London, 17 February 1870 

Dear Kugelmann, 

Yesterday I was out in the fresh air again for the first time in a 
long period. 
First to business: be so good as to send immediately a copy of 

« H. Sybel, ‘Polens Untergang und der Revolutionskrieg’, Historische Zeitschrift, 
Vol. 23, Munich, 1870, pp. 66-154. - > H. Maeposcxiit, oroacenie pabouazo xaacca 6d 
Pocciu. 

Vogt? to Asher & Co., Unter den Linden 11, Berlin. I would 
prefer it if you were to obtain a confirmation of posting certificate 
when you send the book off, and send me same. You would also 
oblige me if you would let me know roughly when C. Hirsch wrote 
to you about Vogt 

The pamphlet you sent me is one of the appeals currently being 
made by the privileged estates of the German-Russian-Baltic 
provinces to German sympathies. These canaille. who have always 
distinguished themselves with their zeal in the service of Russian 
diplomacy, army and police, and who, since the transfer of the 
provinces from Poland to Russia, have happily bartered their 
nationality for the legal right to exploit their peasantry, are now 
clamouring because they see their privileged position endangered. 
The old system of rank and estate, orthodox Lutheranism and 
bleeding the peasants—that is what they call German culture, to 
defend which Europe should now mobilise. Hence, too, the last 
words of this pamphlet— landed property as the basis of civilisation, 
and landed property, moreover, as the wretched pamphleteer 
himself admits, consisting mainly of directly manorial estates or 
tributary peasant estates. 

In his quotations—in as far as they refer to Russian communal 
property—the fellow displays both his ignorance and coven Foor. 
Schédo-Ferroti is one of the fellows who (naturally 1 THE INTERESTS 
OF LANDLORDISM) attribute the miserable situation of the Russian 
peasantry to the existence of communal property, just as, 
formerly, the abolition of serfdom in Western Europe, instead of the 
serfs’ loss of their land, was decried as the cause of pauperism. 
The Russian book Land and Freedom is of the same calibre. The 
author is a Baltic country squire von Lilienfeld The Russian 
peasantry is thrown into misery by the same thing that made the 
French peasantry miserable under Louis XIV, etc.— state taxation 
and the obrok to the big landowners. Instead of producing the 
misery, communal property alone diminished it. 

It is, further, a historical lie that this communal property was 
Mongolian. As I have indicated at various points in my writings,” 
it is of Indian origin, and may, therefore, be found among all 
European peoples at the beginning of their development. The 
specific Slav (not Mongolian) form of the same in Russia (which is 
also repeated amongst the non-Russian South Slavs) even re- 

a K. Marx, Herr Vogt. - > D. K. Schédo-Ferroti, Etudes sur l'avenir de la Russie; see also 
this volume, p. 154. - ¢ in the original: Lilienthal - 4 quit rent 

sembles most, mutatis mutandis, the Old German modification of 
Indian communal property. 

The Pole Duchinski in Paris declared the Great Russian race to 
be Mongolian and not Slav, and attempted to prove this with a 
great expenditure of scholarship; and from the standpoint of a 
Pole, this is in order. Even so, it is wrong. Not the Russian 
peasantry, but only the Russian aristocracy, is strongly mixed with 
Mongol-Tartar elements. The Frenchman Henri Martin has taken 
over the theory from Duchinski, and the ‘enthusiastic Gottfried 
Kinkel’ translated Martin™’ and set himself up as a Polish 
enthusiast, in order to make the Democratic Party forget his 
servile homage to Bismarck. 

On the other hand, the fact that the Russian state represents 
Mongolianism in its policy towards Europe and America is 
naturally a truth that has today become a platitude, and thus 
accessible even to people like Gottfried and Baltic country squires, 
philistines, clerics and professors. Despite everything, therefore, 
the Baltic-German cries of dismay must be exploited, since they 
place Prussia, the German great power, in a ‘ticklish’ position. 
Everything that arouses antipathy on our side towards these 
‘representatives of German culture’ in Prussia’s eyes is bound to 
make it appear worth protecting! 

Another example of the crass ignorance of the pamphleteer: he 
sees the cession of Russian North America as no more than a 
diplomatic ruse by the Russian Government, which incidentally was 
VERY HARD PRESSED For costs."* But the main point is this: the American 
Congress recently published the documents about this transaction. 
They include, among other things, a report by the American 
envoy, in which he writes explicitly to Washington: the acquisition 
is at the moment not worth a cent economically—but England is, 
thereby, cut off from the sea on one side by the Yankees, and the 
reversion of the whole of British North America to the Unrrep States 
thus accelerated. There’s the rub! 

I approved of the substance of your correspondence with 
Jacoby,’ but I was absolument shocked by the exaggerated praise of 
my activities. Est modus in rebus!“ If you must praise, Old Jacoby 
himself is worth praising. Which other oxp radical in Europe has 
had the sincerity and courage to align himself so directly with the - 
proletarian movement? It is quite unimportant that his transitional 
measures and detailed proposals are not worth much. Between 

a with alterations of details - > See this volume, p. 417. - © All has its measure! 
(Horace, Satires, I, 1.) 

ourselves—TAKE ALL IN ALL—I expect more for the social movement 
from Germany than from France. 

I had a big row with Bakunin, that intriguer. But more about 
that in my next letter. 

My best compliments 4 Madame Ia Comtesse* and Franzchen.° 

Your 
K. M.