MARX TO NIKOLAI DANIELSON
IN ST PETERSBURG
[London,] 25 November 1872
My dear friend,
The letter sent over to me has been duly received and has done its work.[1]
If I have not written earlier, and if, even at this moment, I do not send but these few lines, it is because I want you to send me another—if possible—strictly commercial address under which I may write to you.
In consequence of the extradition of Nechayev[2] and the intrigues of his master Bakunin, I feel very anxious on your behalf and that of some other friends. Those men are able of every infamy.
I cannot enough express my gratitude for the interest taken in my work and labours by you and other Russian friends.
Yours most sincerely
A. Williams[3]
Please reply to those lines as soon as possible.
- ↑ A reference to the letter written by Sergei Nechayev to Nikolai Lyubavin in the spring of 1870 on Bakunin's instructions in the name of the non-existent Bureau of Foreign Agents of the Russian Revolutionary Society The People's Judgment. In this letter, Lyubavin was threatened with reprisals if he did not release Bakunin from the commitments he had undertaken with regard to the translation of Volume I of Capital into Russian. (Under the agreement concluded through Lyubavin with the publisher Nikolai Polyakov, Bakunin was to receive 1,200 roubles for the translation, 300 roubles of which had been paid to him on account on 28 September 1869.) Nechayev's letter was forwarded to Marx by Lyubavin on 20 August 1872 and figured among the documents passed on by Marx and Engels to the committee appointed by the Hague Congress to inquire into the activities of the secret Alliance.
- ↑ Sergei Nechayev, who was living in Zurich at the time, was arrested on 14 August 1872 by the Swiss authorities and in the autumn of the same year extradited to Russia as a criminal. Sentenced to 20 years' hard labour, Nechayev was kept at the Alexeyevsky Ravelin of the Peter and Paul Fortress in St Petersburg where he died ten years later.
- ↑ Marx's pseudonym