| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 15 March 1892 |
ENGELS TO NIKOLAI DANIELSON
IN ST PETERSBURG
London, 15 March 1892
Dear Sir,
I am almost ashamed to reply to your kind and interesting letters of the 12 and 21 November last. But I have been so overwhelmed with work, and I find that writing by gaslight is still so hurtful to my eyes (which otherwise keep quite serviceable) that this extra work and the shortness of daylight during our winter must be my excuse.
You are passing indeed through a momentous period for your country, the full importance of which can hardly be overestimated. From your letters it seems to me that you look upon the present неурожай[1] not as an accident, but as the necessary result, as one of the unavoidable concomitants of the economic development entered upon by Russia since 1861.[2] And that is my opinion too, as far as one can judge from a distance. With the year 1861 Russia entered upon the development, on a scale worthy of a great nation, of Modern Industry. The conviction ripened that now-a-days no country can take a befitting rank among civilised nations without possessing steam-driven industrial machinery and providing, to a great extent at least, for its own wants of manufactured goods. And upon that conviction Russia has acted, and acted with great energy. That she surrounded herself with a rampart of protective duties, was but too natural, English competition forced that policy upon almost every great country, even Germany, where une grande industrie had successfully developed under almost absolute free trade, joined the chorus and turned protectionist, merely to accelerate the process of what Bismarck called die Züchtung von Millionären.[3] And if Germany entered upon this course even without any necessity, who can blame Russia for doing what to her was a necessity, as soon as the new industrial course was once determined upon?
To some extent your present situation appears to me to find a parallel in that of France under Louis XIV. There, too, manufactures were placed in a condition of vitality by Colbert's protective system; and within 20 or 30 years, it was found out that a national manufacturing industry, under the circumstances then existing, can be created only at the expense of the peasantry. The Naturalwirtschaft[4] of the peasants was broken up and supplanted by the Geldwirtschaft,[5] the home market was created and, at the same time, nearly destroyed again, at least for the time, by this process and the unprecedented violence with which economic necessity enforced itself, and by the increased taxation in money and in men, necessitated, then, by the introduction of standing armies by conscription, as it is now-a-days necessitated by the introduction of the Prussian military system of universal army service. And when at last a crop or two failed, then arose that universal state of discomfort all over the country which we find depicted in Boisguillebert and Marshal Vauban.[6]
But there is one immense difference: The difference between old Manufaktur and modern grande industrie which (in the action upon the peasant, the agricultural producer on a small scale and with his own means of production) is as the difference between the old smooth-bore flint-musket of 1680 and the modern repeating rifle, calibre 7.50 millimetres, of 1892. And moreover, whereas in 1680 agriculture on a small scale was still the normal mode of production, and large estate-farming could only be a rising exception, but always an exception, large farming with machinery is now the rule and becomes more and more the only possible mode of agricultural production. So that the peasant today appears to be doomed.
You remember what our author said in the letter on Joukovsky[7] — that if the line entered upon in 1861 was persevered in, the peasants' obshchina[8] must go to ruin. That seems to me to be in course of fulfilment just now. The moment seems getting near, at least in some districts, where the whole of the old social institutions of Russian peasant life not only lose their value to the individual peasant but become a fetter, exactly as they have done in former times in Western Europe. I am afraid we shall have to treat the община[9] as a dream of the past, and reckon, in future, with a capitalist Russia. No doubt a great chance is thus being lost, but against economic facts there is no help. The only curious thing is that the very men in Russia who never tire of defending the invaluable superiority of Russian primitive institutions as compared with those of the rotten Occident, are doing their very best to destroy those primitive institutions and to replace them by those of the rotten Occident!
But if the Russian peasant is doomed to be transformed into a proletarian, industrial or agricultural, the помѣщикъ[10] does appear to be doomed too. From what I gather, this class is even more in debt than the peasants, and has to sell out gradually. And between the two seem to step in a new class of landowners, village кулакъ or town-bourgeois— the fathers of, perhaps, a future Russian landed aristocracy??
The failure of last year's crop has brought all this out into glaring daylight. And I am quite of your opinion that the causes are entirely social. As to deforestation, that is as essentially, as is the ruin of the peasants, a vital condition of bourgeois society. No European 'civilised' country but has felt it, and America,* and no doubt Russia, too, feels it at this moment. Thus deforestation, in my eyes, is essentially
a social factor as well as a social result. But it is also a very common pretext for interested parties, to devolve the blame for economic mishaps upon a cause which apparently nobody can be made responsible for.
The failure of the crop, in my opinion, has only made patent, what was there already latent. But it has terribly accelerated the velocity of the process going on. The peasant, at seed-time this spring, will be infinitely weaker than he was at seed-time last autumn. And he will be called upon to recover strength under far more unfavourable circumstances. A pauper, over head and ears in debt, no cattle, what can he do — even in the places where he has got through the winter without having to leave his land? It therefore seems to me that it will take years before this calamity is completely overcome, and that when that point is reached, Russia will be a very different country from what she was even on 1 January 1891. And we will have to console ourselves with the idea that all this in the end must serve the cause of human progress.
I sent you last autumn a little book: Ursprung der Familie[12] 4th edition, it was registered and my address outside on the wrapper, as it did not come back I hope you have received it.
I thank you very much for the many papers and reviews sent — the one of Mendelejeff's[13] was especially interesting. But I regret I cannot just now give to them all the attention they deserve, owing to hard work. How fast I was with extra work, you will conceive when I tell you that from New Year to now — generally my quietest time — I have not been able to give one minute to 3rd volume[14] !
Your congratulations were duly forwarded to Paris.[15]
With kind regards ever yours
P.W. Rosher[16]
No news from our mutual[17] ?