Lydia Osipovna Dan (russian: Ли́дия О́сиповна Дан; née Tsederbaum; 21 May 1878 – 28 March 1963) was a
Menshevik
The Mensheviks (russian: меньшевики́, from меньшинство 'minority') were one of the three dominant factions in the Russian socialist movement, the others being the Bolsheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries.
The factions eme ...
revolutionary leader and active participant in the revolutionary movement of Russia.
Her brother was the Menshevik leader
Julius Martov
Julius Martov or L. Martov (Ма́ртов; born Yuliy Osipovich Tsederbaum; 24 November 1873 – 4 April 1923) was a politician and revolutionary who became the leader of the Mensheviks in early 20th-century Russia. He was arguably the closes ...
, her husband was fellow Menshevik
Fyodor Dan
Fyodor Ilyich Dan (surname at birth: Gurvich) (died 22 January 1947) was a political activist and journalist who helped found the Menshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party.
Background
Fyodor Dan was born to a Jewish family ...
.
Biography
Early life
Dan was born in
Odessa
Odesa (also spelled Odessa) is the third most populous city and municipality in Ukraine and a major seaport and transport hub located in the south-west of the country, on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea. The city is also the administrativ ...
in 1878.
She entered the
Russian Social Democratic Labour Party
The Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP; in , ''Rossiyskaya sotsial-demokraticheskaya rabochaya partiya (RSDRP)''), also known as the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party or the Russian Social Democratic Party, was a socialist pol ...
in the mid-1890s, and was a member of the first social-democratic circles in
St. Petersburg
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
.
Political life
Lydia Dan was attracted to
Marxism
Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
by its appeal as a 'path of reason', as she called it, which could guide mankind to civilisation, enlightenment and modernity. She also felt drawn to it by its 'sociological and economic optimism, its strong belief, buttressed by facts and figures, that the development of the economy, the development of capitalism, by demoralising and eroding the foundations of the old society, was creating new social forces (including us) which would certainly sweep away the autocratic regime together with its abominations', but also noting that youths like her were drawn to it because of its
'''European'' nature', breaki