ENGELS TO NIKOLAI DANIELSON~"! 
IN ST. PETERSBURG 
London, 17 October 1893 
My dear Sir, 

When I received your letter of July 26" announcing your return home, I 
was on the point myself of going abroad for two months and am only just 
returned. '*’ This is the reason of my long silence. 

Many thanks for the copies of the Outlinef three of which I have for- 

* Outlines of Our Post-Reform Economy (1893). [Written in Russian in original.] 

Letters- 1893 213 

warded to appreciative friends. The book, I am glad to see, has caused 
considerable stir and indeed sensation, as it well merited. Among the 
Russians I have met, it was the chief subject of conversation. Only yesterday 
one of them* writes: 

‘we in Russia are arguing over the ‘fate of capitalism here’. 

In the Berlin Sozialpolitische Centralblatt' a Mr. P. v. Struve has a long 
article on your book.* I must agree with him in this one point, that for me, 
too, the present capitalistic phase of development in Russia appears an 
unavoidable consequence of the historical conditions as created by the 
Crimean War, the way in which the change of 1861 in agrarian conditions 
was accomplished, and the political stagnation in Europe generally. Where 
he is decidedly wrong, is in comparing the present state of Russia with that of 
the United States, in order to refute what he calls your pessimistic views of 
the future. He says, the evil consequences of modern capitalism in Russia 
will be as easily overcome as they are in the United States. There he quite 
forgets that the United States are modern, bourgeois, from the very origin; 
that they were founded by petits bourgeois and peasants who ran away from 
European feudalism in order to establish a purely bourgeois society. Whereas 
in Russia, we have a groundwork of a primitive communistic character, a 
pre-civilisation Gentilgesellsehaft,“ crumbling to ruins, it is true, but still 
serving as the groundwork, the material upon which the capitalistic 
revolution (for it is a real social revolution) acts and operates. In America, 
Geldwirthschaff has been fully established for more than a century, in Russia, 
Naturalwirtschaft was all but exclusively the rule. Therefore it stands to 
reason that the change, in Russia, must be far more violent, far more incisive, 
and accompanied by immensely greater sufferings than it can be in America. 

But for all that it still seems to me that you take a gloomier view of the 
case than the facts justify. No doubt, the passage from primitive agrarian 
communism to capitalistic industrialism cannot take place without terrible 
dislocation of society, without the disappearance of whole classes and their 
transformation into other classes; and what enormous suffering, and waste of 
human lives and productive forces that necessarily implies, 

* Josif Goldenberg - ° [phrase in Russian], II I. Jobrgang, No. 1, Oct. 2, 1893. [Note by Engels, 
in the original, Oct. 1, which is a misprint.] - © P. Struve, ‘Zur Beurtheilung der Kapitalistischen 
Entwickelung Russlands’, Sozialpolitisches Centralblatt, No. 1, 2 October, 1893. - ‘ gentile 
society - ° money economy - ' natural economy 

214 Letters- 1893 

we have seen—on a smaller scale—in Western Europe. But from that to the 
complete ruin of a great and highly I gifted nation there is still a long way. 
The rapid increase of population to which you have been accustomed, may 
be checked; the reckless deforestation combined with the expropriation of 
the old landlords* as well as the peasants, may cause a colossal waste of 
productive forces; but after all, a population of more than a hundred million 
will finally furnish a very considerable home market for a very respectable 
grande industrie, and with you, as elsewhere, things will end by finding their 
own level—if capitalism lasts long enough in Western Europe. 

You yourself admit that 

‘the social conditions in Russia after the Crimean War were not favorable to the 
development of the form of production inherited by us from our past history’. 

I would go further, and say, that no more in Russia than anywhere else 
would it have been possible to develop a higher social form out of primitive 
agrarian communism unless that higher form was already in existence in 
another country, so as to serve as a model. That higher form being, wherever 
it is historically possible, the necessary consequence of the capitalistic form 
of production and of the social dualistic antagonism created by it, it could not 
be developed directly out of the agrarian commune, unless in imitation of an 
example already in existence somewhere else. Had the West of Europe been 
ripe, 1860-70, for such a transformation, had that transformation then been 
taken in hand in England, France etc., then the Russians would have been 
called upon to show what could have been made out of their Commune, 
which was then more or less intact. But the West remained stagnant, no such 
transformation was attempted, and capitalism was more and more rapidly 
developed. And as Russia had no choice but this: either to develop the 
Commune into a form of Production, from which it was separated by a 
number of historical stages, and for which not even in the West the 
conditions were then ripe—evidently an impossible task—or else to develop 
into Capitalism, what remained to her but the latter chance? 

As to the Commune, it is only possible so long as the differences of wealth 
among its members are but trifling. As soon as these differences become 
great, as soon as some of its members become the debt-slaves of the richer 
members, it can no longer live. The big peasants and village exploiters’ * 

“In Russian] — ° [In Russian] 

Letters- 1893 215 

of Athens, before Solon, have destroyed the Athenian gens with the same 
implacability with which those of your country destroy the Commune. I am 
afraid that institution is doomed. But on the other hand, Capitalism opens out 
new views and new hopes. Look at what it has done and is doing in the West. 
A great nation like yours outlives every crisis. There is no great historical 
evil without a compensating historical progress. Only the modus operandi is 
changed. Que les destinées s’accomplissent!* 

Yours ever 

When Vol. II I’ in the press, will take care to send you advance sheets. 

First published, in Russian, Reproduced from the original 
in Minuvshiye gody, No. 2, St. 
Petersburg, 1908 

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