Letter to Friedrich Engels, February 12, 1870

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To Engels in Manchester

[London] 12 February, 1870

DEAR FRED,

Allen visited me yesterday. Nothing but a simple chill. He advised me, however, to continue my house arrest until the Russian wind ‘WHICH BLOWS NO GOOD TO ANYBODY’ ceases.

Your introduction is very good. [Intro to Engels' Peasant War in Germany, 1870.] I know of nothing which should be altered or added. With your treatment of 1866 I agree word for word. The double thrust at Wilhelm [Liebknecht] with the People's Party and Schweitzer with his bodyguard of ruffians is very pretty!

Regarding the EXCUSES made by Wilhelm, one never knows whether he is lying intentionally, or whether everything is revolving in confusion like a mill-wheel in his head. The FACT is that I wrote to Meissner from Hanover that he should send COPIES’ to Wilhelm, Zukunft and Schweitzer, and the latter immediately published a detailed announcement. Additionally: Wilhelm’s friends—Bonhorst and Bracke—saw the new edition when they visited Hanover, and told me that they had reached agreement with Meissner on the publication of a cheaper, popular edition. Meissner wrote to me about it. I agreed this edition should consist of 2,000 copies, of which 1,000 should be supplied to Bonhorst, etc., at cost price. They pledged themselves to see to the placing of this 1,000. I’ve heard nothing about the matter since. We should now put Wilhelm to the test. Write to him that he should write to Meissner, asking how it is that he has not advertised the 18th Brumaire either in Volksstaat or in Zukunft, and ditto, despite my instructions from Hanover, why he has sent neither him nor Weiss of Zukunft COPIES? The reply from Meissner would, at the same time, give me an opportunity to have a serious word with the latter about his sloppiness.

I agree entirely with your marginal notes on the FRENCH RADICAL PRESS. Not for nothing was Proudhon the socialist of the Imperial period. I am firmly convinced that, although the first blow will come from France, Germany is far riper for a social movement, and will grow far over the heads of the French. It is a great error and self-deception on their part that they still regard themselves as the ‘chosen people’.

Apropos. Jennychen heard whispers yesterday at Monroe’s that Mr John Bull Bright is not in the country as the papers report, but in town in the care of a mad-doctor. Softening of the brain HAS AGAIN SET IN. On the occasion of Castlereagh’s suicide, Cobbett noted, that England DURING ONE OF ITS MOST CRITICAL EPOCHS, WAS GOVERNED BY A MADMAN. And the same again today, during the Irish crisis.

It’s extremely amusing that Bouverie, THIS INCARNATION OF PURE WHIGGISM, should find the proceedings quoad O’Donovan to be illegal. Bouverie is furious that he was given the COLD SHOULDER in the distribution of offices.

The title of N. Flerovsky's book is The Condition of the Working Class in Russia, Publishers, N. P. Polyakov, St. Petersburg, 1869.

What amuses me very much among other things in Flerovsky is his polemic against the direct dues paid by the peasantry. It is a regular reproduction of Marshal Vauban and Boisguillebert. He feels too that the situation of the country people has its analogy in the period of the old French monarchy (after Louis XIV). Like Monteil, he has a great feeling for national characteristics--"the honest Kalmuck," "the Mordwin, poetical despite his dirt" (he compares him to the Irish), the "agile, lively, epicurean Tartar," "the talented Little Russian," etc. Like a good Russian he teaches his fellow countrymen what they should do to turn the hatred which all these races have for them into its opposite. As an example of this hatred he instances among other things a genuinely Russian colony which has emigrated from Poland to Siberia. These people only know Russian and not a word of Polish, but they regard themselves as Poles and devote a Polish hatred to the Russians, etc.

From his book it follows irrefutably that the present conditions in Russia can no longer be maintained, that the emancipation of the serfs only, of course, hastened the process of disintegration and that a fearful social revolution is approaching. Here too one sees the real basis of the schoolboy nihilism which is at present the fashion among Russian students, etc. In Geneva, by the by, a new colony of exiled Russian students has been formed whose programme proclaims opposition to Pan-Slavism, which is to be replaced by the International.

In a special section Flerovsky shows that the "Russification" of the alien races is a sheer optimistic delusion, even in the East.

You don’t need to send me Lilienfeld. Gaudissart has it in Russian and German. He announced his return to me the day before yesterday. According to an earlier communication from his wife to mine, he had found a new post. But it surprises me that he doesn’t mention this in his latest epistle.

Enclosed, it must be returned, a copy of the letter from Hins to Stepney. In my reply I gave the fellow a thorough dressing down. The exact manner in which he informs himself is shown by the following points, amongst others. He says that, in our Report on the Basle Congress we suppressed the discussion on the right of inheritance. Bakunin probably palmed this off on him, and he believes it, although he has our Report in his hands and knows enough English to read it! He speaks of ‘my’ letter to Geneva, though I have not addressed a line there! My expostulation about Bakunin’s goings-on is in my letter to Brussels, in which—apart from communicating the missive of the GENERAL COUNCIL to Geneva— I had to give a general report and communicate the appointment of a new secretary for Belgium (Serraillier, ouvrier bottier from Marseilles). He accuses us of having provoked the crisis in Geneva which —as Egalité shows—ended more than a week before our MISSIVE arrived there, etc. The Belgian Conseil Général has, despite Hins, declared its full agreement with us.

Curious that OLD Becker announced his withdrawal from the editorial committee of Égalité together with the other Bakuninists. At the same time, he publishes in his Vorbote the exact opposite of what Bakunin did in Egalité. The old confusionist!

Salut.

Your

K. M.