The group "Liberation of labor". From the archives of G. V. Plekhanov, V. I. Zasulich and L. G. Deich. Collection No. 6.

The group "Liberation of labor". From the archives of G. V. Plekhanov, V. I. Zasulich and L. G. Deich. Collection No. 6.
M.-L. State Publishing House, 1928. - 341, [3] p. Circulation of 3000 copies. Publisher's cover, enlarged format (15.5 x 23.5 cm). The cover is lost; losses on the pages on the right edge of the block that do not affect the text; temporary and everyday stains on the pages; begins to break up into separate notebooks; rusty paper clips.

Committee for the Perpetuation of the memory of G. V. Plekhanov.

Collection No. 6 is a special rarity.

[Emancipation of Labor is the first Russian Marxist organization.

After the split of the Land and the Will into the People's Will and the Black Division, G. V. Plekhanov headed the organization Black Division. This group was to continue the old course of the Land and the Will for the agrarian revolution. The police got on the trail of Plekhanov's organization, and he had to flee abroad, to Switzerland. The emergence of the Russian labor movement and the failures of the narodnik movement forced the search for a new revolutionary theory.

In 1883, the Emancipation of Labor group was created in Geneva on the initiative of the former active narodniks-chernoperedeltsy-Plekhanov, Ignatov, Zasulich, Deitch and Axelrod, who actually became the main ideologist of the group.

In September 1883 the Emancipation of Labor group announced its main goals and objectives:

- translation into Russian of the most important works of Karl Marx and F. A. Tolstoy. Engels, as well as the works of their followers for the dissemination of the ideas of scientific socialism;

- criticism of narodism and the development of problems of Russian public life from the point of view of the theory of Marxism.

Along with its theoretical and propagandistic activities, the Emancipation of Labor group did a great deal of work abroad to unite the forces of Russian social democracy, and played a significant role in the fight against "economism".

Despite great difficulties, the group had connections with social-democratic organizations in Russia (Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kiev, Kharkiv, Vilnius, Riga, Minsk, Odessa, Nizhny Novgorod). In May 1895, in Switzerland, Lenin met with Plekhanov and agreed on a joint publication in 1896 in Geneva of the collection "The Worker". The St. Petersburg Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class, founded by Lenin in 1895, establishes a close connection with the Emancipation of Labor group; the Union elected Plekhanov as its representative at the International Socialist Congress in London in 1896. The Emancipation of Labor Group maintained contacts with social Democratic parties and organizations in Germany, France, England, Poland, Bulgaria, Switzerland, Austria, and Hungary. The group had connections with prominent figures of the socialist movement of the West: E. Eveling, Eleonora Marx, D. Blagoev, A. Labriola, A. Bebel, V. Liebknecht, K. Zetkin, K. Kautsky. Its representatives participated in the international socialist workers ' congresses: in 1889 in Paris, in 1893 in Zurich, in 1896 in London. F. Engels highly appreciated the activities of the Emancipation of Labor group.]