Vladimir Alexandrovich Bazarov (Russian: Влади́мир Алекса́ндрович База́ров; 8 August [O. S. 27 July] 1874 – 16 September 1939) was a Russian Marxist revolutionary, journalist, philosopher, and economist. Born as Vladimir Alexandrovich Rudnev, Bazarov is best remembered as a pioneer in the development of economic planning in the Soviet Union. He was one of the Russian Machists, as Lenin dubbed the term, and was a close friend to Alexander Bogdanov.
Early career
Early years Vladimir Alexandrovich Rudnev was born on 8 August 1874 (N.S.) in Tula, Russian Empire. The son of a doctor and nobleman, A. M. Rudnev, he enrolled in the Tula classical gimnazija (high school) in 1884, and graduated in the spring of 1892. In the autumn of 1892, Rudnev enrolled in the faculty of natural sciences of Moscow University. He became involved in revolutionary politics in 1896, activity which would lead to his expulsion from Moscow the following year. He also adopted the surname "Bazarov" as an underground revolutionary pseudonym taking it from the Russian nihilist character in Turgenev's Fathers and Sons. Thereafter, Bazarov returned home to Tula where, together with Alexander Bogdanov and Ivan Skvortsov-Stepanov, Bazarov organized a secret school for Tula workers. Bogdanov resided at the house of Bazarov's father and met his wife who worked for Alexander Rudenev. A guiding principle of this group was that the workers' movement should be led by workers themselves, assisted by educated members of the radical intelligentsia.
In exile Bazarov was expelled from Tula in 1899 and emigrated to Germany, settling in Berlin. In the fall of 1900, Bazarov was instrumental in establishing a political organization called the "Neutral Group of Social-Democrats in Berlin." This organization dedicated itself to helping heal the split between the Union of Russian Social-Democrats Abroad, publishers of Rabochee Delo (The Workers' Cause), and the Emancipation of Labor Group, publishers of Iskra (The Spark). According to Bazarov, the Berlin group sent representatives to Geneva in an attempt to broker a reconciliation between these two groups of Marxist revolutionaries. Bazarov's Berlin group issued three or four political proclamations before disbanding in the summer of 1901.
Return to Russia
In the fall of 1901, Bazarov returned to Russia to serve as a member of the Moscow Social Democratic Committee. He was soon again arrested for his political activity, however, this time to be exiled for three years to Siberia. In 1904, Bazarov joined the Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP), an organization headed by V.I. Lenin. He returned to St Petersburg when his term of exile was over, and was a member of the Bolsheviks' Petersburg committee. In 1905–07, Bazarov wrote extensively for the Bolshevik party press, serving on the editorial board of the grouping's primary newspaper, Rabochii put' (The Workers' Path), and sitting as a member of the party's underground leadership in the country, the so-called "Bolshevik Center." Also in this period Bazarov joined with his old Tula comrades Ivan Skvortsov-Stepanov and Alexander Bogdanov in retranslating and publishing a new Russian-language edition of the three volumes of Capital by Karl Marx. This edition of the book gained recognition as the basic Russian translation and was reissued for decades in the Soviet Union, although for political reasons any mention of the participation of Bazarov and Bogdanov in the translation was later avoided. Bazarov also became interested in philosophy during the first decade of the 20th century, coming to reject Marx's formulaic dialectical materialism in favor of the use of the scientific method to observe and theorize about human behavior, as espoused by the Austrian Ernst Mach and the German-Swiss philosopher Richard Avenarius. The Bolshevik supporters of the "empirical-criticism" of Mach and Avenarius, including Bazarov, Bogdanov, and Nikolai Valentinov, were soon the target of a bitter polemic by Lenin published in 1909, Materialism and Empirio-criticism. This dispute created a rift with Lenin. In May 1908, Bazarov and Bogdanov were in Capri, as guests of the writer Maxim Gorky, who prevailed upon Lenin to join them, in the hope of brokering a reconciliation. The attempt failed. Lenin told them: "We will simply have to separate for two or three years." Bazarov continued to be an active Marxist, without being a member of either of the rival factions, the Bolsheviks or Mensheviks. In 1911, Bazarov was arrested once again and was deported once more, this time a three-year sentence to Astrakhan. In November 1912, Bazarov joined with Bogdanov, Anatoly Lunacharsky, Gorky, and Lenin, writing for a new paper in St. Petersburg called Pravda. During the years of World War I, Bazarov wrote for various radical publications, including Gorky's radical daily, Novaya zhizn' (New Life).
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