tolstoy over their shared interest in the ongoing religious persecution of the Doukhobors. In 1898, Fedoseyev was accused of embezzling party funds and shamed. He committed suicide later that year.

Career Fedoseyev was born in Nolinsk, in Vyatka province, the son of a detective. He studied at Kazan Gymnasium, where he became interested in social science, and began studying the writings of Karl Marx, at a time where there were no organised Marxist groups anywhere in the Russian Empire. On 5 December 1887, he was expelled from the gymnasium for 'political unreliability'.

According to Soviet historiography, Vladimir Ulyanov, later known as Lenin, became a member of Fedoseyev Marxist circles in the late 1880s, through which he supposedly discovered Karl Marx's 1867 book Capital. However, it was not until 1888 that Fedoseyev founded a Marxist study group, at which time Lenin, who had previously been a first year student at Kazan University, had already left the city. This meant that Lenin and Fedoseyev did not meet. By Lenin's own omission:I heard about Fedoseyev while I was in Kazan, but I never met him. Therefore, it is likely that this claim was fabricated by later Soviet officials, who were eager to exaggerate Lenin's early involvement with Marxism and downplay the influence of other socialist currents on his thought. |

Fedoseyev also influenced the young itinerant baker, Aleksei Peshkov, who was later a world famous writer, under the name Maxim Gorky. In his memoirs, Gorky recalled being invited to a secret meeting organised by Fedoseyev, to listen to a reading of Our Differences by Georgi Plekhanov, the founder of Russian Marxism. The reading was interrupted by barracking from the audience, who objected to Plekhanov's criticism of Russian populism, one of whom suggested that it was an insult to the memory of Lenin's older brother, Aleksandr Ulyanov, who been hanged for plotting to assassinate Alexander III of Russia. Afterwards, Peshkov was taken aside by Fedoseyev, who taught him the basics of Marxist theory. Gorky later wrote:

In June 1889, the police discovered an illegal printing press that Fedoseyev had organised. He was arrested on 13 July, and was held in custody for 15 months, then sentenced to a year and three months in solitary confinement.

Fedoseyev travelled part of the journey to Siberia with two peasants named P. V. Olkovik and Kirill Sereda—Tolstoyans exiled for refusing to do military service. Fedoseyev was accused of "uncomradely relations" with the two. The accusation was heard on 5 January 1898 by the United Assembly of Political Exiles, who found that there was "not a shadow of suspicion" that his relations with them were anything but "friendly". He was also accused of embezzling party funds which resulted in shame and a switch to an austere lifestyle that eventually led to his suicide.