The Labor movement and Revolutionary Social Democracy in the borderlands of late Imperial Russia

A review of a new monograph by Professor Eric Blanc of Rutgers University (USA) is presented. The book is devoted to the history of the labor movement and the development of revolutionary social democracy on the outskirts of the Russian Empire from 1882 (the year of the creation of the first social democratic organization in Poland) to the revolutionary 1917. Blanc focuses specifically on the "non-Russian" socialist parties in the territory of modern Poland, Ukraine, the Baltic States, Georgia and Armenia. The author concludes that the development of the socialist and labor movement in the border areas of late Imperial Russia was characterized by greater radicalism, a more developed structure and popularity among the local working class. At the same time, the situation in Finland with its autonomy and legalized party struggle, which could include socialists, differed from the virtually illegal life of social democracy in Poland and the Caucasus.