German Lopatin

He studied physics and mathematics at the University of St. Petersburg, where he graduated in 1866 with a thesis On Spontaneous Formation.

This thesis reflected the materialist ideas of the philosophers Vogt, Büchner and Moleschott, which were then extremely popular among Russian radicals.

In 1867 he travelled to Italy, hoping to join the revolutionary army of Giuseppe Garibaldi.

Volkhovsky, he organised the "One Ruble Society", a group dedicated to educational work and revolutionary propaganda among the common people.

Under their influence he came to see revolution not so much as a coup to be carried out at will by a minority, but rather as a mass uprising requiring certain 'material preconditions'.

In the winter of the busy and eventful year of 1870, Lopatin returned to Russia, intending to free the respected revolutionary writer N.G.

Lopatin sided with Marx during the latter's conflict with Bakunin, which eventually destroyed the First International.

Lopatin became a member of the party's Administrative Committee and served as its de facto leader.

A large number of addresses were found on him, leading to mass arrests and to the Trial of the 21 in 1887.

Due to his broken health he did not become politically active but settled in Vilno (now Vilnius, Lithuania).