Yemelyan Pugachev
Yemelyan Ivanovich Pugachev () (c. 1742 – ) was a Russian Cossack who led a great popular insurrection during the reign of Catherine the Great, claiming to be her late husband, Emperor Peter III. Alexander Pushkin wrote a notable history of the rebellion, "The History of Pugachev", and he recounted some of the events in his novel "The Captain's Daughter" (1836).
Pyotr Tkachev
Orlando Figues has claimed that Lenin owed more to Tkachev than any other Russian theorist. Chief among the ideas that Tkachev espoused that were influential in the development of Lenin's political philosophy was the idea of a revolutionary vanguard. 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. The Leninist approach to Marxism was rooted in his origins in the Russian revolutionary movement, with the writings and ideas of Chernyshevsky, Tkachev, Nechayev and the "People's Will" injected into the passive Marxism to give it a 'Russian dose of conspiratorial politics'. This enabled the precipitation of a revolution by political action. Tkachev was a proponent of a closely organised revolutionary party, following the ideas of Nechayev, and was also influenced by the French revolutionary Blanquism movement. In Tkachev's eyes, the principal duty of revolutionary parties was not to engage in propaganda efforts, but to overthrow the government and seize power in the name of the proletariat.