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 | 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