Letter to Nikolai Danielson, March 22, 1873

Author(s) Karl Marx
Written 22 March 1873


First published, in Russian, in Minuvshiye gody, No. 1, St Petersburg, 1908
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 44
Reproduced from the original


MARX TO NIKOLAI DANIELSON

IN ST PETERSBURG

London, 22 March 1873

My dear Sir,

You would much oblige me in giving me some information on the views of Tschitscherin, relating to the historical development of communal property in Russia; and on his polemics on that subject with Bjeljajew.[1] The way in which that form of property was founded (historically) in Russia, is of course a secondary question, and has nothing whatever to do with the value of that institution. Still, the German reactionists like Professor A. Wagner in Berlin, etc., use that weapon put in their hands by Tschitscherin.[2] At the same time all historical analogy speaks against Tschitscherin. How should it have come to happen that in Russia the same institution had been simply introduced as a fiscal measure, as a concomitant incident of serfdom, while everywhere else it was of spontaneous growth and marked a necessary phase of development of free peoples?

Yours most truly,

A. Williams[3]

  1. ↑ The dispute between Boris Chicherin and Ivan Belyaev on the origins of the Russian commune was opened by Chicherin's article 'A Review of Historical Development of the Village Commune in Russia' published by Russky Vestnik, Vol. I, 1856, and a critical review of this article written by Belyaev and featured in Book One of Russkaya Beseda, 1856. Belyaev argued against Chicherin's idea that communal landownership, which still existed in Russia in the 19th century, had its roots in the taxation system of the Russian serf-owning state and was not a remnant of the ancient form of communal peasant property.
  2. ↑ In his work Die Abschaffung des privaten Grundeigenthums which was directed against the decision on collective landownership passed by the International's Basle Congress (1869), the German armchair-socialist Adolph Wagner used several of Chicherin's works to support his case.
  3. ↑ Marx's pseudonym