ENGELS TO ISAAC A. HOURWICH !“* 

London, 27 May 1893 
122 Regent’s Park Road, N. W. 

Dr. Isaac A. Hourwich 
Dear Sir, 

Many thanks for your interesting study on the Economics of the Russian 
Village,* which I read, I hope, not without profit. 

As to the burning questions of the Russian revolutionary movement, the 
part which the peasantry may be effected to take in it, these are subjects on 
which I could not conscientiously state an opinion for publication without 
previously studying over again the whole subject and completing my very 
imperfect knowledge of the facts of the case by bringing it up to date. But 
for that I am sorry to say I have not at present the time. And then, I have 
every reason to doubt whether such a public statement by me would have the 
effect you expect of it. I know from my own experience of 1849-52 how 
unavoidably a political emigration splits itself up into a number of divergent 
factions, so long as the mother-country remains quiet. The burning desire to 
act, face to face with the impossibility of 

“T. A. Hourwich, The Economics of the Russian Village. 

doing anything effective, causes in many intelligent and energetic heads an 
over-active mental speculation, an attempt at discovering or inventing new 
and almost miraculous means of action. The word of an outsider would have 
but a trifling, and at best a passing effect. If you have followed the Russian 
emigration literature of the last decade, you will yourself know how, for 
instance, passages from Marx’s writings and correspondence have been 
interpreted in the most contradictory ways, exactly as if they had been texts 
from the Classics or from the New Testament, by various sections of Russian 
emigrants. Whatever I might say on the subject you mention, would probably 
share the same fate, if any attention was paid to it. And so from all these 
various reasons, I think it best for all whom it may concern, including myself, 
to abstain. 

Yours very truly F. 
Engels