In their campaign against the narodničestvo, most members of the intelligentsia took the side of the Marxists, but as soon as a victory had been gained over the narodniki, a great crisis took place within Marxism itself, leading ultimately to the secession of a number of distinguished theorists from social democracy and from Marxism. The writings and teachings of Sombart, Herckner, Schulze-Gavernitz, and Brentano, had for some time been exercising considerable influence, and these secessions were the practical upshot, the beginnings of German revisionism and above all the coming of Bernstein to the front notably contributing. The influence of those English and French socialists who are opposed to orthodox Marxism was less conspicuous in Russia than that of the German revisionists.
The Russian social democrats and their Marxist leaders, notably Plehanov, maintained a continuous and lively intercourse, both literary and personal, with the German social democracy. German influence and the German example were decisive, above all in view of the fact that the German social democracy, the ideas and the organisation of the German movement, were exercising a similar influence upon the French and English labour movements and upon socialism generally.
In Germany, after the repeal of the exceptional laws in 1890, the labour movement and the socialist current greatly increased in vigour; but the movement of the "Jungen" now began, and Vollmar and the Badenese compelled the party leaders of the social democracy to reconsider the question of tactics. It must not be forgotten that Engels had modified his views, especially upon the matter of revolution. Shortly before his death (1895) he had written the important preface to Marx's Class Struggles in France, and had here effected a far-reaching revision of social democratic tactics/
An analogous evolution took place in French, Belgian, and Italian socialism. Russian social democracy, while in the act of undergoing consolidation, was thus subjected to a cross fire from the orthodox Marxist and revisionist camps. It was only to be expected that in Russia, too, similar oppositions would speedily come to light.
As early as 1899, Struve gave expression to a direct opposition to orthodox Marxism. That which was at first manifested as critical revisionism, came before long to display itself as an independent philosophical trend, whose positive watch- word found expression in 1904 in the title of Bulgakov's essays
