Pyotr Lavrov

Pyotr Lavrovich Lavrov (1823 to 1900) was a Russian philosopher, sociologist, historian, publicist and revolutionary, a prominent political theorist of Narodism. Born at Melekhovo into a family of hereditary nobles, he graduated from a military academy in 1842 as an army officer and taught mathematics at the Artillery College in St. Petersburg for two decades. He joined the revolutionary movement in 1862, was arrested after Dmitry Karakozov's failed attempt on Alexander II, and was sentenced to exile in Vologda, from which he escaped abroad. In France he joined the Ternes section of the International Workingmen's Association in 1870, and in Zürich in 1872 he founded the journal Vperyod!, becoming a rival of Mikhail Bakunin. His Historical Letters (1870), published under the pseudonym Mirtov, greatly influenced revolutionary activity in Russia. He held that Russia's historical path differed from that of Western Europe yet still allowed a socialist revolution, that the intelligentsia must organize and teach the peasant masses, and that sociology as a science is indissolubly connected with the principles of individual morality.