Letter to Pyotr Lavrov, December 5, 1890

Author(s)	Friedrich Engels
Written	5 December 1890

First published, in Russian, in Bolshevik
Printed according to the original
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 49

ENGELS TO PYOTR LAVROV

IN PARIS

London, 5 December 1890 122 Regent's Park Road, N. W.

My dear friend Lavrov,

Many, many thanks for your kind letter of 27 November and your congratulations, as also those of your socialist compatriots on whose behalf you speak. But it's always the same. The lion's share of the honours that were showered upon me last Friday doesn't fall to me by right and no one knows that better than I do. So permit me to place on Marx's grave the lion's share of the flattering things you were good enough to say to me and which I accept, but only as his continuator. And as for the small portion which, without being presumptuous, I accept on my own account, I shall do my best to prove worthy of it.

After all, we are not so very old, you and I. And we have hopes of living and seeing. We have seen Bismarck's rise, heyday and decline, so why should we not also see, after its heyday, the decline (already in progress) and ultimate fall of Russian Tsarism, the great enemy of us all?

Yours affectionately,

F. Engels