Black Repartition was established in August-September 1879 after the split of Zemlya i volya (Land and Liberty) at the Voronezh Congress the previous June.
The organizers of BR’s central body in Saint Petersburg were Georgi Plekhanov, Pavel Akselrod, Osip Aptekman, Lev Deich, Vera Zasulich and others.
This group organized a print shop and started publishing magazines Black repartition and Core (Зерно, or Zerno), simultaneously developing ties with students and workers.
BR’s peripheral organs were active in Moscow, Kharkov, Kazan, Perm, Saratov, Samara and other cities.
Plekhanov, Deich, Zasulich along with other ex-members of BR embraced Marxism and created the first Russian Marxist organization called Emancipation of Labor (Освобождение труда, or Osvobozhdeniye truda) in Geneva in 1883.