Pyotr Tkachev

Pyotr Nikitich Tkachev (Russian: Пётр Ники́тич Ткачёв; 29 June 1844 – 4 January 1886) was a Russian writer, critic, and revolutionary theorist he did not figure prominently in the mythology of the Soviet Union.

Biography Early life Tkachev was born in 1844 to a minor gentry family. He was born in the village of Sivistov, at the time located in the Pskov Governorate. His sister Alexandra Nikitichna Annenskaya was a writer for young adults.

Tkachev 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, he likely came into contact with radical Russian political philosophy through other inmates during the months he was incarcerated at a Kronstadt prison. After his arrest due to participating in the student strikes of 1861, Tkachev later spent several years in Peter and Paul Fortress.

Political career Tkachev praised Nikolay Chernyshevsky's novel What Is to Be Done?, calling it the "gospel of the movement". This would become the guiding principle of Vladimir Lenin's theory of revolution.

Political ideas Historian Andrzej Walicki argued that the form of economic determinism espoused by Tkachev differed significantly with the historical materialism developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, stating: "This specific 'economic materialism' of Tkachev did not amount to Marxism; it constituted rather in a peculiar mixture of some elements of Marxism with a rather primitive utilitarianism, grossly exaggerating the role of direct economic motivation in individual behavior".

Impact and following A radical terrorist group called the People's Will (Narodnaya Volya) formed in 1879, influenced by Tkachev's teaching, would assassinate Tsar Alexander II on 1 March 1881.

Vladimir Lenin and Tkachevism Orlando Figes has claimed that Lenin owed more to Tkachev than any other Russian theorist. The Leninist approach to Marxism was rooted in his origins in the Russian revolutionary movement, with the writings and ideas of Tkachev, Nikolay Chernyshevsky, Pyotr Zaichnevsky, Sergey Nechayev and the People's Will injected into the passive Marxism to give it a "Russian dose of conspiratorial politics". This enabled the precipitation of a revolution by political action.

Tkachev was a proponent of a closely organised revolutionary party: Yet, in his commemoration of Blanqui, which could not be delivered on the occasion of his death but was published in Ni Dieu, ni maître on 9 January 1881, Tkachev himself acknowledged with deep-felt words the Russian revolutionaries' debt to him: "Yes, he was our inspirer and our role model in the great art of conspiracy." In Tkachev's eyes, the principal duty of revolutionary parties was not to engage in propaganda efforts, but to overthrow the government, to seize power in the name of the proletariat and to establish a harsh revolutionary dictatorship.

Hal Draper had argued against this view, pointing out that Tkachev is only mentioned a handful of times in Lenin's writings and the only significant reference to him in What Is to Be Done? is a negative one.

Friedrich Engels also took issue with Tkachev and his ideas about Russian development.