Russian Social Democrat, one of the leaders of the Mensheviks (Menshevik), who opposed the Bolsheviks in the political struggle leading up to the Russian Revolution of 1917.

Potresov, the son of a general, joined the Marxists in the early 1890s and was briefly exiled in 1898. In 1900 he helped V.I. Lenin (Lenin, Vladimir Ilich) found the newspaper Iskra, which was intended to unite the Social Democrats against revisionists. However, at the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903, Potresov and the Mensheviks broke with Lenin over the latter's demand for a highly centralized, authoritarian party. After 1908 Potresov became a leader of the so-called liquidationists (a pejorative term devised by Lenin), who advocated political activity by legal means, in contrast to the conspiratorial methods of the Bolsheviks.

After the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II in 1917, Potresov became a codirector of the newspaper Den, which opposed the Bolsheviks. Following the October Revolution he emigrated and contributed to Aleksandr Kerensky's anti-Bolshevik newspaper.