Rabochaia Mysl

Rabochaia Mysl’ 

(Workers’ Thought), a newspaper published by adherents of Economism, an opportunist trend in the Russian Social Democratic movement. A total of 16 issues were published between October 1897 and December 1902 in St. Petersburg, Berlin, Warsaw and Geneva.

The editorial board included K. A. Kok, N. N. Lokhov-Ol’khin, K. M. Takhtarev, V. P. Ivanshin, and A. A. Iakubova. The ideas of Economism were first formulated in issue no. 1. The newspaper urged the working class to uphold narrow economic interests instead of engaging in political struggle, which was allegedly not a task of the proletariat. It also opposed the creation of a revolutionary Marxist party of the proletariat and advised the workers to form legal trade-union-type organizations. V. I. Lenin presented critical analyses of the newspaper’s positions in the article “A Retrograde Trend in Russian Social-Democracy” (Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 4, pp. 240–73) and in the book What Is To Be Done? (ibid., vol. 6, pp. 1–192).