The socialist movement in Germany is making admirable 
progress. There are currently 62 socialist periodicals, of which 46 
are daily newspapers, 1 is a magazine and 15 are organs of societies 
of resistance. Moreover, 4 German-language newspapers and 1 
magazine are published in Switzerland, 3 in Austria, 1 in 
Hungary, 6 in America. The total number of socialist periodical 
publications in German is: 

Germany 62 
Austria 3 
Hungary 1 75 7° 
Switzerland 3 
America 6 

and therefore the periodical literature of German socialism has 
more organs than all the other languages put together. I am not 
including in these figures the more or less socialist newspapers of 
the university professors (Kathedersocialisten)*' but only the recog- 
nised organs of the party. 

When a bourgeois wrote to me after the attempt on Bismarck’s 
life ?*?: “All (bourgeois) Germany is rejoicing that Bismarck was 
not killed”, I replied: “We are pleased too, because he works for 
us as if he were paid for the job.” You know I was right, because 
without the persecutions and the sufferings, without the militarism 
and the ever-increasing taxes, we would never have reached this 
point. 

Although the crisis in France has obtained a less than 
satisfactory result, I believe that a state of affairs will follow from 

it which will allow the French socialists to act by means of the 
press, public meetings and associations, and to organise into a 
working-class party, which is all that we can achieve at present, after 
the slaughter of 1871. Moreover, it is an accepted fact that France 
has made two main kinds of progress: the republicanism of the 
peasants and the formation of a republican army. The coup d’état 
of Ducrot, Batbie and company failed because the soldiers 
resolutely refused to march against the people.” 

The worker question has been put on the agenda in America 
with the bloody strike of the employees of the big railways.”* This 
will turn out to have been an epoch-making event in American 
history: the formation of a working-class party is thereby making 
great strides in the United States. It is advancing rapidly in that 
country, and we must follow its progress, to avoid being taken by 
surprise by the important successes which will soon be produced. 

Russia, I believe, will play the most important part in the near 
future. The situation produced by the so-called emancipation of 
the serfs* was already intolerable before the war. This great 
reform had been so well managed that it ended up ruining nobles 
and peasants. It was followed by another reform which, on the 
pretext of providing provinces and districts with an administration 
based on elections that were to be more or less independent from the 
Central Government, had done nothing except raise the already 
unbearable levels of taxation. 

The provinces were simply lumbered with the expenses of their 
own administration, so that the state paid less while continuing to 
receive the same tax revenues; hence there were new taxes for 
provincial and local expenditure. To this was added the general 
compulsion of military service, which was equivalent to a new and 
more severe tax and a new and more numerous army. 

In this way financial ruin drew near with great strides. The 
country was already in a state of bankruptcy before the war. 
Russian high finance, after taking a lavish part in the fraudulent 
speculations of the 1871-73 period, plunged the nation into the 
financial crisis which erupted in 1873°° in Vienna and Berlin and 
ruined Russian industry and commerce for years. In this state of 
affairs the Holy War against the Turk began,”° and since no 
foreign loans were obtainable and domestic loans were insufficient, 
the nation had to resort to the millions held in Bank (reserve 
funds) and to the printing of credit notes. The result is that the 
value of paper money is falling daily and will soon reach its 

minimum levels, in no more than a year or two. In short, we have 
all the ingredients for a Russian 1789, necessarily to be followed 
by a 1793."7 Whatever the outcome of the war, the Russian 
revolution is ready and it will break out soon, perhaps this year; it 
will begin, contrary to Bakunin’s predictions, from above, in the 
palace, in the heart of the impoverished and frondeuse nobility. 
But once set in motion, it will sweep over the peasants, and you 
will then witness scenes in comparison with which those of ’93 will 
pall. Once Russia has been pushed into revolution, the whole face 
of Europe will change. The old Russia has been up till now the 
great reserve army of European reaction; it performed this role in 
1798, in 1805, in 1815, in 1830, in 1848. Once this reserve army is 
destroyed—just wait and see what will happen! 

January 22, 1878 Translated from the Italian