Vasily Vorontsov

As the 1890s wore on, Vorontsov had to admit that capitalism had made some inroads in Russia, but he attributed this to misguided government policies, such as protective tariffs on foreign manufactured goods, subsidies and low-interest loans to Russian industrialists and an ambitious infrastructure programme (e.g., railway building), together with agrarian policies designed to undermine communal land tenure.

One of the earliest Russian Marxists, the economics professor N. I. Ziber, interpreted Marx to mean that a prolonged period of capitalism was a necessary 'historical stage' any society must undergo.

Lenin, who were associated with the revolutionary movement and with the founding of Russian Social-Democracy (RSDRP), looked for a quicker transition to socialism (although in the 1890s they insisted that Russia's coming revolution would be 'bourgeois-democratic').

Pace Vorontsov, they argued that the development of capitalism in Russia was not only inevitable but had already progressed sufficiently far to make its future breakdown visible on the horizon.

In January 1894, at an underground meeting in the City of St Petersburg, V. P. Vorontsov faced off against V. I. Lenin in a debate which attracted the attention of spies.