Julius Martov

Born Iulii Osipovich Tsederbaum in Constantinople, Julius Martov grew up in Odessa and St. Petersburg. His grandfather Aleksander Zederbaum was a highly influential publisher of Jewish periodicals in Hebrew, Yiddish, and Russian. In the 1890s, Martov collaborated with Vladimir Lenin and Aleksandr Potresov to found the Union for the Emancipation of Labor and create the journal Iskra. He became a leading Menshevik in the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party (RSDWP). During the Second Congress of RSDWP in 1903, he opposed the Bund’s demand for autonomy, and his confrontation with Lenin was a factor in the split between Bolsheviks and Mensheviks. He died in Berlin.