Potresov, Aleksandr Nikolaevich

Born Sept. 1 (13), 1869, in Moscow; died July 11, 1934, in Paris. Russian Social Democrat, one of the leaders of Menshevism. Son of a major general.

Potresov graduated from the natural sciences faculty of St. Petersburg University in 1891 and studied at the law faculty there until 1893. He participated in Marxist circles from the early 1890’s. In 1896 he joined the St. Petersburg Union of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class; he was arrested and exiled to Viatka Province in 1898.

In late 1899 and in 1900, Potresov helped found the newspaper Iskra and became a member of its editorial board. At the Second Congress of the RSDLP (1903) he joined the Mensheviks and became a prominent contributor and editor of Menshevik publications. During the reactionary period 1908–10, Potresov was one of the leaders of Liquidationism. He was a social chauvinist during World War I (1914–18). In 1917 he played a leading role on the bourgeois newspaper Den’, which opposed the Bolsheviks. After the October Revolution of 1917, Potresov emigrated and became a contributor to A. F. Kerensky’s counterrevolutionary newspaper Dni.