marx and the russians

Marx and the RussiansAuthor(s): Henry EatonSource: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Jan. - Mar., 1980), pp. 89-112Published by: University of Pennsylvania PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2709104 .

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MARX AND THE RUSSIANS

BY HENRY EATON*

Marx's personal contacts with the Russians link the Bolshevik Revo- lution to its past. The purpose of this essay is to enumerate those con- tactsl and to show how they may be related to the origins of Marxism in Russia. Of those Russians who knew Marx personally or corresponded with him only Nikolai Ziber, a Kiev University professor, and Vera Zasulich, one of the organizers of the first Russian Marxist party, the Emancipation of Labor group, were Marxists. Nor was their contact with Marx a factor in their conversion. However, nearly all the Russians who met or corresponded with Marx were influenced by him and in some way contributed to the dissemination of his ideas in Russia. This was true of Marx's adversary Mikhail Bakunin and of Populists such as Nikolai Daniel'son and Peter Lavrov who, despite their closeness to Marx, could not reconcile their own vision of Russia's future with his prediction that industrial capitalism would precede socialism.

Soviet writers automatically accept the Marx-Russian contacts as important historical stepping stones towards Bolshevism.2 Western authors are inclined to minimize their importance and to argue that Russian Marxism began around 1883, the year of Marx's death and of the formation of the Emancipation of Labor group.3 The difficulty here is that

* Research for this article was supported by the University of Illinois Russian and East European Center's Summer Research Laboratory and by North Texas State University.

1 Russians who met Marx and/or corresponded with him include: M. A. Bakunin, P. L. Lavrov, H. A. Lopatin, N. F. Daniel'son (Nikolai-on), M. M. Kovalevsky, N. A. Kablukov, N. K. Ziber, N. V. Chaikovsky, P. V. Annenkov, V. N. Smirnov, Vera Zasulich, N. I. Utin, N. V. Vasil'ev, V. V. Lutsky, V. P. Botkin, A. V. Korvin-Krukovskaia (Zhaklar), E. L. Tomanovskaia (E. Dmitrieva), N. I. Sazanov, D. I. Rikhter, N. N. Liubavin, L. N. Hartmann, A. A. Serno-Solov'-

evich, G. M. Tolstoy, and N. A. Morozov. 2 The best single work on the subject of Marx's personal contacts with Russians

is the indexed and extensively annotated K. Marks, F. Engel's i revoliutsionnaia Rossiia (hereafter MER), ed. A. K. Vorob'eva (Moscow, 1967); it supplants (largely) another major collection, Perepiska K. Marksa i F. Engel'sa s russkimi

politicheskimi deiateliami, ed. P. N. Pospelov, et al. (2nd ed.; Moscow, 1951); one of the less biased, more informative monographs is S. S. Volk, Karl Marks i russkie obshchestvennye deiateli (Leningrad, 1969).

3 E.g., L. H. Haimson, The Russian Marxists and the Origins of Bolshevism

(Cambridge, Mass. 1955); S. H. Baron, "The First Decade of Russian Marxism," The American Slavic and East European Review, 14, no. 3 (Oct. 1955); L.

Schapiro, The Communist Party of the Soviet Union (New York, 1960), 10; the same view is suggested by the title of a book by Iu. Z. Polevoi, Zarozhdenie Marksizma v. Rossii, 1883-1894 gg. (Moscow, 1959).

89



90 HENRY EATON

1883 is not a turning point. A better case could be made for either the 1870s when Das Kapital and several articles on Marx were published in Russia, or the 1890s when a party began to crystallize within the country. By contrast, during the Emancipation of Labor's first decade (1883- 92), ten years of ill fortune and frustrated efforts for the group,4 Rus- sian interest in Marx seems to have retreated.

One of the principal early figures in Marx's relationship with the Russian emigre community was Mikhail Bakunin. The paths of the two first crossed in the spring of 1840 in Berlin where Bakunin had come to study German philosophy. Marx was then a graduate student at the Uni- versity of Berlin, but his association with the Hegelian Left, especially Bruno Bauer, had ended his chances there for a doctorate. Bauer himself was removed from the faculty, Friedrich Schelling given an appointment, and the Left Hegelian journal Hallische Jahrbiicher suppressed. Fried- rich Engels, who had come to Berlin in connection with his military service in the fall of 1841, and Bakunin attended some of Schelling's lectures. Engels was already committed to the Hegelian Left and bitter over Schelling's appointment.'

Bakunin's conversion began later that autumn in Dresden where he met Arnold Ruge, editor of the defunct Hallische Jahrbiicher. Ruge guided him to the works of the Young Hegelians and in 1842 published an article by him in the new Deutsche Jahrbiicher.6 These contacts with Ruge and the literature of the Young Hegelians drew Bakunin into the revolutionary arena with Marx. The two first met in March 1844 at an international banquet arranged by Ruge. Belinsky's friend, the liberal publicist Vasilii Botkin, and Count Grigorii Tolstoy, a reform-minded landowner from Kazan, were also there. Botkin had attended some of the

Schelling lectures in Berlin in the autumn of 1841 and two years later published an article on German literature, devoted partly to the philoso- pher, in the journal Otechestvennye zapiski (Fatherland Notes). That part of the article which concerned Schelling was little more than a loose translation of portions of an anonymous brochure which the young En- gels had published in 1842 in Germany.7

The Russians who met Marx in Paris in 1843-44 were favorably impressed. Count Tolstoy, in a momentary fit of conscience promised to

4 Baron, "First Decade," 325-26. 5 Gustav Mayer, Friedrich Engels, trans. from Ger. ed. (1934) by Gilbert and

Helen Highet (1936), ed. R. H. S. Crossman (New York, 1939), 18-24. 6 E. H. Carr, Michael Bakunin (1st ed. 1937; New York, 1961), 114-16;

Martin Malia, Alexander Herzen and the Birth of Russian Socialism, 1812-1855 (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), 251-52.

7 Marx/Engels Gesamtausgabe (Frankfurt, Berlin, Moscow, 1927-35), Pt. 1, II, Friedrich Engels Werke und Schriften bis Anfang 1844 nebst Briefen und Dokumenten (1930), ix-xiii, 181-227 ("Schelling und die Offenbarung"); Karl Marx, Chronik seines Lebens in Einzeldaten (Moscow, 1934), 21; V. B-n, "Germanskaia literature," Otechestvennye zapiski, 26 (Jan. 1843), "Inostrannaia literatura," 1-3.



MARX AND THE RUSSIANS 91

sell his land and "throw himself and all his capital into the muzzle of the coming revolution." Bakunin sided with Marx in a debate with Ruge. Nikolai Sazonov, a wealthy young journalist, friend of Herzen and Ogarev, tried to get Marx to join him on the staff of the Paris paper La Reforme.8 To Marx, however, these Russians were political dilet- tantes;9 Engels was almost certain that some of them were spies.10 In 1851 Sazonov wrote Marx that he had begun a French translation of the Manifesto. Marx was not impressed. "In Sazonov's letter," he wrote Engels, "the dateline 'Paris' is the only interesting thing.""

Between 1841 and 1844 Marx was associated with several short- lived journals, each the victim of Prussian censorship. The Deutsch- Franzosische Jahrbicher, to which both Marx and Bakunin contributed, survived only one issue (March 1844). After its demise Marx, Bakunin, and Ruge moved into a circle of writers associated with a Paris publication called Vorwdrts. The Prussian government, however, succeeded in

having the French suppress it also. In January 1845 a number of Ger- man fugitive contributors, including Marx, were ordered out of France; with his family Marx went to Brussels. While he was there a meeting was arranged between him and the communist labor leader Wilhelm

Weitling. An account of their "debate" was made by the writer Paul Annenkov, a liberal Russian gentleman who had come to Brussels to see Marx. The meeting was short. Marx, who impressed his Russian visitor as a "democratic dictator" of "indestructible convictions," inter-

rupted Engels' opening remarks in order to charge Weitling with thought- lessly stirring up the Swiss workers. To emphasize his anger Marx

pounded the table with his fist, then jumped to his feet; the discussion was finished.12

In December 1846, in reply to a query from Annenkov, Marx wrote a long sharply worded critique of Proudhon's Philosophie de la misere (1846). The letter was eventually expanded into the book, Misere de la philosophic (1847). Soon after their first meeting Marx twice sought financial assistance from Annenkov, once in May 1846 (Annenkov sent 140 francs in June) and again the following year, when he found him-

8 Correspondence de Michel Bakounine; Lettres a Herzen et a Ogareff (1860-1874), ed. M. P. Dragomanov, trans. M. Stromberg (Paris, 1896), 28-34; Franco Venturi, Roots of Revolution, trans. from Ital. ed. of 1952 by F. Haskell

(New York, 1960), 46; P. V. Annenkov, "Zamechatel'noe desiatiletie," Vestnik

Evropy, 2 (March-April 1880), 496. 9 Marx to Kugelmann, 12 Oct. 1868, Marx Engels Werke (hereafter MEW),

39 vols. (Berlin, 1972-73), XXXII, 566-67. 10 Engels to the Communist Correspondence Committee in Brussels, 16 Sept.

1846 and to Marx, 18 Sept. 1846, MEW, XXVII, 43-44, 52; P. V. Annenkov to

Marx, 30 Sept. 1846, MER, 129-30; Benoit-P. Hepner, "Marks i Rossiia," Novi

zhurnal, 32 (1953), 254; E. H. Carr, Karl Marx, (1st ed. 1934; London, 1938), 30. 11Marx to Engels, 13 Oct. 1851, MEW, XXVII, 358; Sazonov to Marx, 6

Dec. 1849, 2 May 1850, 10 Sept. 1851, 10 May 1860, MER, 146-55. 12 Annenkov, "Zamechatel'noe," 497-99.



92 HENRY EATON

self tormented by heavy domestic worries, a condition which became for him, like his ulcerous boils and ailing liver, a chronic malady. Early in December 1847 Marx wrote from London that he was penniless, his children ill, and his wife, whose health was also poor, "literally besieged by creditors." The two met a second and last time in Paris shortly after the February uprising of 1848.1'

In mid-December 1847 both Marx and Bakunin returned to Brus- sels, Marx from London where he had been negotiating with the English Chartists and Bakunin from Paris, expelled by Guizot for an anti-tsarist speech; they met at the end of December and once again, perhaps, in January. However warm may have been Bakunin's association with the German emigres in Paris, he now began to suspect that Marx and his followers were simply plotters, capable only of endless speculation.14 Bakunin himself had not long to wait for action. Two days after the Paris revolt of February 24, 1848, he arrived in the French capital. In the reactionary aftermath of that uprising he traveled to Prague; when rebellion there faltered he went to Berlin. There he was confronted by an article in the July 6 issue of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung which called him a Russian agent, "chiefly responsible for the recent arrests among the unfortunate Poles." The paper originated in Cologne under the editor- ship of Marx. The article was quickly discredited and an apology printed, and though years later a repetition of this slander played a part in the feud between Marx and Bakunin, for the moment it did not trouble their relationship. In August the two met in Berlin on good terms.15

Nevertheless, the German-western biases of Marx and Engels, cou-

pled with their strong dislike for Pan-Slavism and Russian nationalism.

prejudiced their firm cooperation with Bakunin. Marx apprehended behind Pan-Slavism the reactionary power of an ever expanding Russia. Six months after the Berlin meeting Engels referred to Bakunin as "our friend" but harshly criticized his Pan-Slavic sentiments. The accusations

appeared, again in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, in a two-part article which identified Russia and the Slavs as reactionary traitors: "the Slavs . . . excluding the Poles ... have always been the chief tools of counter- revolution. Oppressed at home, in foreign countries they have been the

oppressors of all revolutionary nations as far as the Slavic influence has reached."16 Bakunin had no chance to reply; involved in the last phase of the German revolutions, he was arrested in May 1849 by Saxon authorities. Two years later he was transferred to Russia where he was exiled to Siberia.

13 Annenkov to Marx, 2 June 1846, MER, 128; Marx to Annenkov, 28 Dec. 1846 and 9 Dec. 1847, MEW, XXVII, 451-63, 472-73; Annenkov, "Zamechatel'-

noe," 499-502. 14 Marx, Chronik, 43; Carr, Bakunin, 153-54; Carr, Marx, 53. 15 Marx, Chronik, 55; Mehring, Marx, 190-91. 16 Engels, "Der demokratische Panslawismus," Neue Rheinische Zeitung, 15-16

(Feb. 1849), in MEW, VI, 280; Carr, Marx, 226-27.




During the 1850s Marx and his family lived in comparative isolation in London, plagued by indebtedness, sickness, and the death of two children. It was a decade of hardship for many exiles in the city and of dis- illusionment for revolutionaries who witnessed the triumph of reaction across the Channel. The frustrated emigre community was constantly divided by querulous factions. In 1854 Marx was invited to a meeting for the establishment of an international socialist committee. He attended but objected to a proposal for electing Herzen to membership. He did not know Herzen personally, he said, but his being a Russian nationalist was sufficient reason for exclusion. When, despite this objection, Herzen was

accepted, Marx quit the meeting.17 A few months later, in February 1855, Marx received an invitation to a banquet of the International Emigrants Committee in celebration of the revolutions of 1848. Although certain groups were to be present, especially the Chartists, whom Marx did not want to alienate, he refused. "I at no time and no place want to be associated with Herzen," he wrote, "since I do not adhere to the opinion that 'old Europe' can be renovated by Russian blood."'1

Bakunin escaped from Siberia in 1861 and was in London by year's end. Unlike many other emigres he had preserved the revolutionary optimism of 1848.19 Soon he was planning a strategic entry into the Polish Revolution, or failing that, sparking a rebellion in Finland. When these schemes collapsed he made his way to southern Europe, settling at last in Florence. In the fall of 1864 he returned briefly to London where he met Marx for the last time. The occasion was the founding of the Inter- national Association of Workingmen. Among those elected to the General Council and to a constitutional drafting committee was Marx. Having heard that Bakunin was in London, Marx sought him out, thinking he might be useful to the new organization. Marx wrote to Engels about the meeting, "I must say I like him very much and better than formerly. ... In the future, after this Polish business, Bakunin is going to take part only in the international socialist movement."20 Marx thought he could use Bakunin's influence among Italian and Spanish workers on behalf of the International;21 Bakunin hoped to enhance his position in the international labor movement through an association with Marx.22 From

17 A. I. Gertsen, Sobranie sochinenii v. tridtsati tomakh (Moscow, 1954-65), II, 166.

18 Marx to Engels, 13 Feb. 1855, MEW, XXVIII, 434-35. 19 Carr, Bakunin, 251-52. 20 Marx to Engels, 4 Nov. 1864, MEW, XXXI, 16. 21Marx to Engels, 1 May 1865, MEW, XXXI, 111. Marx, who constantly

campaigned against Mazzini and his influence among the Italian workers, wrote to

Engels: "Du weisst, dass nicht die italienische Gesellschaft aus der Association, wohl aber ihre Delegates aus dem Council [Council General of the IAW] aus-

getreten. Statt dessen sind jetzt Spanier drin. One Roman nation for the other. Ernennen die Kerls [Italian members of the IAW] nicht bald neue Delegierte, wie wir sie aufgefordert, so wird Bakunine for some life Italians zu sorgen haben."

22 Bakunin to Herzen, 28 Oct. 1869, Correspondence, 288-95.



94 HENRY EATON

Florence, early in 1865, Bakunin wrote affectionately to Marx, apologiz- ing for having left previous letters unanswered and expressing a whole-hearted allegiance to Marx and the International.23 The truth seems to be that, for the time being, neither Marx nor the International were foremost in his thoughts. He even failed to respond when, in Sep- tember 1867, Marx sent him a copy of the just published Das Kapital.24 Within the next few months, however, Bakunin and Marx entered on a collision course.

Italy proved a disappointment to Bakunin. Revolutionary nationalism, which drew him there as it had to Poland in 1863, had not emanci-

pated the workers. Thus, when he left Italy for Switzerland in August 1867 he went in search of a truly international revolutionary workers' movement. In September in Geneva he attended the first international

congress of the recently formed League of Peace and Freedom. He was

given an enthusiastic welcome and elected to the League's executive committee. His attention, however, was now focused on the IAW. In June or July 1868 he joined its Geneva section and then attempted to bring the League and the IAW together, hoping to secure for himself a position of influence in the latter. Failing to obtain a merger, he dropped the

League, founded a new International Social-Democratic Alliance, and

petitioned for its admission into the IAW. These activities prompted Marx to inquire after Bakunin in a letter

to Alexander Serno-Solov'evich, an IAW member and strike organizer in Geneva. "But since I do not trust any Russian," Marx wrote to Engels, "I put it [the inquiry to Serno] in this form: 'what is my old friend Bakunin (if he still is my friend) up to, etc., etc.' " Having seen the letter to Serno, Bakunin replied, stressing his willingness to serve the Inter- national and his friendship and loyalty to Marx. He also wrote that his relations with Herzen had been severed.25 This submissiveness won him

nothing. On the day he posted his letter the General Council of the International, in which Marx had a decisive voice, voted to exclude the Alliance.

That marked a parting of the ways for the two men,26 though it did not keep Bakunin out of the IAW. Acceding to the Council's recom- mendations, he dissolved the Alliance in June 1869 and proposed that each section join the International individually. Bakunin's Geneva section was admitted in July. The following September the IAW held its fourth annual Congress at Basel. The Association appeared vigorous and

23 Bakunin to Marx, 7 Feb. 1865, MER, 156-58. 24 Marx, Chronik, 261. 25 Iu. M. Steklov, Mikhail Aleksandrovich Bakunin, 4 vols. (Moscow-Lenin-

grad, 1920-27), III, 6-7; Marx to Engels, 13 Jan. 1869, MEW, XXXII, 243; men- tion is made of Marx's letter to Serno (Dec. 1868) in Bakunin's reply to Marx, 22 Dec. 1868, MER, 166-67.

26 Marx to Engels, 15 Dec. 1868 and Engels to Marx, 18 Dec. 1868, MEW, XXXII, 234, 235-37. As late as Nov. 1868 Marx had discouraged the republication of an 1849 article by Engels which was critical of Bakunin, MEW, XXXII, 195-99.




Bakunin's position in it growing strong. Through the summer he had taken part in Geneva labor politics, and his articles had appeared in two Swiss journals of the IAW: L'Egalite, which he edited during July and August, and Le Progres. The Congress lasted six days. In Marx's absence Bakunin was a dominating figure.

Distressed at these events, Marx began to use his influence to knock the props from under Bakunin. Through the General Council he discredited journals over which Bakunin had influence and in a "confidential communication" warned the German sections of Bakunin's clandestine operations.27

A key figure in the Marx-Bakunin conflict was Nikolai Utin. As a Petersburg University student he had been arrested during the demon- strations of September 1861 and briefly imprisoned. When further in- volvement, in the Chess Club and the Petersburg committee of Land and Freedom, put the police on his trail again, he fled to the West (May 1863). In London he was associated with Herzen and Kolokol'; then he moved to Geneva where he became friends with Serno and was drawn into the IAW (1867). The following year Utin secured from Bakunin control of a new leftist journal Narodnoe delo.28 In January 1870 he also gained control over L'Egalite and in March founded a Russian section of the IAW. The section wrote to Marx assuring him of its anti-Bakunin- ist sentiments and anti-Pan-Slavic aims. At its request Marx agreed to represent the section in the General Council.9' In April Utin forced a split in the Romande (French Swiss section of the IAW) which had been dominated by Bakunin, secured the expulsion of Bakunin from the central Geneva section of the International, and, in an attempt to force Bakunin out of the IAW altogether, charged that the Genevan Alliance had not been properly admitted. In 1871 the General Council, unable to bring a full congress together, held a London conference which considered various charges made by Marx against Bakunin and commis- sioned Utin to report on one particular aspect of the charges, the Nechaev affair.

This affair turned on a contract Bakunin had made in 1869 to translate Das Kapital into Russian.3" Bakunin had submitted only a few

pages of translation to the publisher's agent Nikolai Liubavin when the terrorist Sergei Nechaev arrived at Locarno (January 1870) and con- vinced him to devote his pen to propaganda for what Nechaev described as a vast revolutionary organization in Russia. Regarding the contract

27 Carr, Bakunin, 376-77; James Guillaume, L'Internationale, Documents et Souvenirs, 4 vols. (Paris, 1905-1910), I, 210-13; Marx to Engels, 17 Dec. 1869, MEW, XXXII, 421-23; Marx to Kugelmann, 28 March 1870, MEW, XXXII, 664 and XVI, 409-420, "Konfidentielle Mitteilung."

28 Carr, Bakunin, 360-61. 29 Committee of the Russian Section of the International to Marx, 12 March

1870, and Marx to the Committee, 24 March 1870, MER, 168-70, 170-71. 30 Carr, Bakunin, 399; Bakunin to Herzen, 4 Jan. 1870, Correspondence, 300.



96 HENRY EATON

to translate Capital, Nechaev simply wrote to Liubavin threatening his life should he make any demands on Bakunin.3l

In July 1872 the General Council of the IAW scheduled a General Congress for The Hague the following September. It was apparent to members of the International that the clash between Marxists and Bakuninists would be the principal attraction. Marx's strongest complaint was against the continued existence of a secret and subversive Alliance organization under Bakunin's leadership. In addition, he hoped to discredit the character of Bakunin by bringing to light particulars of his association with Nechaev. Marx's position was secure; he controlled the General Council and was sure of a majority in the assembly. There was, however, a strong minority which demanded sectional autonomy, i.e., a sharp reduction in the power of Marx and the Council. Marx, therefore, came to The Hague determined to free himself from both the IAW and Bakunin by having the seat of the General Council removed from London and by having Bakunin ousted from the Association. He succeeded on both counts.32

Bakunin's defeat at The Hague was only one of many setbacks for the aging anarchist. At last even optimism, which had carried him through a succession of failures, gave way. The flurry of activity among the Bakuninists after the congress in establishing their own "anarchist" International received only his initial support. Nechaev's arrest in Zurich in August 1872 started Bakunin on a nervous vigil anticipating his own capture. He was now 59, chronically ill, and financially helpless.33 Never- theless, another attack on him was made in mid-September 1873 in a pamphlet which came out in London, entitled L'Alliance de la Demo- cratie Socialiste et l'Association Internationale des Travailleurs.Y Pub- lished in the name of the General Council and written by Engels, Lafargue, and Marx, it restated the charges against Bakunin and defended the action of The Hague Congress. The decline and dissolution of the IAW were ascribed to Bakunin and the Alliance. Marx's sympathetic biographer, Franz Mehring, considered the pamphlet "below anything else Marx and Engels ever published . . . a one-sided indictment whose

31 Guillaume, Internationale, I, 147, 260, and III, 13-14; Steklov, Bakunin, III, 495-97; Carr, Bakunin, 390-99; J. M. Meijer, Knowledge and Revolution (Assen, 1955), 41-42.

32 The First International Minutes of the Hague Congress of 1872 with Related Documents, ed. and trans. H. Gerth (Madison, 1958), 225-26; Carr, Bakunin, 444-51; Marx's correspondence regarding the Nechaev letter, MER, 240-41, 244-46, 256-60, 276-78; Iu. M. Steklov, History of the First International, trans. from 3rd Russian ed. with notes from the 4th ed. by E. and C. Paul (New York, 1928), 234-35; Guillaume, Internationale, II, 177-86, 192-214.

33 Bakunin to Ogarev, 2 Nov. 1872, Correspondence, 365; Carr, Bakunin, 468-78. 34 MEW, XVIII, 327-471.




tendentious character is apparent on every page."35 Bakunin's reply, bitter and indignant, was a confession of old age, weariness, and a sick heart.36

Emigre Russians who were closely associated with Bakunin signed a

public letter protesting the decisions taken at The Hague and Marx's part in them. Printed in the pro-Bakuninist Geneva monthly La Liberte (13 Oct. 1872), it derided the Utin group, "that famous Russian Inter- national," and assured Marx that, despite his cleverness, he would gain nothing in Russia where Bakunin was esteemed.37 Yet, even in Zurich, where the letter originated, Marx had a small following of Russians, three of whom (G. Akimov, N. E. Vasil'ev, and D. I. Rikhter) were members of the Zurich section of the IAW. Also, one of the eight signers of the letter, Valerian Smirnov, who became editor of the Zurich-London Vpered!, was soon on good terms and corresponding with Marx. On balance, however, the emigre Russians, especially the large Zurich colony, sympathized with Bakunin.38 Peter Lavrov and Hermann Lopatin, who were by no means in the anarchist's camp and were on close terms with Marx and his family, objected to the attacks of Marx and the General Council. Liubavin pointed out to Marx that the Nechaev letter used to discredit Bakunin was not proof of his guilt.39 As for Utin, after 1872 there was no further correspondence, and only an occasional meeting, with Marx. In 1880 he took advantage of an Imperial pardon and, having renounced revolution, returned to Russia and a government post.40

The struggle between Marx and Bakunin had revealed differences in personality and philosophy. Racism and nationalism clouded their view; each saw in the other a flawed mentality-a romantic Russian, a

logic-chopping German.41 It is to Bakunin's credit that to the end he

openly recognized the importance of the IAW and the debt owed Marx

by members of the revolutionary movement.42 Once their struggle com- menced Marx regarded Bakunin with complete disdain. Bakunin was

skeptical about Marx's vision of proletarian rule, and posing the

35 Franz Mehring, Karl Marx, the Story of His Life, trans. from German ed. of 1918 by E. Fitzgerald, ed. R. and H. Norden (New York, 1935), 521.

36 Steklov, Bakunin, IV, 316-20. 37Guillaume, Internationale, III, 12-13; Utin to Marx, 1 Nov. 1872, MER,

266-67, n. 157. 38Meijer, Knowledge and Revolution, 100-104, 188 (n. 74); Smirnov-Marx

correspondence, MER, 314-15, 318, 344, 397. 39 Liubavin to Marx, 20 Aug. 1872, MER, 260; Meijer, Knowledge and Revo-

lution, 189 (n. 82). 40 Their last meeting was in Sept. 1876 in Liege where Marx found Utin ill and

sought a doctor for him, Marx to Fleckles, 21 Sept. 1876, MEW, XXXIV, 201; Utin made several visits to Marx in London in November 1873 (Marx, Chronik, 345); early in 1877 Marx was paid several visits by Frau Utin (Marx to Lavrov, 16 March 1877, MEW, XXIV, 256); Mehring, Marx, 523.

41 Carr, Bakunin, 136, 153-54; Mehring, Marx, 173. 42 Guillaume, Internationale, II, 165.



98 HENRY EATON

question, over whom would the new state govern, answered: "The peasant 'rabble,' which, as we know, does not stand in great favor with the Marxists." He warned against the numbing consolation that the proletarian dictatorship would be temporary. In order to care for the people, he wrote, the Marxists will organize production under a single authority and divide the people into industrial and agricultural armies commanded

by a "new privileged scientific-political class" of "state engineers."43 At the height of the struggle between Marx and Bakunin the first

Russian editions of Capital and The Communist Manifesto were published. Alexander Serno-Solov'evich, friend and disciple of Chernyshevsky and one of the organizers (with his brother Nikolai) of Land and Freedom, had already begun searching for a publisher for Capital in the

spring of 1868. Serno had left Russia in 1862 just avoiding a police round-up which claimed his brother and Chernyshevsky. Tormented by these arrests and a desire to act, Serno joined the International and plunged into the Geneva workers' movement. In December 1867 he received from Marx a copy of Das Kapital. The following spring he wrote to Marya Trubnikova, who had attracted a circle of young revolutionaries (including Alexander and his brother) around her in Petersburg, about the possibility of finding publishers for Russian editions of Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie and Das Kapital. In October he again expressed to Trubnikova his desire to translate Das Kapital. But it was not to be. In November he wrote Marx about the workers' movement in Geneva and requested his support for a new publication, L'Egalite.44 Unfortunately, Serno had drawn the opposition of Bakunin's Alliance which controlled the journal, the result being his removal from the editorial committee in January 1869. This, combined with the discovery that he had an incurable and progressively worsening illness, drove him to suicide (August 1869). "Too bad about Serno," wrote Engels, "he

really seems to me to have been a respectable Russian."45 Ironically, it was Bakunin who was offered the job of translating

Capital into Russian and it was probably he who first translated the Manifesto into Russian. In a letter to Marx in November 1872 Utin described the contents of a journal, Narodnaia rasprava (no. 2), put out anonymously by Nechaev and Bakunin and printed in Geneva in December 1869 (imprinted: "Petersburg, winter 1870"). Under the heading "Principal Foundations of the Future Social Order" the editors of the journal pointed out that readers would find in the Manifest Kom-

43 Bakunin, Gosudarstvemost' i anarkhiia (1873), quoted in The Political

Philosophy of Bakunin: Scientific Anarchism, ed. G. P. Maximoff (Glencoe, 1953), 286-89.

44 A. A. Serno-Solov'evich to Marx, 20 Nov. 1868, MER, 161-65, and to Mariia Trubnikova, 19 May, 14 June, and 29 Oct. 1868, Zven'ia V, Sborniki materialov i dokumentov po istorii literatury, iskusstva i obshchestvennoi mysli XIX veka, ed. V. Bonch-Bruevich (Moscow-Leningrad, 1935), 394-404.

45 Venturi, Roots, 253-84; Engels to Marx, 1 Nov. 1869, MEW, XXXII, 383.




munisticheskoi Partii, "published by us," the "basic theoretical development of the foundations of our principles." In fact, writes Utin, they have actually translated and published the Manifesto, without any indication of authorship or translator. Utin was certain that Bakunin was behind the journal and had pirated the translation.46 The facts about this first Russian edition are few: a Russian translation of a German edition was sent, early in September 1869, through Ogarev to the printer of Kolokol', L. Chernetsky, in Geneva, and he printed 1000 copies. Bakunin probably made the translation which Nechaev, on his way back to Russia in August of 1869, delivered to Ogarev with instructions to publish.47

In the fall of 1868 members of the Petersburg Ruble Society (including G. A. Lopatin, M. F. Negreskul, F. V. Volkhovsky, N. F. Daniel'son, and Liubavin) considered publishing a Russian edition of Capital.48 It was Nikolai Daniel'son (Nikolai-on) who first wrote to Marx about the project. Daniel'son had been a student activist in Petersburg in the early 1860s. After graduating from a commercial college in 1862 he was employed by the Petersburg Mutual Credit Association. There he met Lopatin with whom he attended lectures at the University of St. Petersburg and meetings of the Ruble Society. The correspondence between Daniel'son and Marx consisted of about 60 letters (1868-1881).

In his first letter to Marx (September or October 1868) Daniel'son wrote that the importance of Das Kapital had led the publisher N. P. Poliakov to undertake its translation and publication in Russia. Like Daniel'son, Poliakov had been a student activist (expelled from the University of St. Petersburg in 1861) and was associated with reform- minded journalists and with the Chaikovsky Circle. Marx was pleased at the news but reflective ("It is an irony of fate that the Russians, whom I have fought for twenty-five years ... have always been my 'patrons"'") and condescending ("But too much should not be made of all this. The Russian aristocracy is, in its youth, educated at German universities and

46 That view is carried into the preface to the second Russian edition of the Manifesto (1882) where Marx and Engels refer to the "first Russian edition . . . in the translation of Bakunin printed early in the 60s . . . at the printing press of Kolokol." Engels confirms him as translator of the first Russian edition in his preface to the 1888 English edition and gives as the date of publication, "about 1863." In this same preface Engels attributes Plekhanov's translation of the second Russian edition of the Manifesto to Vera Zasulich.

47 Utin to Marx, 1 Nov. 1872, MER, 264-65; Bert Andreas, Le Manifest Communiste de Marx et Engels. Histoire et Bibliographie 1848-1918 (Milan, 1963), 49-53; Archives Bakounine, IV, Michel Bakounine et Ses Relations avec Sergei Nechaev 1870-1872, ed. A. Lehning (Leyden, 1971), xxviii-xxix, 415-32; B. P. Koz'min, "Kto byl pervym perevodchikom na russkii iazik 'Manifesta Kom- munisticheskoi Partii'?" Literaturnoe Nasledstvo; Gertsen i Ogarev, eds. V. V. Vinogradov, et al. (Moscow, 1956), LXIII, Pt. III, 700-701.

48 . S. Knizhnik-Vetrov, Russkie deiatel'nitsy pervogo Internatsionala i Parizhskoi kommuny (E. L. Dmitrieva, A. V. Zhaklar, E. G. Barteneva) (Moscow- Leningrad, 1964), 8.



100 HENRY EATON

in Paris. They always run after the most extreme that the West can offer") .49

Liubavin, having learned of Bakunin's financial woes, recommended him to Daniel'son as translator. An agreement was made in the summer of 1869 and 300 rubles advanced. But Bakunin had hardly begun the work when he was caught up in the schemes of Nechaev.

The translation now fell to Lopatin, another young Petersburg radical who was committed to the ideas of Chernyshevsky, associated with the Chaikovsky Circle, and a founder of the Ruble Society. He had been arrested early in 1868 along with other members of the Society and exiled to Stavropol'. In January 1870 he escaped, engineered the flight of another political prisoner, Peter Lavrov, and with him traveled to Paris. There he began a serious study of Marx, an interest which went back to his readings and discussions among the Chaikovtsy during his own student radical apprenticeship in Petersburg. In July Lopatin traveled to London with a letter of introduction from Paul Lafargue to Marx. They met and talked the whole of one Sunday afternoon and evening. Lopatin must have begun the translation soon afterwards. Marx was pleased with the visit. In September he submitted Lopatin's name for membershp in the General Council of the IAW. Both Marx and the publisher regretted Lopatin's decision in December 1870 to return to Russia in order to free the exiled Chernyshevsky. Two months after leaving England he himself was imprisoned in Siberia.50

Daniel'son completed the translation. Fortunately Lopatin, before

going to Siberia, passed on to him the material he had been working with, including four finished chapters (2-5). Liubavin may have translated or at least worked on the first chapter which Bakunin had started. It went to press in March 1872 and was put on sale in early April. Of the 3000 copies printed some nine hundred were sold by the end of May.51 Its preface did not include, as in the first German edition, an attack

against Herzen (d. 1870); instead the works of Chernyshevsky and the economist N. Ziber were praised. It passed the censor because it was "Scientific, heavy, and difficult to understand" and not applicable to Russia.52 Several journals and newspapers carried reviews which were

generally favorable. Sales went so well that by mid-summer Daniel'son was anxious to prepare a second edition.53 Although this expectation was

49Daniel'son and Liubavin to Marx, 30 Sept.-14 Oct. 1868, MER, 158-59; Marx to Kugelmann, 12 Oct. 1868, MER, 23-24, 741 (n. 14).

50 Marx to Engels, 5 July 1870, MEW, XXXII, 520-22; Marx, Chronik, 296; V. F. Antonov, German Lopatin (Lipetsk, 1960), 57-58; Volk, Karl Marks, 118-20.

51 Volk, Karl Marks, 120-21; Olga P. Kalekina, Ocherki po istorii izdaniia marksistskoi literatury v Rossii (1870-1917 gg.) (Moscow, 1962), 23-25.

52 A. L. Reuel', Russkaia ekonomicheskaia mysl' 60-70-kh godov XIX veka i Marksizm (Moscow, 1956), 233.

53 Daniel'son to Marx, 4 June 1872 and 1-6 Aug. 1872, Pospelov, Perepiska, 81-84.




premature, a handful of the intelligentsia continued to take an interest in the book; in 1877 it was debated in the Russian press more warmly than at the time of publication.

The connection between Marx and Daniel'son was fruitful. Marx received numerous books and articles, and in order to read them began the study of Russian. Impressed with his first reading, Polozhenie rabochego klassa v Rossii (Condition of the Russian Working Class, 1869) by N. Flerovsky (Vasilii V. Bervi) he was soon requesting more from Daniel'son, particularly the economic writings of Chemyshevsky.54 Daniel'son was an eager informant on economic and social matters, especially those which lent support to his own Populist beliefs. When Marx inquired about the polemic between B. N. Chicherin and I. D. Beliaev concerning the origin of the Russian obshchina (peasant commune), Daniel'son was pleased to send him several basic works and a promise of more.55 Daniel'son hoped Marx would use the information to write a survey of the Russian economy. In the end he himself made the study which appeared first as an article in Slovo (Oct. 1880) and in 1893 as a book, Ocherki nashego poreformennogo obshchestvennogo khoziastva (Survey of Our Post-Reform Social Economy). Daniel'son applied his banking experience, as well as his Populist and Marxist views, to analyzing the flow of money between banks and villages, to the latters' great disadvantage. It was a significant work on the question of Russia's economic development.56

In the summer of 1873 Lopatin once again escaped imprisonment and returned to Western Europe. He visited Marx only infrequently since he lived in Paris and was associated with Lavrov's Vpered! group in Zurich. At the time of Lopatin's return Bakunin was already expelled from the IAW but there was still some heat left in his debate with Marx. Although Lopatin did not support Bakunin in the IAW, he found Utin and his clique loathsome, and took the anarchist's side when he debated the issue with Engels or the Marxes in their homes.57 Nevertheless, Lopatin and the Marxes remained on quite friendly terms. In the fall of 1876 he met Marx in London probably for the last time. In October 1884 he was arrested again, this time with secret codes and a membership list of the already foundering People's Will.58

54 Marx to Engels, 23 Oct. 1869 and 10 Feb. 1870, MEW, XXXII, 377, 437; Marx to Kugelmann, 29 Nov. 1869 and 27 June 1870, MEW, XXXIII, 637, 686; Marx to Daniel'son, 13 June 1871, MEW, XXXIII, 231.

55 Marx to Daniel'son, 22 March 1873 and Daniel'son to Marx, 1 April 1873, Pospelov, Perepiska, 93-96.

56 Richard Wortman, The Crisis of Russian Populism (London, 1967), 151-52. 57 Engels to Marx, 29 Nov. 1873, MEW, XXXIII, 93-94; Lopatin to Lavrov,

10 Dec. 1873, quoted in Meiher, Knowledge and Revolution, 189 (n. 82). 58Avrahm Yarmolinsky, Road to Revolution (London 1957), 324-27; Iu. M.

Rapoport, Iz istorii sviazei russkikh revoliutsionerov s osnovopolozhnikami nauch-

nogo sotsializma, K. Marks i G. Lopatin (Moscow, 1960), 63.



102 HENRY EATON

Peter Lavrov (Mirtov), Lopatin's close friend and a leading figure in the Populist movement, also knew Engels and Marx. Throughout the 1870s their meetings and correspondence were frequent. Lavrov was nearly 40 when he joined the revolutionary Land and Freedom movement in 1862. He had been an army colonel and professor of mathematics and had published several important articles on German philosophy. In 1866 he was found guilty by a military court of spreading subversive literature. During his exile he composed a series of essays which were published in Petersburg in 1868-69 and entitled Historical Letters. The work was an immediate success among revolutionaries. In 1870 he escaped with Lopatin to the West, where he was soon active in support of the Paris Commune.

As an emissary of the Commune, traveling abroad in search of support, Lavrov met Marx and Engels. Being a socialist and student of Hegelian theory he was attracted to their ideas.59 In mid-July 1871 Lavrov left London for Paris where he assisted in the IAW's program for helping the defeated Communards. In March of the following year he was asked by the Chaikovsky Circle to head a new left-wing Russian emigre journal. There ensued a protracted debate over editorial and publication questions which divided the Russian emigres in Zurich into two camps, Lavrists and Bakuninists. In March 1873 Lavrov published his program for Vpered! It included various viewpoints: Populist, Marxist, and Bakuninist. The editor believed Russia's future depended upon the evolution of peasant communal society. For its free development the state had to be destroyed; but the success of an overthrow depended es- sentially on two things: the right moment and knowledge.60

Lavrov saw the struggle between Marx and Bakunin as a serious and

unnecessary breach in the socialist movement, believing that Marx's revolutionary centralism and Bakunin's revolutionary federalism were not mutually exclusive. Both ideas had merit; the particular historical circumstance would determine which was best." Frequently, in conversa- tions with Marx and his family Lavrov defended Bakunin. Although Marx viewed such eclecticism as weakness, the two became good friends; when Marx died it was to Lavrov that Eleanor Marx gave her father's Russian library.62

Another visitor to Marx's London home was Maksim M. Kovalev-

sky, an eminent legal scholar and political liberal. During the 1870s he travelled extensively in the West; at Karlsbad in the late summer of 1875 he met with Marx daily for almost a month and again in the summer of 1879 the two frequently met, either at the British Museum Library or

59 Meijer, Knowledge and Revolution, 114-15. 60 Ibid., 115, 126, 160-61. 61Lavrov to Lopatin, 19 July 1870 and Lopatin to Lavrov, 20 July 1870,

Lavrov-gody emigratsii. Arkhivnye materialy v. dvukh tomakh, ed. Boris Sapir, 2 vols. (Dordrecht and Boston, "Russian Series on Social History," 1974), I, 13, 17. 62 Ibid., I, xlix.




at Marx's home. As with Daniel'son, the relationship benefitted both men. Kovalevsky's interest in history was expanded through his discussions with Marx, particularly on questions of land ownership, family structure, comparative ethnography, and comparative history of law. He was impressed with Marx's knowledge of languages and his familiarity with Russian authors. His own writing was enhanced by Marx's critical

appraisal and he was especially pleased when Engels showed him the extensive notes which Marx had compiled from Kovalevsky's book Ob- shchinnoe zemlevladenie (Communal Ownership of Land). Kovalevsky had given Marx a copy in September 1879, just after publication, and it had served Marx as a basic source for his own studies of land owner-

ship in Asia. Marx called Kovalevsky one of his "scientific friends"; the latter de-

scribed their discussions as stimulating and enlightening. Despite strong reactionary tendencies in Russia and his belief that Marx overestimated his own popularity there, Kovalevsky considered his country second only to Germany in the interest shown Marx. When Kovalevsky returned to Russia in 1879 he took back Engels' Herrn Eugen Diihrings Umwdlzung der Wissenschaft (1877) which he passed on to N. I. Ziber who published it piecemeal in three different journals; including Kriticheskoe obozrenie, edited by Kovalevsky.G3

Due to his moderate opposition to the government Kovalevsky was dismissed from Moscow University in 1887 where he had been a professor of constitutional law since 1878. Besides being a teacher (he was reappointed to the law faculty of Petersburg University, 1905-16) and editor (Kriticheskoe obozrenie, Strana, Vestnik Evropy), Kovalevsky worked towards constitutional government through the zemstvos, the Duma (as a member of the Party of Democratic Reform), and State Council. He also helped to establish the Cadet (Constitutional Demo- cratic) Party and the Progressive Bloc of the Fourth Duma. Although he worked for lawful political change, he remained sensitive to the appeal of his revolutionary friends. When Lavrov in 1886 was desperately short of money Kovalevsky found him work as London correspondent for Russkie vedomosti and helped him get his books published.64

Late in his life Marx had brief contacts with several notable figures from Russia, including Elizaveta Dmitrieva (Tomanovskaia), Lev Hart- mann, Nikolai Morozov, Vera Zasulich, and Nikolai Chaikovsky.

Elizaveta Dmitrieva was the only other member of the small Russian section of the IAW besides Utin whom Marx knew personally. She visited him in December 1870 a few weeks after the section was formed.

63 M. M. Kovalevsky, "Dve zhizni," Vestnik Evropy, (4 July 1909), 10-19; also see "M. M. Kovalevsky," in A. K. Vorob'eva (ed.), Russkie sovremenniki o K. Markse i F. Engel'se (Moscow, 1969), 59-78; Kovalevsky to Lavrov, 27 Aug. 1879, Sept. 1880, and July 1884, also in Vorob'eva, 161, 188, 206-207.

64 Philip Pomper, Peter Lavrov and the Russian Revolutionary Movement

(Chicago and London, 1972), 220-21.



104 HENRY EATON

At the time of their conversation Marx apparently had predicted the dis- integration of communal property in Russia into small holdings, for she wrote Marx to tell him that she had to agree with what he had said on this matter, because the facts, regrettably, supported him. In the spring of 1871 Dmitrieva went to Paris and joined the Communards. When their cause failed she returned to Russia and in 1876 accompanied her husband into Siberian exile.65

Lev Hartmann belonged to the People's Will which had emerged in the fall of 1879 from a division in the ranks of Land and Freedom. He was well known for his attempt to assassinate Tsar Alexander II in November 1879. After fleeing the Russian police and then being expelled from France, he went to London in December 1880. He gained the friendship of both Marx and Engels during several brief visits, but by the time he departed for the United States in June 1881 he had raised a small storm in the Marx household. Just before leaving he proposed, in rapid succession, to a niece of Mrs. Engels and then to Marx's young- est daughter Eleanor. "This is too much," wrote Marx. "even Mama is now completely disgusted with him and the whole male sex!"66 Accord-

ing to an account related by Yarmolinsky, after a brief visit to London in 1882 Hartmann returned to the States and a career in the electrical

appliance business.67 Accompanying Hartmann on his first trip to London in 1880 was

Nikolai A. Morozov, a member successively of the Chaikovsky Circle, Land and Freedom, and People's Will. He was also an associate editor of the Geneva journal Rabotnik in 1874 and Zemlia i volia in 1878-79. Morozov visited Marx twice. Before returning to the Continent he asked for a literary contribution from Marx for the organ of the People's Will which was to be published in Geneva. Marx produced "5 or 6 pamph- lets" and a promise to write a foreword for whichever one was first

published. However, back in Geneva Morozov found a letter from Sofia Perovskaia informing him that impending events required his immediate return to Russia. While crossing the border in January 1881 he was arrested (and imprisoned until 1905). Afterwards he could not remember what had become of the "Manifesto and other books" which Marx had

given him but thought he had turned them over to Plekhanov.68 At about the time of Morozov's arrest Marx was visited by Nikolai

Ziber, professor of economics and statistics at Kiev University, who was

working at the British Museum Library on his book Ocherki pervobytnoi ekonomicheskoi kul'tury (Survey of Primitive Economic Culture, 1883).

65 Karl Marx, Chronik, 299; Elizaveta Tomanovskaia to Marx, 7 Jan. 1871, MER, 186-87; Volk, Karl Marks, 94-96.

66 Marx to Jenny Longuet, 6 June 1881, MEW, XXXV, 195. 67 Yarmolinsky, Road, 299. 68 N. Morozov, "U Karla Marksa," in A. S. Smirnova, Oni vstrechalis' s

Markom; vospominaniia russkikh obshchestvennykh deiatelei (Moscow, 1958), 27-30.




Ziber had been interested in Marx's ideas since the late 1860s. Besides

publishing Engels' Anti-Diihring, he wrote a number of articles on Marx- ist themes, including a series in 1878 on "the economic theory of Marx."69 His work had caught Marx's attention as early as December 1872 when he (Marx) wrote Daniel'son requesting Ziber's Theory of Value and Capital of D. Ricardo (Kiev 1871).7" With Ziber when he visited Marx was Nikolai Kablukov who had finished his undergraduate work in economics and statistics at Moscow University in 1871 and had since worked in the statistical section of the Moscow Zemstvo Board. In London he was doing research at the British Museum during the fall and winter of 1880-81 and was already well acquainted with Marx and Engels when Ziber arrived.71

At the end of March 1881 Marx became acquainted with Nikolai Chaikovsky, leader of one of the most important political circles of the early 1870s. After two arrests he had emigrated in 1874 to the United States and then to Paris where he became a foreign correspondent of Russkie vedomosti. In 1880 he went to London as a representative of People's Will. Lev Hartmann wrote to Engels in November of that year that Chaikovsky desperately needed work: "he has no money and no job, his wife is painfully ill with kidney stones, and he is left alone with three children-one still at the breast."72 Chaikovsky is not mentioned in Marx's correspondence although he did once write Marx to answer a question about Ia. I. Rostovtsev, an official in the government of Alex- ander II.73

A frequently mentioned correspondence of Marx is the exchange of two letters with Vera Zasulich. In her letter of 16 February 1881 Zasu- lich, still a Populist, asked Marx the questions which had been troubling the Narodniks ever since Marxism had gained some attention in Russia. She asked his opinion about the economic evolution of Russia and the

prospects for the peasant commune. At the same time she pointed out that his views in Capital indicated a long wait for the triumph of socialism in Russia, a disheartening prospect for Russian revolutionaries.74

Marx was hard put to find the proper answer. He did not agree with the Populist view but did not want to discourage or dissociate himself

69 Richard Kindersley, The First Russian Revisionists, a Study of "Legal Marx- ism" in Russia (Oxford, 1962), 8-9; Ziber, "Ekonomicheskaia teoriia Marksa," Slovo (Jan.-Sept. 1878).

70 Teoriia tsennosti i kapitala D. Rikardo v sviazi s pozdneishimi dopolneniiami i raz"iasneniiami. Opyt kritiko-ekonomicheskogo issledovaniia (Kiev, 1871). Sec- ond edition: David Rikardo i Karl Marks v ikh obshchestvenno-ekonomicheskikh

issledovaniiakh-Opyt kritiko-ekonomicheskogo issledovaniia (St. Petersburg, 1885).

71 Marx to Daniel'son, 19 Feb. 1881, MEW, XXXV, 157; Marx, Chronik, 383; Vorob'eva, Russkie sovremenniki, 78.

72 Hartmann to Engels, 24 Nov. 1880, MER, 429; Marx, Chronik, 383. 73 Chaikovsky to Marx, 31 March 1881, MER, 445. 74 Zasulich to Marx, 16 Feb. 1881, Pospelov, Perepiska, 299-300.



106 HENRY EATON

from either the Russian revolutionary movement, despite its strong Pop- ulist tradition, or from the Russian socialists who had responded to his ideas. Marx had to be tactful.

The analysis presented in "Kapital" argues neither for nor against the viability of the Russian obshchina, but the particular investigations, which I have conducted on the basis of material drawn by me from primary sources, convinces me that this obshchina is the axis of social regeneration in Russia. But in order for it to function as such, it would be necessary, first of all, to eliminate the noxious influence which it undergoes from all sides, and consequently, insure normal conditions for its natural development.75

Neither this letter to Zasulich nor a similar statement in the preface to the 1882 Russian edition of the Manifesto hold out much promise for the survival of the village commune.

At the time of his death in 1883 it was not apparent that Marx had left to Russia a vital revolutionary legacy. The formation that year of the Emancipation of Labor group, although a promising step, did not fire a revolutionary movement. Members were arrested or struck down by sickness and death, their publications were confiscated, and their ideas met stiff resistance. For Plekhanov and the Emancipation group the years 1883-1892 were "a decade of isolation."76 That is not to say that Marx- ism had slipped out of the Russian revolutionary consciousness; some of the same writers who were engaged in discussing Marx and his ideas in the 1870s were again at the literary barricades when that name and those ideas became the center of an even more vigorous controversy in the 1 890s.

Marxism had begun to make some headway in Russia as early as the late 1860s when there began to appear, in Russian journals (Russkoe slovo, Sovremennik, Otechestvennye zapiski), occasional articles and reviews which referred to Marx and his writing. At the same time interest in translating his books into Russian also began to grow. At the height of Marx's struggle with Bakunin (who first translated the Manifesto in 1869) a Russian edition of Capital was being prepared.

Most of Marx's Russian acquaintances doubted the ready application of Marxism to Russia yet recognized its significance to the revolutionary movement. Lavrov, though a Populist, was pleased to see the author's ideas exposed in his homeland. Lavrov also resisted efforts to make the

journal Vestnik Narodnoi voli, which he edited with Lev Tikhomirov, into an anti-Marxist paper.77 In 1887 he translated a significant portion of, and wrote a "Foreword" to, Marx's "Towards a Critique of the Hegel-

75 Marx to Zasulich, 8 March 1881, MEW, XXXV, 166-67, 494-95 (n. 211). 76 Samuel H. Baron, Plekhanov, the Father of Russian Marxism (Stanford,

1963), 117-38. 7 Lavrov-gody emigratsii, I, xlvii-xlviii.




ian Philosophy of Right, Introduction."78 Marx was always congenial in his relations with Lavrov but sometimes privately disdainful, as when he wrote to Engels that Lavrov was a man, "not without abilities," who had read a great deal of bad German literature, imagining, "that since it was German literature it must be 'scientific'."79 Lavrov's comrade Hermann

Lopatin became a dear friend of the Marx family, and though his return to Russia in 1871 cut short his translation of Capital, he nevertheless assisted in getting the book published and provided his friends with information about the International.8"

Among the early converts to Marxism was Ivan Fesenko. He and Dmitrii Lizogub, political activists of the 1870s, came to London in the

spring of 1874 where they met Lavrov and quite possibly Marx. Both had been students at Petersburg University and Lizogub had been a member of the Chaikovsky Circle. Both young men were probably familiar with Capital before they travelled abroad. After their return to Russia in the fall of 1874 Fesenko went to Kiev where he organized and led a workers' discussion group, advocating the ideas of Marx. Leo Deutsch recalled Fesenko's enthusiastic praise of Capital and the strong impact Fesenko had had on his own thinking. Plekhanov was one of those who attended lectures on political economy delivered by Fesenko in 1874-75, lectures which Deutsch claims gave Plekhanov's thinking a Marxist impulse.8'

Nikolai Ziber, another acquaintance of Marx, was known to all three of these revolutionaries: Plekhanov, Deutsch, and Fesenko and may have had some influence on the political persuasion of each. Ziber's name also arises in the case of Axelrod's introduction of Marx. It was as a member of the Chaikovsky Circle in Kiev that Axelrod, in the early 1870s, was first introduced to Capital by I. I. Kablitz who was auditing classes at Kiev University where Ziber held the Chair of Political Economy and Statistics (1873-75).82 Ziber also contributed, as did Bakunin, to Plek- hanov's early high regard for Marx.8" Another of Marx's Russian contacts known to Plekhanov was Lavrov. They met in Paris for the first

78 Lavrov to V. N. Smirnov, 2 Dec. 1887, Lavrov-gody emigratsii, II, 440-41; Marx, "Zur Kritik der Hegelschen Rechts philosophie. Einleitung," Deutsch- Franz6sische Jahrbiicher (Feb. 1884).

79 Marx to his daughters, 13 June 1871, MEW, XXXIII, 234. Engels took a similar attitude: Lavrov "always found himself in the role of a mother hen who hatches 'young Russian' ducks and afterwards looks on in dismay as they get into the horrible water," Engels to E. Bernstein, 13 Nov. 1883, MEW, XXXVI, 72.

80 Venturi, Roots, 477. 81 Lev Deich, Za polveka (Berlin, 1923), I, 79-111; L. Deich, "Molodest'

G. V. Plekhanova," Byloe, 13 (July 1918), 139. 82 P. B. Aksel'rod, Perezhitoe i peredumannoe (Berlin, 1923), I, 87-109. 83 Baron, Plekhanov, 48-50.



108 HENRY EATON

time in 1877. In 1881 Plekhanov wrote to Lavrov that his writings and those of Marx and Chernyshevsky had most influenced his thinking.84

One reason why political exiles from Russia were attracted to Marx and Engels was because the latter two showed a genuine interest in their country. Engels began the study of Russian (along with other Slavic

languages) as early as 1852 in order, as he said, "to know the language, history, literature, and details of the social institutions of just those nations with which there is an impending conflict." Engels had Russia specifically in mind. Twenty years before Bakunin's defeat and thirty years before Zasulich put to Marx the question about the future of the peasant commune, Engels wrote:

Bakunin has made something of himself only because no one else knows Russian. And the old pan-Slavic dodge of converting the ancient Slavic communal property into communism and of presenting the Russian peasants as born communists will once again become widely propagated.85

Marx began studying Russian during the winter of 1869-70; besides Chernyshevsky, Flerovsky, and Dobroliubov, he was familiar with books by Ziber, Kovalevsky, A. I. Chuprov, and others. According to Hart- mann as late as the spring of 1881 Marx was still studying the language.86

The commitment to Marxism by Ziber in the late 60s and Fesenko in the early 70s is hardly evidence for a "movement." In fact, during his lifetime Marx was not well known in Russia. When Daniel'son first wrote to Marx, in the fall of 1868, about the decision to publish a Russian edition of Capital he pointed out the need for acquainting the Russian

public with Marx's former works which were difficult to find.87 Scarcely anyone in Russia in the 1860s knew about the Manifesto of the Com- munist Party. It is doubtful that Bakunin's 1869 translation got into Russia except as one of the items among Nechaev's confiscated papers. Lavrov wrote in 1874 that Marx and Engels were largely ignored by the Russian community.88 Vera Figner, in her memoirs, mentions Marx only in passing. She writes that when Hartmann, as a member of the executive committee of Land and Freedom, was sent to ask Marx to help organize propaganda against the Russian government Marx did no more than send the committee a note of support and photograph of himself, appro- priately inscribed; an arrogant reply perhaps, but of little matter to Fig- ner who believed that the Russian revolutionary movement after 1876 needed no help from the west.89 By 1876, of course, Russian intellectual

84Plekhanov to Lavrov, 31 Oct. 1881, Vorob'eva, Russkie sovremenniki, 194-95.

85Engels to Marx, 18 March 1852, MEW, XXVIII, 40. 86 Hartmann to Lavrov, 12 May 1880, Vorob'eva, Russkie sovremenniki, 177. 87Daniel'son and Liubavin to Marx, 30 Sept.-14 Oct. 1868, MER, 159. 88 Lavrov to Lopatin, 19 Jan. 1874, Lavrov-gody emigratsii, I, 106. 89 Vera Figner, Zapechatlennyi trud, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1964), I, 245-46.




life was inextricably bound to Western thought; even Marx's ideas had already been circulating in Russia for some time, albeit within narrow limits.

In an 1865 review of two books by Iu. Zhukovsky, Peter Tkachev pointed out that the author's view about the economic foundations of society was not new, that it had been transplanted ino Russian literature, "as is always the case for what is good in it, from the literature of West- ern Europe."

As early as 1859 the well known German exile Karl Marx formulated this very same view (Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie, pp. 4, 5). Now this view has become virtually the common property of all thoughtful honest persons, and hardly any sensible man will find any serious objection to it.90

Five years before Tkachev's review article Marx had written Lassalle that this same book had "aroused great interest in Russia, and a professor [I. K. Babst] in Moscow has lectured on it."9' In 1868 Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy was considered for translation by Serno and the Ruble Society. Although both projects fell through, interest in Marx was increasing. By the early 1870s there were Russian editions of Capital, Manifesto, and Civil War in France (1870-71) (the latter anonymously translated from German and published in Geneva in 1871).92 In addition there had been several articles published since the mid-1860s which, in some measure, considered Marx's views.93 The cul- mination was a debate in the Russian press during the years 1877 to 1882. The first round was a series of articles published between 1877 and 1879, N. K. Mikhailovsky and N. Ziber defending Marx against Iu. G. Zhukovsky and B. N. Chicherin.94 "And all of them long articles,"

90 Russkoe slovo, Dec. 1865, in Peter Nikitich Tkachev, Sochineniia v. dvukh tomakh, eds. A. A. Galaktionov, V. F. Pustarnakov, B. M. Shakhmatov (Moscow, 1975-76), I, 99-100.

91 Marx to F. Lassalle, 15 Sept. 1860, MEW, XXX, 565. I. K. Babst was professor of political economy at the universities of Kazan and Moscow.

92 Kalekina, Ocherki, 19. 93 E.g., E. K. Watson, "Stachki rabochikh vo Frantsii i v Anglii," Sovremen-

nik 6 (1865), includes passages from the manifesto of the IAW; G. Z. Eliseev, "Otvet na Kritku," Otechestvennye zapiski, 4 (1869), mentions the German edition of Das Kapital; V. I. Pokrovsky, "Chto takoe rabochii den?" Otechestvennye zapiski, 4 (1870), includes citations from Capital; Eliseev, "Plutokrattia i ee os- novy," Otechestvennye zapiski, 2 (1872), has citations from Capital, and N. K. Mikhailovsky, "Po povodu russkogo izdaniia knigi Karla Marksa," Otechest- vennye zpiski, 4 (1872).

94 Iu. Z. Zhukovsky, "Karl Marks i ego kniga o kapital," Vestnik Evropy, 9 (Sept. 1877); N. K. Mikhailovsky, "Karl Marks pered sudom g. Iu. Zhukov- skogo," Otechestvennye zapiski, 10 (Oct. 1877); N. Ziber, "Neskol'ko zamechanii po povodu stat'i g. Iu. Zhukovskogo 'Karl Marks i ego kniga o kapitale'," Otechest- vennye zapiski, 11 (Oct. 1877); B. N. Chicherin, "Nemetskie sotsialisty, II: Karl Marks," Sbornik gosudarstvennykh znanii, 6 (1878); Ziber, "Chicherin contra Karl Marks," Slovo, 2 (Feb. 1879).



110 HENRY EATON

wrote Lavrov, "I think that in no other place has there been so much written about his [Marx's] work."95 At issue was capitalism in Russia, its prospects, the forecast made by Marx and Engels, and alternatives. It was rather a Populist debate than one between Marxists and non- Marxists, but it was carried on in Marxist terms by authors who were familiar with or well informed about, and in some cases sympathetic to, Marx's ideas. Mikhailovsky suggested that a Russian Marxist must accept capitalism and the destruction of the peasant commune as a necessary historical stage in the progress towards socialism.96 In a letter (which he never sent) to the editor of Fatherland Notes, Marx argued that Mikhailovsky had wrongly interpreted his survey of the origins of capitalism in the West to mean that all people were fated to travel the same path whatever their particuar circumstances. Marx pointed out that he had learned Russian in order to study the basic literature on Russia's economic development. What did he conclude? "If Russia continues along the path she has followed since 1861, she will lose the finest chance which history has ever afforded a people and will suffer all the fatal mis- fortunes of capitalism."97

The second round of debate over Marx and Russia's future occurred around 1880 to 1882 in articles by V. P. Vorontsov, Daniel'son, and N. S. Rusanov. Attempts were made by these Populist writers to satisfy theoretical considerations by going to the facts. Vorontsov poured out several articles and books. In Sud'by kapitalizma v Rossii (The Fate of Capitalism in Russia, 1882) he argued that although capitalism was present in Russia, it was an alien force which, because Russia lacked foreign markets, could not survive. Industrialization was inevitable but it would advance under the guidance of the state which alone had the capital and was not motivated by profit. As noted above Daniel'son was

strongly influenced by Marx. He saw capitalism advancing rapidly in Russia but, like Vorontsov, believed Russia would avoid a full assault since world markets were already controlled by Western Europe and the United States. Although Marx himself suggested that Russia might by- pass capitalism of the western type (in the preface to the 1882 edition of the Manifesto and in the unposted letter to Mikhailovsky), he said little to Daniel'son supporting that view.98 In 1893 Engels, writing to Daniel'son about his book, Survey of Our Post-Reform Social Economy, commented that "the present capitalistic phase of development in Russia

appears . . . unavoidable." About the commune, he wrote, "I am afraid

95Lavrov to Engels, 11 Aug. 1878, MER, 349-50. 96 N. K. Mikhailovsky, "Po povodu russkogo izdaniia knig Karla Marksa,"

Otechestvennye zapiski, 4 (1872), in N. K. Karataev (ed.), Narodnicheskaia ekonomicheskaia literatura (Moscow, 1958); J. H. Billington, Mikhailovsky and Russian

Populism (Oxford, 1958), 66-70. 97 Marx to Editor of Otechestvennye zapiski, Nov. 1877, MER, 77-79. 98 Marx to Daniel'son, 19 Feb. 1881, MEW, XXXV, 155.




that institution is doomed."99 Daniel'son never became reconciled to this proposition.

Rusanov, like Daniel'son, was familiar with Marx's work (he first read Capital about 1874 when he was 14 or 15) and committed to an

objective investigation of Russia's economic foundations.1"' He published his views in several articles, most of which appeared in Delo in 1880-81. He did not agree with Vorontsov and Daniel'son that the commune would survive or that cartels of craftsmen (kustary) could supplant private exploitative industry. In "Contemporary Manifestations of Capitalism in Russia" ("Sovremennye proiavleniia kapitalizma v Rossii," Russkoe Bogatstvo, Jan., 1880) Rusanov argued that Russia stood "at the threshold of capitalism."1'

At that threshold Populism stopped. Writers who had been attracted to Marx in the 1870s had to defend their Narodnik views against Marx- ism in the 1890s. It seems they felt the bite of an ideology they once had fed. For Marxism was introduced into the mainstream of Russian radical thought by way of various Populist connections; a not surprising circumstance since the two movements arose about the same time and were rooted in much the same philosophy: Comte, Mill, Hegel, Proud- hon, Blanc, etc. Student groups and reform publicists, cornerstones of

Populism, eagerly acquainted themselves with these authors. The discussion and dissemination of books was a primary activity of the Chai-

kovsky Circle, "the first large Populist movement";102 the favorite Rus- sian authors were Chernyshevsky and Flerovsky (Bervi). The latter's Condition of the Russian Working Class, which so impressed Marx, was a basic text.1'3 Marx, his friend Lavrov, and his antagonist Bakunin were also highly regarded by the group. The Ruble Society, another circle of

young leftists, probably initiated efforts to publish Capital in Russia. The Russian edition of 1872 and reviews and articles which fol-

lowed brought Marx before readers of the left-wing press. The response was generally favorable, in part because Populists tended to overlook fundamental differences between his materialism and objectivism and their own commitment to idealism and subjectivism. Even the critic Iu. G. Zhukovsky recognized "many estimable" qualities in Capital.104 The Rus- sian first volume was largely the work of Daniel'son, who carried on the translation of subsequent volumes as the debate between Populists and Marxists grew. The same Daniel'son was encouraged by his contacts with Marx to make his own investigation of the Russian economy. His book on the post-reform era did notable service for Populism, documenting

99 Engels to Daniel'son, 17 Oct. 1893, MEW, XXXIX, 148-50. 100 N. S. Rusanov, Iz moikh vospominanii, I, Detstvo i iunost' na rodine 1859-

1882 (Berlin, 1923), 115-116. 101 Ibid., I, 288-89. 102 Venturi, Roots, 471. 103 Billington, Mikhailovsky, 60.

104Zhukovsky, "Karl Marks," 71.



112 HENRY EATON

the oppressive financial exploitation of the village. Mikhailovsky, who also had basic disagreements with Marxism and who became a prime target of Plekhanov's criticism, nevertheless credited Marx with stimulating renewed interest in the question of Russia's relationship to the West. In response to Marx, Russian writers had not only to address the issue of capitalism in Russia but to raise again that "long chain of debates" in Russian literature, "the arguments of Slavophiles and Westernizers."105

Marx held out little hope that the peasant commune might overcome industrial capital, and his dialectical materialism was at odds with the Populist faith; still, many Populists found in Marx a compelling indictment of capitalism, a rich fund of theory, and evidence which confirmed their own views of labor and capital. Because of his personal contacts with leading reformers, the publication of his works in translation, and the warm reception given his ideas in the radical press, Marx got a re- markably substantial hearing in Russia. The author himself was sur-

prised at its extent. One result was the exposure to Marxism of such ardent Narodniki as Plekhanov, Axelrod, and Deutsch. Another was to

spur such other Populists as Daniel'son and Rusanov to launch their own

investigations into the economic foundations of Russian society. To their

dismay, they found evidence that capitalism was advancing and the vil-

large commune declining; that same evidence helped fuel the Marxist

arguments against Populism in the last decades of the century.

North Texas State University.

105 N. K. Mikhailovsky, Literaturnaia vospominaniia i sovremennaia smuta, 2 vols. (2nd ed., St. Petersburg, 1905), I, 330.

