Lyubov Axelrod

Axelrod was born in the family of a rabbi in Vilenkovichi, a village in the Vilna gubernia of the Russian Empire, now in Pastavy Raion, Belarus.

In 1906 Axelrod returned to Russia during an amnesty and became a leading Russian authority on Marxist philosophy, second only to Plekhanov, as well as working with the Mensheviks' illegal organisation.

Her Philosophical Essays, published in 1906, were acknowledged by both the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks as the definitive rebuttal of the 'neo-Kantians' Nikolai Berdyaev and Pyotr Struve, former Marxists who had broken with the revolutionaries.

[citation needed] She was critical both of Alexander Bogdanov and of Vladimir Lenin during their debate over Empiriocriticism in 1908–1909, branding their ideas as anti-Marxist.

Her appointment to lecture in philosophy at Sverdlov University,[citation needed] in 1921, was originally blocked by the Orgburo, but when Lenin was consulted he said that it should be allowed, on condition that she was kept under observation in case she started promoting Menshevism.