It is impossible to discuss political philosophy in Russia without discussing Marxism, just as it is impossible to discuss Marxism without paying attention to Russia. It is not least in (connection to) Russia that Marxism took shape in the first place: ‘It was in Russia that Marxism had its greatest impact and produced some of the most well-known Marxist theoreticians: men like Plekhanov, Lenin, Bukharin and Trotsky’ (White 2019a: vi). Also, Russia urged Marx to specify his theory on significant points. In Russia, finally, socialism was never exclusively, or even predominantly, Marxist (until claimed as such by official Soviet Marxism–Leninism); nor was the impact of Marxism limited to revolutionary movements. Marxist political economy made its way into the university, and Russia was the place where Marxism was transformed into a dogmatic system of dialectical and historical materialism, combined with innovative theories of party and revolution.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, Russia was quickly modernising, urbanising and industrialising, but the country remained predominantly agricultural (Hussain and Tribe 1983: 156). The abolition of serfdom in 1861 had liberated the peasants, but the uneven distribution of the land between peasants and land-owning gentry forced the former to work for the latter or seek work in mines and factories (Wirtschaftler 2008: 211). The results were striking: heavy and light industry increased annually by between 5 and 10 per cent, and the state-owned railway network grew from 917 km in 1855 to 50,881 km in 1905. Yet, at the same time, the Russian population remained largely rural and overall very poor. In all of this, the role of the state was very strong, warranting a qualification as ‘capitalism from above’ – which places this development in the tradition of top-down modernisation. State investment in heavy industry and infrastructure for economic and military purposes, the harsh repression of political opposition after the assassination of Tsar Aleksandr II in 1881, and an active policy of russification started by Aleksandr III mark this period.