{{short description|Concept in Leninist theory}} {{for|the economic concept|Liquidationism (economics)}} {{Expand Russian|date=July 2025}} {{Leninism sidebar|expanded=concepts}} {{Communism sidebar}}
'''Liquidationism''' ({{langx|ru|Ликвидаторство}}) was the ideology among some members of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) who argued for the abandonment of the underground party work and transition to exclusively legal political activities.
==Concept== According to the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin, writing in 1909, liquidationism "consists ideologically in negation of the revolutionary class struggle of the socialist proletariat in general, and denial of the hegemony of the proletariat".<ref name=liqu>{{cite web |last=Lenin |first=Vladimir |author-link=Lenin |title=The Liquidation of Liquidationism |url=http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1909/jul/11.htm |website=Marxist Internet Archive |publisher= |date=11 July 1909 |access-date=3 November 2018}}</ref> The term refers to the alleged liquidation of the old-style RSDLP.
Nikolai Rozhkov was identified by Lenin as a liquidationist.<ref name=liberal>{{cite web |last=Lenin |first=Vladimir |title=A Liberal Labour Party Manifesto |url=https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1911/lilapman/i.htm#v17pp74-313 |website=Marxist Internet Archive |publisher= |date=3 December 1911 |access-date=3 November 2018}}</ref>
In his concluding remarks to the 1914 ''Marxism and Liquidationism'' symposium, Lenin made the distinction between "Left liquidationism", which is "leaning towards anarchism", and "Right liquidationism", which is "liquidationism proper" and "leans towards liberalism".<ref name=dist>{{cite web |last=Lenin |first=Vladimir |title=Concluding remarks to the symposium Marxism and Liquidationism |url=http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/CRML14.html#fnp266 |website=From Marx to Mao |publisher= |date=April 1914 |access-date=3 November 2018}}</ref>
==See also== *Vanguardism *Reformism *Bolshevism *Menshevism *Factions of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, which later split into Bolsheviks and Mensheviks
==References== {{reflist}}
{{Marxist & Communist phraseology}}
Category:Communist terminology Category:Marxist terminology Category:Marxist theory Category:Marxism Category:Vladimir Lenin Category:Political theories Category:Left communism Category:Factions of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party