Date: Sat, 3 Aug 1996 15:17:08 +0100
Subject: Marx/Engels on revolution in Russia -- and how!


Christian wrote:

>Marx didn't believe the Rev. would occur in a
>historical backwater like Russia.

This is a common misapprehension. It's completely wrong.

Fairly late in life Marx learnt enough Russian to study the agrarian
question in the original.He had been following events in Russia, Russian
diplomacy and foreign policy all his life. Engels too followed Russia with
the closest interest.

Some extracts from the correspondence show the conclusions they drew.


October 15, 1875, Engels to Bebel in Leipzig, emphasis in original.

        The country besides Germany and Austria we have to watch most remains
        Russia. There just as with us the government is the chief ally of the
        movement. But a much better one than our Bismarck and the
        Stieber-Tessendorfs. The Russian court party, which is now firmly in
        the saddle, tries to take back all the concessions made during the
years
        of the 'new era' that was ushered in in 1861, and at that with
genuinely
        Russian methods. ...

        ... It almost looks as if the next dance is going to start in Russia.
        And if this happens while the *inevitable* war between the Prussian
        Reich and Russia is in progress -- which is very likely --
        reverberations in Germany are also inevitable.

That was in *1875*, forty years before the inevitable war finally broke out
and the 'next dance' started.


September 27, 1877, Marx to Sorge in Hoboken, emphasis in original.

        This crisis [the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78] is *a new turning point*
        in European history. Russia -- and I have studied conditions there from
        the original *Russian* sources, unofficial and official (the latter
        accessible to but few persons, but obtained for me through friends in
        Petersburg) -- has long been standing on the threshold of an upheaval;
        all the elements of it are prepared. ... The upheaval will begin
        +secundum artem+ [according to the rules of the game], with some
playing
        at constitutionalism, +et puis il y aura un beau tapage+ [and then
there
        will be a fine uproar]. If Mother Nature is not particularly
        unfavourable towards us, we shall yet live to see the fun!

        The stupid nonsense the Russian students are perpetrating is merely a
        symptom, worthless in itself. But it is a symptom. All sections of
        Russian society are in full decomposition economically, morally and
        intellectually.

        This time the revolution begins in the East, hitherto the unbroken
        bulwark and reserve army of counter-revolution.

That was in *1877*, thirty years before 1905 and forty years before
October. Note his exact words:

        This time the revolution begins in the East ...


November 5, 1880, Marx to Sorge in Hoboken.

        In Russia, where Capital is more read and appreciated than anywhere
        else, our success has been even greater.


April 23, 1885, Engels to Zasulich in Geneva, emphasis in original.

        First of all I repeat to you that I am proud to know that there is a
        party among the youth of Russia which frankly and without equivocation
        accepts the great economic and historical theories of Marx and has
        decisively broken with all the anarchist and more or less Slavophil
        traditions of its predecessors. And Marx himself would have been
equally
        proud of this had he lived a little longer. It is an advance which will
        be of great importance for the revolutionary development of Russia. To
        me the historical theory of Marx is the fundamental condition of all
        *reasoned* and *consistent* revolutionary tactics; to discover these
        tactics one has only to apply the theory to the economic and political
        conditions of the country in question.

        ...

        What I know or believe I know about the situation in Russia makes me
        think that the Russians are approaching their 1789. The revolution
        *must* break out there in a limited period of time; it *may* break out
        any day. In these circumstances the country is like a charged mine
which
        only needs a match to be applied to it. Especially since March 13
        [Alexander II was killed on March 1 (13), 1881]. This is one of the
        exceptional cases where it is possible for a handful of people to
*make*
        a revolution, i.e., with one little push to cause a whole system, which
        (to use a metaphor of Plekhanov's) is in more than labile equilibrium,
        to come crashing down, and thus by an action in itself insignificant to
        release explosive forces that afterwards become uncontrollable.


Whether you agree with the analysis or not, it is perfectly obvious that
both Marx and Engels firmly 'believed the Rev. would occur in ... Russia'.
Also that the didn't in the least consider it to be 'a historical
backwater'.


As for the claim that:

>It hadn't sprouted but the meagerest capitalist social organization
>by 1917.  The productive force of capitalism is essential to
>the imperatives which a planned economy demands of its society.

I'll just refer you to Lenin's book on the Development of Capitalism in
Russia and Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution (Results and
Prospects is good, too).

Cheers,

Hugh




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