Letter to Minna Gorbunova, August 5, 1880

ENGELS TO MINNA GORBUNOVA

IN PARIS

London, 5 August 1880

122^[1] Regent's Park Road, N. W.

Dear Madam,

Further to my brief note sent to Biarritz,^[2] all I can tell you is that I don't in fact know of any documents or reports I could recommend to you other than those first enumerated by yourself in your previous esteemed letter. However, after the school holidays, when the various people I'm acquainted with return, I shall make further inquiries, and if I find anything new, shall send it to you in Moscow or report to you further. In order that such correspondence should appear perfectly innocuous, I shall write in English and sign myself E. Burns. When communicating with me from there, you could address your letters: Miss E. Burns, 122 Regent's Park Road, N. W., London. An inner envelope is unnecessary; she is my niece.

I was most interested to hear about your activities in Moscow and about the prospect of your setting up an industrial school with the help of the president of the 3CMCTBO^[3] ; we, too, have the statistical reports of all the Russian 3eMCTBa over here, as in general quite excellent material on economic conditions in Russia, but unfortunately I cannot look it out at this moment as it is at Marx's house and he and all his family are away at the seaside. However it wouldn't be much help to me in answering your inquiry, since this calls for a knowledge of the relevant branches of the cottage industry, its operation, products and competitiveness, and that can only be acquired on the spot. All in all it seems to me that most, at any rate, of the branches of industry you mentioned would probably be capable of competing with large-scale industry for some time yet. Industrial revolutions such as these progress extremely slowly; even the handloom has not yet been entirely superseded in some branches in Germany, whereas in England those same branches did away with it 20 or 30 years ago. In Russia that process might well be even slower. After all, the long winter provides the peasant with a great deal of spare time, and even if he only earns something during the day, that is still so much gain. Admittedly these primitive forms of production cannot escape their ultimate demise, and in a highly developed industrial country, as here, for example, one might claim that it would be more humane to accelerate this process of dissolution rather than prolong it. In Russia the situation may well be different, especially as there is some prospect there of violent changes in the political situation as a whole. The minor palliatives which have proved virtually useless in Germany, as you yourself have of course discovered, and also elsewhere, might in Russia help the people on occasion to surmount the political crisis and keep their industry going until such time as they also have a say. The schools, however, might perhaps enable them to get at least some idea of what they ought to say. And all genuine educative elements that are dispersed among the people will, to a greater or lesser extent, contribute to that end. Technical instruction might perhaps best achieve its aim if it sought, on the one hand, to organise the operations at any rate of the more viable branches of traditional industry in a more rational way and, on the other, to provide the children with sufficient training in general technology to facilitate their transition to other industries. Aside from such generalisations there is, at this distance, little to be said. Except that this much seems pretty clear to me: The Moscow gouvernement is unlikely to become a seat of large-scale industry in the near future, since it is remote from the coal-mining areas, and wood fuel is already in short supply. Cottage industry in some, if not always the same, form might persist there for a bit longer even if protective tariffs were to make feasible the introduction of this or that large enterprise, such as the cotton industry of Shuya and Ivanovo in the Vladimir gouvernement. And, after all, the only way one can really help the peasants is to see that they get more land and cultivate it in associations.

Your report about the incipient decay of the oöuniHa^[4] and the artel confirms news that has also come to us from another quarter. Nevertheless this process of disintegration may go on for a very long time. And since the general current in Western Europe is flowing in precisely the opposite direction and, with the next convulsion, must acquire a strength of a quite different order, it may be expected that in Russia, too, which has certainly produced a great many critical minds over the past 30 years, this current will still be strong enough to make a timely appeal to the people's innate, millennial urge to associate before that urge is completely extinguished. For this reason, productive associations and other means of promoting the associate system among the people in Russia should also be looked at from an aspect other than the Western one. Admittedly they still remain no more than minor palliatives. I remain,

Yours most respectfully,

F. Engels