dedication to the cause of revolution; Zhelyabov was perhaps the first to link Populism with a national struggle for political rights, shifting the Populist aim from violence to manipulation of other political parties by forming loose coalitions. 133 Tkachev’s influence on Leninist theory was more Jacobin in nature, in the 1870s he argued in favour of the seizure of power by a highly centralised, disciplined vanguard capable of enforcing a dictatorship and defeating the richer peasants and landholders who he believed would naturally support the capitalist status quo. Plekhanov in a sense merged these two principles and created the so-called ‘Two Stage Transition’ theory, in which alliances would be created with liberal parties to install a western-style liberal democracy before transferring power from the landholding classes and bourgeoisies to the working classes. Plekhanov’s theory was regarded as untenable to the Russian Marxists, at least in a peaceful environment, as such E.G Levit a member of the Veterans of the People’s Will in 1897 surveyed Plekhanov’s plan and wrote four lines stating how revolutionary activity should unfold in Russia: 1. The new party will direct its main effort against absolutism. 2. The new party will constitute a new compact organization, because the enemy is too strong to be fought by individuals or groups operating in isolation. 3. Since there is among us not a single politically mature class of population, the party will recruit its members in all the classes of society (at first, mainly from among the young intelligentsia).
133 idem. p. 237 -38
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