Background
Struve, Petr was born on January 26, 1870 in Perm’. Son of the governor there.
economist editor historian politician sociologist
Struve, Petr was born on January 26, 1870 in Perm’. Son of the governor there.
Graduated in Law at University of St Petersburg in 1895.
In his youth, an extreme revolutionary radical. One of the first Marxists in Russia and author of the first Social Democratic Manifesto. Went abroad and became editor of the left-of-centre newspaper Osvobozhdenie, published in Stuttgart, 1902.
Member of the Central Committee of the Cadet Party, 1905. Member of the 2nd Duma. Editor of the influential magazine Russkaia My si’.
A prominent member of the Vekhi, 1909 (authors who criticized the revolutionary zeal and abstract dogmatism of the intelligentsia). Moved to the right wing of the Cadets, later left the party. Became the best-known voice of right-wing liberal circles (condemned by Lenin as a traitor to the revolutionary cause).
Opposed the October Revolution 1917. Joined the Whites, 1918-1920. After the Civil War, emigrated.
Lived in Belgrade and Paris. Among Russian emigres, considered the most prominent representative of right-of-centre opinion (rivalling Miliukov on the leftof-centre). Lived mostly in Belgrade, 1928-1942.
Edited the newspaper Vozrozhdenie in Paris before World War II.
Main publications:(1894) Kriticheskie zametki k voprosu ob ekonomicheskoi istorii Rossii [Critical Remarks on the Question of the Economic History of Russia], St Petersburg.(1902) Na raznye temy, 1893-1901 gg.: sbornik statei [On Various Themes 1893 1901: A Collection of Articles], St Petersburg.(1909) Tntelligentsiia i revolutsiia'. in Vekhi: sbornik statei o russkoi intelligentsii, Moscow (English translation, Landmarks, trans. Marian Schwartz, New York: Karz Howard, 1977).(1911) Patriótica: politika, kul'tura, religiia, sotsializtn, St Petersburg.Secondary literature:Kindersley, R. (1962) The First Russian Revisionists: a Study of'Legal Marxism' in Russia. Oxford: Clarendon Press.Pipes, R. E. (1970) Struve: Liberal on the Left, 18701905, Cambridge. Mass.: Harvard University Press.(1980) Struve: Liberal on the Right, 1905-1944.Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.The son of the Governor of Perm' province, and a member of an originally German family which produced a dynasty of Russian astronomers, Struve was an economic historian as well as a philosopher. He edited the Marxist journals Novoe slovo [New Word] and Nachalo [Beginning] in the late 1890s, and in 1898 drafted the manifesto of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party. By 1901, his revisionism led Lenin and other ‘orthodox" Marxists to expel him from the Social-Democratic movement, and he involved himself in liberal politics. While in Germany from 1901 to 1905, he edited the illegal liberal journal Osvobozhdenie [Liberation]. After the 1905 Revolution, he led the right wing of the Constitutional Democrat Party, becoming a deputy at the Second Duma in 1907
The son of the Governor of Perm' province, and a member of an originally German family which produced a dynasty of Russian astronomers, Struve was an economic historian as well as a philosopher. He edited the Marxist journals Novoe slovo [New Word] and Nachalo [Beginning] in the late 1890s, and in 1898 drafted the manifesto of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party. By 1901, his revisionism led Lenin and other ‘orthodox" Marxists to expel him from the Social-Democratic movement, and he involved himself in liberal politics.
While in Germany from 1901 to 1905, he edited the illegal liberal journal Osvobozhdenie [Liberation]. After the 1905 Revolution, he led the right wing of the Constitutional Democrat Party, becoming a deputy at the Second Duma in 1907. He also edited Russkaia mysl’ [Russian Thought].
He actively opposed the October Revolution of 1917 as a member of the White movement, and emigrated to Western Europe after its defeat.
Struve’s Kriticheskie zametki (1894) was the locus classicus of ‘legal' Marxism. This was a gradualist, evolutionary version of Marxism, subscribed to by a number of Russian economics professors, and tolerated by the autocracy because it insisted against the dangerous populists that Russia could not bypass the capitalist economic stage of development. The populists accused all Russian Marxists of being apologists for the bourgeoisie, and were vindicated in Struve’s case.
A revisionist from his earliest Marxist publications, he came to accept capitalism and liberal values in themselves, rather than as preconditions of socialism.
Among Struve’s revisionist stances was his advocacy of a neo-Kantian philosophical basis for Marxism. Struve looked to Kant for a justification of continuous change rather than change by leaps, and sought to distinguish between an empirical realm of historical necessity and an ideal, free realm of values. He therefore rejected the causal dependence of the ‘superstructure’ of ideas on the economic base.
He quickly moved to transcendent idealism on the basis of the critical philosophy, and contributed to the symposium Problems of Idealism (1903), along with Berdyaev, Bulgakov and S. L. Frank. These four ex-Marxists also contributed to the controversial collection Landmarks (1909). Struve in particular decried the Russian intelligentsia’s maximalist irreligiosity and hostility to the state, and called for a radical reexamination of its worldview and a refocussing of its efforts on political education.