Arrested by police during a riot on 11 October 1861, he likely came into contact with radical Russian political philosophy through other inmates during the months he was incarcerated at a Kronstadt prison.

[1] Populists like Tkachev argued against waiting indefinitely for the social revolution while also in the meantime condemned revolt and terrorism by the vanguard as he believed it risked allowing the tsarist government to stabilise itself by the advancement of capitalism.

[3] In the mid-1870s, Tkachev formulated a violent critique of the Going to the People movement which had consisted of thousands of students and populists travelling to peasant villages to live and preach among serfs.

[3] Tkachev believed that the time was perfect for the seizure of power and that it should be done as soon as possible while there was no social force that was prepared to side with the government, something that would come with the development of the bourgeoisie and capitalism.

[9] Historian Andrzej Walicki argued that the form of economic determinism espoused by Tkachev differed significantly with the historical materialism developed by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, stating: "This specific 'economic materialism' of Tkachev did not amount to Marxism; it constituted rather in a peculiar mixture of some elements of Marxism with a rather primitive utilitarianism, grossly exaggerating the role of direct economic motivation in individual behavior".

[10] A radical terrorist group called the People's Will (Narodnaya Volya) formed in 1879, influenced by Tkachev's teaching, would assassinate Tsar Alexander II on 1 March 1881.

While not explicitly using this Leninist term, Tkachev argued that in the absence of a popular, peasant-based revolution, revolutionaries should rise up and defeat a tyrannical government.

Hal Draper had argued against this view, pointing out that Tkachev is only mentioned a handful of times in Lenin's writings and the only significant reference to him in What Is to Be Done?