Letter to Pyotr Lavrov, March 16, 1877

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 16 March 1877


First published, in Russian, in Letopisi marksizma, Book V, Moscow-Leningrad, 1926
Printed according to the original
Translated from the French
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 45


MARX TO PYOTR LAVROV

IN LONDON

[London,] 16 March 1877

My dear Friend,

A member of the HOUSE OF COMMONS (an Irishman[1] ) intends to bring a motion—next week—to the effect that the English government should call upon the Russian government to introduce the reforms (in Russia), which it declares to be necessary in respect of Turkey. He wants to take advantage of the occasion by speaking of the horrors that are occurring inside Russia. I have already supplied him with a few details about the measures taken by the Russian government against the refractory Poles of the United Church. Could you make a brief résumé—in French—of judicial and police persecution inside Russia in recent years? Since time is short—I was only informed of the matter today—and something is better than nothing, could you, since these incidents are fresher in your memory than in mine, do this 'something'? I believe that would be of great service to your suffering compatriots.[2]

As to Mrs Utin, I can make absolutely nothing of it, but I SHALL CROSS-EXAMINE HER AT THE NEXT INTERVIEW. Had she not, on various occasions and in the presence of my wife and myself, expressed the wish to see you, we should not have breathed a word of it.

Yours ever,

Karl Marx

  1. ↑ Keyes O'Clery
  2. ↑ At Marx's request, Pyotr Lavrov compiled a résumé of judicial and police persecution in Russia, which Marx passed on to the Irish M.P. Keyes O'Clery. The latter used the information in his speeches delivered in the House of Commons on 3 and 14 May 1877 (see MEGA, Erste Abteilung, Band 25, S. 462). Pyotr Lavrov also wrote an article in French entitled 'La justice en Russie', which Marx helped to get printed in the British weekly Vanity Fair on 14 April 1877.