Pavel Axelrod

Born Pinḥas Borukh Borisovich Axelrod in Potscheff (Chernigov, Russian Empire) to a family of impoverished innkeepers, Pavel Axelrod was a lifelong activist in exile (he lived in Switzerland from 1880 to 1917). He attended traditional Jewish schools in Shklov and Moghilev (today in Belarus) before attending university in Kiev (Kyiv). At university, Axelrod became a Marxist organizer. Fleeing tsarist revolutionary suppression in 1872, he continued to be active in the Zemlya i Volya (Land and Liberty) movement. Axelrod was briefly attracted to the radical wing of the early Ḥibat Tsiyon in 1881 but was ultimately moved to cofound the Marxist and internationalist Liberation of Labor movement with Julius Martov and Vladimir Lenin in 1883. He was an editor of Iskra and a leader of the Menshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Workers’ Party. In 1917 Axelrod briefly returned to Russia, but he returned to exile following the Bolshevik Revolution.