Memorable dates of Russia: Exhibition for the 160th anniversary of George Plekhanov opened in St. Petersburg

In the Museum of Political History of Russia (St. Petersburg) took place the opening of the exhibition "George Plekhanov - the Apostle of Russian Marxism. To the date 160th birth anniversary".

The exhibition is timed to the anniversary of the birth of the thinker and revolutionary, founder of Russian Social-Democracy, the largest theorist Russian labor movement George Valentinovich Plekhanov (1856-1918).

The exhibition shows the political biography of Plekhanov and the evolution of his views as a reflection of the history of the revolutionary movement in Russia in 1870-1917 – from populists to Marxists. Avoiding both apologetics "outstanding Russian Marxist thinker", and received in the Soviet era denunciations in menshevism and opportunism, the exhibition shows the socio-economic and political conditions in which the world of revolutionary was formed. 

A significant place in the exhibition occupies a plot dedicated to relationship among Plekhanov and Lenin - from cooperation to confrontation when Plekhanov appeared as a political antagonist of Bolshevism and critic of Lenin and the October Revolution. Reflected in the exhibition and those fierce debates about Marxism, which Plekhanov led with N. K. Mikhailovsky and L. A. Tikhomirov, "revisionist" Eduard Bernstein, the "legal Marxists" P. B. Struve and ideologist of the "economists" E. D.Kuskova.

The exhibition features documents, photographs, works of Plekhanov, as well as numerous exhibits on the history of the revolutionary movement in Russia, among them - the first leaflet "Land and Freedom" of the 1870s. Paintings and drawings illustrate the events where Plekhanov participated, on which he responded. Plekhanov's death mask and a documentary about his funeral (provided by the Russian State Archive of Film and Photo) will talk about the end of his life.