London, 21 April 1882 

Dear Mr Bernstein, 

I am sending you a piece from the Kélner Zeitung on ‘Baron 
Hirsch’.?°° It is significant that bourgeois papers should find it neces- 
sary to denounce such a trickster. The whole article is worth reprint- 
ing if space is available. It would make a splendid feuilleton, particu- 
larly as emanating from the Kélnische Zectung. If you can’t reprint it 
in its entirety, perhaps you would return it to me when you have done 
with it. You might also return me the ms. of the ‘Preface’ > sometime. 

Let me elucidate: Mahmud Nedim Pasha is, like Mahmud Damat 

@ But no.-> K. Marx and F. Engels, ‘Preface to the Second Russian Edition of the 
Manifesto of the Communist Party’ (see present edition, Vol. 24, pp. 425-26). 

Pasha (the Sultan’s* brother-in-law), Russia’s chief paid agent in 
Constantinople. When the Russian, Poliakov, who was also after the 
Turkish railway concessions, had failed to get them (for the Russians 
could not start a war against Turkey and simultaneously con the 
Turks), it was naturally of the utmost concern to the Russians to see 
to it that the terms imposed upon the Austrian, Hirsch, who was the 
sole competitor and, what’s more, Austria’s protégé, were of such 
a kind as to make Hirsch, and with him Austria, hated in Turkey and 
to prevent Turkey from getting a coherent railway network after all. 
Besides, anything that weakened Turkey financially was advanta- 
geous to Russia — relatively speaking. So Nedim does his deal. Hirsch 
pays him for selling Turkey to him and Russia pays him again just for 
selling Turkey. The fact is that Russian diplomacy does business in 
the grand manner, with none of your small shopkeeper’s niggardly, 
envious eye to his competitors and hence, if there’s no other way of 
doing it, it can even permit an adversary like Austria an apparent or 
momentary advantage and nevertheless turn this to its own account. 
Kindest regards to you and Kautsky. 

Yours, 
F. E.