Russian Machism (/ˈmɑxɪzm, ˈmɑkɪzm/) was a term applied to a variety political/philosophical viewpoints which emerged in Imperial Russia in the beginning of the twentieth century before the Russian Revolution. They shared an interest in the scientific and philosophical insights of Ernst Mach. Many, but not all, of the Russian Machists were Marxists, and some viewed Machism as an essential ingredient of a materialist outlook on the world. The term came into use around 1905, primarily as a polemical expression used by Lenin and Georgi Plekhanov. With a shared desire to defend an "orthodox" account of Marxism, from their differing perspective they both divided the opponents of this putative orthodoxy into the "idealists" and the "Machists". The term remained a signifier of Marxist-Leninist op