It was founded in exile by Georgi Plekhanov, Vasily Ignatov [ru], Vera Zasulich, Leo Deutsch, and Pavel Axelrod, at Geneva (Switzerland) in 1883.
Deutsch left the group in 1884 when he was arrested and sent to Siberia and Sergei Ingerman [ru] joined in 1888.
The group published the first Russian language translations of many works by Karl Marx and distributed them.
Two drafts (1883 and 1885) of a program for the Russian Social Democrats, written by Plekhanov, were also published by the group, marking an important step to what would become the building of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP).
Within Russia itself, Emancipation of Labour influenced a separate group, the League of Struggle for the Emancipation of the Working Class (Союз борьбы за освобождение рабочего класса), formed by Vladimir Lenin and others at Saint Petersburg in 1895.