Alexander Nikolayevich Potresov was a Russian social democratic politician and one of the leaders of the Menshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He was one of six original editors of the newspaper Iskra, under the pen name "Starover".

The Mensheviks were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split with Vladimir Lenin's Bolshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903. The Mensheviks were led by Julius Martov and Pavel Axelrod.