I have today packed up Haxthausen’s Studies on Russia for you, and you will receive them by Monday at the latest. You will see from this, it is true bureaucratic-pedantic and Catholic-reactionary, but industrious compilation of Russian peasant conditions, which the aristocratic Russians themselves never bothered about, since they derived all their wisdom from France and Germany, that Monsieur Herzen first discovered Russian natural communism here in Haxthausen; where Haxthausen let himself be taken in by the Russian чиновники (officials) you will likewise discover at once. Do make sure you take this Herzen to task; he is, like all half-Russians, worse than the full-blooded Russians. Of these, your friend Katkoff is indeed the only one worth considering, and I am glad that you are giving him such a rough handling in the Hermann. The lucubrations of these bitter, venomous Slavic minds need only be translated into a civilised language in order to appear in all their ridiculousness as far as their intellectual content is concerned, but because behind these scoundrels stands the great mass of the reading Russians, they are nonetheless very important. And even the mass of non-reading Russians stands behind them, in a sense, because this party appeals more strongly than any other tendency to the traditional passions and lust of conquest, to the tradition of Russia’s manifest destiny as victor in Constantinople, and hence its policy best accords with the traditions of the мужикъ (peasants). Of all the Slavs I regard the Serbs – next to the Poles – as the only ones already capable of civilisation, and also the only ones who, once they are independent of the Turks, or the Austrians, or secure against them, will act in a directly anti-Russian manner. Precisely because they have fought hard for their independence. With the flabby, philistine Bulgarians it is a very different story! –