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Compared with the wealth of information that has been published and continues to be published every year on revolutionary Russia, the inter‐revolutionary period of 1908–17 has attracted relatively little attention. Yet the complex interplay of events that determined the paths taken and choices made in 1917 and beyond can only be comprehensively understood when forgotten ideas and concepts and those that best expounded them are resurrected and investigated. This article attempts to shed some light on this period by analysing the main ideas put forward during it by Nikolai Aleksandrovich Rozhkov (1868–1927) and by examining how they differed to those presented by Lenin. Furthermore, the article will attempt to show that Rozhkov was a well‐known, influential and independent Russian thinker and political activist who consistently and logically elaborated his own grand theory of social development, which, generally speaking, represented an alternative to the views espoused by Lenin and his followers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is ironic, to say the least, that for a long time now the little known name of Nikolai Aleksandrovich Rozhkov (1868–1927) has been used to substantiate a range of claims about the world's most famous revolutionary – Lenin. Despite numerous one-line references, so little has been written about Rozhkov that readers are unable to evaluate the validity of any statement written about him or his relationship to others, including Lenin. This article attempts to begin to address this issue by providing a very brief biography of Rozhkov, with particular reference to his revolutionary work in the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) and his relationship with Lenin up to 1908. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]