| Author(s) | Karl Marx |
|---|---|
| Written | 21 October 1876 |
MARX TO PYOTR LAVROV
IN LONDON
[London,] 21 October 1876
My dear Friend,
Enclosed a cutting from The Pall Mall Gazette. This extract from your leader (in No. 42 of Vperyod![1] ) is badly translated, even though it was done by Sir etc. Rawlinson. Kovalevsky informed me of it and also sent me the thing. He asked me to lend him No. 42 of your journal, but not even the prettiest girl in France can give more than she's got. I had already sent it to Utin (Liège).
Kovalevsky also told me—you could make use of it in your journal[2] —that a detestable Russian clique, which purports to represent the leading Russian men of letters, and has announced its venture in these terms to Rawlinson and other English notables, intends to publish a review in London for the purpose of acquainting the English with the true politico-social movement in Russia. Golokhvastov would be editor-in-chief, with other collaborators from that disgusting journal Grazhdanin[3] and also, so it is said, Prince Meshchersky.
The Russian government has already given signs of its insolvency by ordering the Bank of Petersburg to announce that it would no longer pay foreign bills of exchange in gold (and/or silver). I had been expecting this, but what passes all understanding is the fact that, for two or three weeks before settling on this 'disagreeable' measure, the aforesaid government had again perpetrated the folly of seeking artificially to maintain the rate of exchange in the London market. This has cost it nearly twenty million roubles; it might just as well have thrown the money into the Thames.
This absurd operation—the artificial maintenance of the rate of exchange at government expense—belongs to the eighteenth century. Today it is only the alchemists of Russia's finances who can go in for such things. Since Nicholas' death these grotesque, periodically repeated, manipulations have cost Russia at least 120 million roubles. But it is typical of a government which still seriously believes in the omnipotence of the State. Other governments do at least know that 'money has no master'.
Yours ever,
Karl Marx