NIKOLAI SIEBER: THE FIRST RUSSIAN MARXIST

Abstract

Georgii Plekhanov is often credited with being the ‘father of Russian Marxism’. He was not, however, the first Russian Marxist. That distinction belongs to Nikolai Ivanovich Sieber (Ziber), whose dissertation on Marx’s economics appeared in 1871, the year before the Russian translation of Das Kapital, and introduced Plekhanov’s generation of Russian revolutionaries to Marxist ideas. Sieber’s work was then given a prominent endorsement in the second edition of Das Kapital, wherein Marx praised the depth of understanding Sieber had displayed of his economic theory. In view of this, one might consider that Sieber should be regarded as a dominant figure in the history of Marxism in Russia but, in fact, he is seldom mentioned by historians – and, when he is, it is generally cursorily and dismissively. The purpose of this article, therefore, is to examine the interrelationship of Sieber and Marx and to place Sieber’s writings in the context of the emergence of the Russian conception of Marxism at the end of the nineteenth century.