Lavrov, Petr Lavrovich (1823–1900)

Russian radical thinker, leader of the Populist movement that sought political change in Tsarist Russia. He was a professor of mathematics, but had wide-ranging intellectual interests, contributing to liberal periodicals on philosophy, sociology, and anthropology, and acting (until 1872) as editor of the revolutionary journal Forward. In London, he became a member of the First International, established by Karl Marx.

Lavrov was sent into internal exile for his views in 1866, and emigrated to England in 1870. He was editor of an Encyclopaedic Dictionary, 1861–64, and in his Historical Letters, 1868–69, developed an influential philosophy of history.