Georgy Chicherin’s first acquaintance with revolutionary activity dates back to his student years. He first learned about the labor movement from lectures on political economy by the then famous economist and statistician Andrey Isaev. At the seminars of the university’s assistant professor Mitrofan Sveshnikov, the young man often listened to speeches against the populists by one of the most prominent representatives of ‘legal Marxism’, Pyotr Struve.
Chicherin attended disputes, where they argued about the future of Russia and the ways of the revolution, participated in student ‘riots’. But the ‘sentimental-utopian attitude’ towards the peasantry, assimilated from childhood, held back his transition to Marxism.
Through his friend Vladimir Narbut, who, after graduating from the university, entered the Military Medical Academy, Georgy Chicherin became close to the revolutionary circles of the capital. In his apartment near the Tsarskoye Selo train station, fonts and other accessories of an illegal printing house were often kept.
At the same time, the future diplomat began to get acquainted with the works of Karl Marx and other socialist literature, attended disputes about Marxism, which were held by the famous liberal publicist, literary critic and public figure Konstantin Arseniev. A turning point became visible in his worldview.
By 1904, Georgy Chicherin had decided to emigrate in order to deeply study Marxist doctrine abroad. He spent the first years of emigration in Germany, where the next important stage in his life began. Chicherin eagerly ‘devoured’ socialist works, carried on extensive correspondence with Russian revolutionaries, attended speeches of the German Social Democrats, and became close to German workers.
Georgy Chicherin joined the Berlin Bolshevik section of the Foreign Organization Committee. It was created in March 1905 at the founding congress in Geneva, when the scattered foreign Bolshevik groups merged into a single association. He helped the Russian Social Democrats who were abroad, often without means of subsistence, and provided financial support for the publication of their party literature. Georgy Chicherin himself lived very modestly, believing that he and all his property belonged to the revolution.
Chicherin attended disputes, where they argued about the future of Russia and the ways of the revolution, participated in student ‘riots’. But the ‘sentimental-utopian attitude’ towards the peasantry, assimilated from childhood, held back his transition to Marxism.
Through his friend Vladimir Narbut, who, after graduating from the university, entered the Military Medical Academy, Georgy Chicherin became close to the revolutionary circles of the capital. In his apartment near the Tsarskoye Selo train station, fonts and other accessories of an illegal printing house were often kept.
At the same time, the future diplomat began to get acquainted with the works of Karl Marx and other socialist literature, attended disputes about Marxism, which were held by the famous liberal publicist, literary critic and public figure Konstantin Arseniev. A turning point became visible in his worldview.
By 1904, Georgy Chicherin had decided to emigrate in order to deeply study Marxist doctrine abroad. He spent the first years of emigration in Germany, where the next important stage in his life began. Chicherin eagerly ‘devoured’ socialist works, carried on extensive correspondence with Russian revolutionaries, attended speeches of the German Social Democrats, and became close to German workers.
Georgy Chicherin joined the Berlin Bolshevik section of the Foreign Organization Committee. It was created in March 1905 at the founding congress in Geneva, when the scattered foreign Bolshevik groups merged into a single association. He helped the Russian Social Democrats who were abroad, often without means of subsistence, and provided financial support for the publication of their party literature. Georgy Chicherin himself lived very modestly, believing that he and all his property belonged to the revolution.
