London, 10 November 1876 

41 Maitland Park Road, N. W. 
My dear Sir, 

In communicating to you some éclaircissements* on the last 
movements of Mr Gladstone, I do so on the express under- 
standing: 

1) that until January next they be kept secret (this refers of 
course not to Mr Urquhart); 

2) that if made use of in the January number of the Diplomatic 
Review, it be done in the form of a correspondence, dated from 
Rome, Naples or Vienna. Regard to the security of third persons 
renders these precautions necessary. 

Since some time a Russian lady, Madame Nowikoff, has 
established her autumn and winter quarters in London; during 
the remainder of the year she travels on the continent or sojourns 
at Moscow. She is the wife—practically divorced, if not legally—of 
Mr Nowikoff, Russian dragoman at Constantinople,” who is 
himself the brother of the Russian ambassador at Vienna‘ (the 
latter has, I believe, been recently removed from Vienna to 
Constantinople). 

Excluded in Russia from ‘la bonne compagnie’ because of her 
matrimonial embarrassments, Madame Nowikoff plays neverthe- 
less a certain part at Moscow where her saloon is frequented by 
Frondeurs, at the same time that other compatriots suspect her of 
being a subaltern agent of the Third Division. (The Third Division 
means the secret State police, a Star Chamber on a colossal scale, 
the main lever of the Russian governmental machine.) A 
busybody, she intrudes everywhere, on scientific congresses at 
Brussels, old Catholic meetings in Germany, etc. Once very 
handsome, she has now reached a certain age between 45 and 50, 
and pretends only to intellectual charms. Very amiable and adroit, 
she possesses indeed the qualities which, as the French say, 
‘distinguent la tripoteuse russe’.“ Still it would be a mistake to range 
her with the higher order of that species; her mind is of a very 
superficial cast. 

a explanations - > Ivan Novikov - © Yevgeny Novikov - ¢ are characteristic of the 
Russian intrigantes 

At London Englishmen (professors of science, literary men, 
politicians), Frenchmen, Slavs and Russians meet in her saloon. 
One of its principal attractions is the cavalier servant of the lady, 
‘son ami intime’, as she calls him—-Count Beust, the Austrian 
ambassador. 

Some London papers having met the ‘Bulgarian atrocities’, 
ushered in by Mr Schuyler, with the ‘Turkestan atrocities’,’? told 
by the same Mr Schuyler, Madame Nowikoff (in collusion with 
General Gorloff, the military attaché to the Russian Embassy at 
London) addressed a letter to Mr Gladstone, till then a perfect 
stranger to her—a letter, set off with an enthusiastic eulogy of his 
chivalrous exploits on behalf of the downtrodden Slavs, but really 
intended to give him lessons on the Turkestan events and to 
protest indignantly against the alleged foul slanders of some 
London prints. In answer to this missive she received a friendly 
reply, written and signed by Madame Gladstone. 

Since then, Mr Gladstone has paid several visits to Madame 
Nowikoff who improved her opportunities so well that a literary 
campaign against the shameless revilers of Russian humanitarian- 
ism was at once resolved upon. 

Two letters, the one by Madame Nowikoff, but anonymous, the 
other written by Gorloff and signed with his name (the which letter 
Mad. Nowikoff communicated to Mr Gladstone), were to be 
published in the Daily News as forerunners to an article of Mr 
Gladstone himself (in the Contemporary Review), so that he might 
refer to Gorloff’s letter as a ‘document justificatif’. The gist of 
Gorloff’s letter was the denial of General Kaufmann’s atrocious 
order to General Golowatscheff,”’ as published by Mr Schuyler. 
The public denial of the authenticity of that order with Gorloff’s 
signature would have derived a certain value from the cir- 
cumstance that Gorloff occupies a double position; he is an attaché 
of the Embassy, but depends at the same time on the Russian war 
ministry, and might therefore have been considered its authorised 
spokesman. 

However, at an interview of Mr Gladstone with Madame 
Nowikoff, she received, and communicated to him, a letter from 
Gorloff to the effect, that Schuwaloff, the ambassador, had 
forbidden him (Gorloff) to sign his letter with his name, as it 
might compromise the embassy. (Schuwaloff, of course, would not 
have cared a pin to see a lie publicly signed by Gorloff; but, as the 
Russian war minister, Miljutin, is the enemy both of Schuwaloff 
and Kaufmann, and a man not to be trifled with, Schuwaloff stood 
on his guard.) 

Thereupon, by request of Mr Gladstone, Gorloff’s letter was 
amended and abridged, that is to say, its invectives against the 
English revilers were suppressed, Mr Gladstone considering it 
more becoming to reserve that part of the business for himself; it 
was, moreover, agreed that Gorloff’s letter should be signed ‘A 
Russian’* and that of Madame Nowikoff ‘Another Russian’.” As to 
Mr Gladstone’s article for the November number of the Contempo- 
rary Review. he had not only read it in manuscript to Madame 
Nowikoff; it was in fact but a summary of the lessons taught by 
the Muscovite Egeria to the English Numa. 

In this article (see Contemporary pp. 883, 884) Mr Gladstone 
speaks of Gorloff’s letter in the following terms: 

‘The defence so far as I find it supplied by a letter recently published in the 

Daily News, with the signature of ‘A Russian”, which, as I learn from a friend, has 
the sanction of General Gorloff, military attaché at London.’ 

The passage is so worded as to make the public believe that ‘A 
Russian’, the writer to the Daily News, and General Gorloff are two 
different persons, the one having written and published the letter, 
the other sanctioned it after its publication; that Mr Gladstone 
became first acquainted with the letter of ‘A Russian’ through the 
columns of the Daily News; that only after having read it in that 
paper, he ‘learned from a friend’ that ‘Gorloff has sanctioned it’. 
The most admirable trait is certainly the discreet introduction of 
Gorloff’s name and the hiding of Madame Nowikoff under cover 
of ‘a friend’. 

When Madame Nowikoff, borne up by Gorloff’s written 
testimony, had succeeded to impress Mr Gladstone with the 
conviction, that General Kaufmann’s ‘authentic’ order to 
Golowatscheff was a myth,”"* she gave, amidst her Russian friends, 
rather freely vent to by no means flattering animadversions upon 
English ignorance and credulity. Having been appointed (some 
time after the last Polish insurrection,?> and in succession to the 
hangman Muravieff) governor of Wilna,? Kaufmann contrived to 
overact even his part, so that General Berg, the commander of 
Warsaw, addressed a letter to the Czar* showing the impolicy to 
continue that man in his office, from which he was indeed at last 
removed. Such were the dispair and the disgust which his 

4‘The Russians in Turkestan’, The Daily News, No. 9521, 27 October 1876. - 
b ‘The Russians in Turkestan’, The Daily News, No. 9523, 30 October 1876. - 
© W. E. Gladstone, ‘Russian Policy and Deeds in Turkistan’, The Contemporary 
Review Vol. XXVIII, London, June-November 1876. - 4 now Vilnius - 
e Alexander II 

ferociously infamous treatment of the Poles had evoked at Wilna, 
that its inhabitants actually welcomed as a saviour General 
Potapoff, his successor, one of the most notorious villains in the 
Russian service. (This same Potapoff was put at the head of the 
Third Division, when Schuwaloff exchanged this honourable post 
of spy-in-chief at home for that of Ambassador abroad.) 

Muravieff was a Muscovite patriot who, in his merciless 
execution of the Czar’s orders, was convinced to apply the only 
method sure to save the Empire from dismemberment. Kauf- 
mann, on the contrary, is an intriguer, eager to outdo in atrocity 
even the common run of Russian generals, in order to make the 
Muscovites forget his foreign origin, to ingratiate himself with the 
Czar, and to oust Mr Miljutin from the war ministry which he 
covets. 

Before the publication of the letters in the Daily News and Mr 
Gladstone’s article in the Contemporary Review, I had been kept au 
courant of the incidents told in this letter. I had every reason to be 
convinced of the authentic character of my information, but if I 
had entertained the least doubt, it must have vanished after I saw 
in print what I knew beforehand. 

Meanwhile the company of Madame Nowikoff has been 
enriched by a hopeful newcomer, Mr Mackenzie Wallace, a young 
man who, during his five years’ residence in Russia, has learned 
the language of that country and become more or less familiar 
with its social state. He is now, like a true Briton of the 19th 
century, on the look out for ‘realizing’ his acquirements on the 
best market. 

Yours truly, 
Karl Marx