Letter to the Executive Committee of the Social-Democratic Party of Hungary

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Author(s) Frederick Engels
Written January 1893


Written in early January 1893
First published in: Marx and Engels, Works, First Russian Edition, Vol. XVI, Part II, Moscow, 1936
Printed according to the manuscript
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 27
Keywords : Hungary, Letter, Social democracy

Engels wrote this letter in response to an invitation (received in late December 1892) to the second congress of the Social-Democratic Party of Hungary, which took place in Budapest on January 6-8, 1893. Before the congress and during it, a conflict arose between the party’s opportunist wing and its Left wing led by Paul Engelmann. The opportunists managed to get the decision (which they had reached in December) on Engelmann’s and his followers ‘ expulsion from the party confirmed. Engels’ letter, in which he advocated a peaceful settlement of the conflict, was not read out at the congress or published in the party press.

Dear Comrades,

My best thanks for your kind invitation to the Party Congress of the Hungarian Social Democrats, which I shall sadly be unable to attend.

I cannot dispatch these lines without expressing my great regret at the strife which has broken out in your ranks. Far be it from me to intervene in matters which I am neither called upon to decide nor sufficiently informed to be capable of so doing. I can only express the wish that the Party Congress succeeds in reconciling the differences of opinion and [1] ends the danger of a split.

With best wishes for the success of the Party Congress

Yours,

F. E.

  1. ↑ The following is deleted in the manuscript: "the Hungarian Party retains such a capable worker as Comrade P. Engelmann hardly is". — Ed.
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