When the diffusion of Marxism took place in Russia during the middle nineties, revisionism and antirevolutionary reformism found their place in the new movement.
Down to the present day Plehanov has continued the discussion concerning tactics which he began in the eighties. The principles and the leading arguments have remained unchanged; but the socialand political situation has undergone modification, and new, specifically Russian, problems have come to the fore. During the reaction of the eighties a species of enforced apolitism was widely diffused, and the discussion with the narodniki was historico-philosophical rather than political in character. During the nineties, however, political trends increased in strength, until at length at the opening of the new century the era of isolated acts of terrorism began, culminating in the mass revolution. The introduction of the constitution, the new constitutional problems pressing for solution, and the lively experiences of the last decade, have given increased interest to the discussion of the tactical problem.
We know that Marx carried on a campaign against Bakunin and Bakuninist revolutionism. Plehanov, after the split in Zemlja i Volja, continued this campaign against the followers of Bakunin and the supporters of Bakuninist methods. At first his opposition was conducted against the Narodnaja Volja, subsequently against the social revolutionaries, and finally against the revolutionaries in his own party. The creation of the duma gave a practical turn to the dispute concerning the importance and efficacy of politism and economism respectively, for the question now took the form, "Are you for or against the duma?" The first answers were purely abstract, but in practice it soon became apparent that the question comprised a considerable number of concrete subsidiary problems. Those who wished to decide whether on the one hand the duma should be theoretically and practically boycotted (in the latter case by "active," i.e. forcible, hindrance of the elections), or whether, on the other, the duma should be recognised, were compelled to consider the relationship of the socialists to other parties and to the programs of these, to consider the question of political alliances, and so on.
Plehanov and his supporters could not fail to point to the purely practical and utilitarian aspects of the new constitutionalism. The duma actually existed, and the question was how it could be turned to account for socialist ends. The
