Letter to Eduard Bernstein, April 21, 1882

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 21 April 1882


First published, in Russian, in Marx-Engels Archives, Book I, Moscow, 1924
Published in English for the first time in Marx-Engels Collected Works, Volume 46


ENGELS TO EDUARD BERNSTEIN

IN ZURICH

London, 21 April 1882

Dear Mr Bernstein,

I am sending you a piece from the Kölner Zeitung on 'Baron Hirsch'.[1] It is significant that bourgeois papers should find it necessary to denounce such a trickster. The whole article is worth reprinting if space is available. It would make a splendid feuilleton, particularly as emanating from the Kölnische Zeitung. If you can't reprint it in its entirety, perhaps you would return it to me when you have done with it. You might also return me the ms. of the 'Preface'[2] sometime.

Let me elucidate: Mahmud Nedim Pasha is, like Mahmud Damat Pasha (the Sultan's[3] brother-in-law), Russia's chief paid agent in Constantinople. When the Russian, Poliakov, who was also after the Turkish railway concessions, had failed to get them (for the Russians could not start a war against Turkey and simultaneously con the Turks), it was naturally of the utmost concern to the Russians to see to it that the terms imposed upon the Austrian, Hirsch, who was the sole competitor and, what's more, Austria's protégé, were of such a kind as to make Hirsch, and with him Austria, hated in Turkey and to prevent Turkey from getting a coherent railway network after all. Besides, anything that weakened Turkey financially was advantageous to Russia — relatively speaking. So Nedim does his deal. Hirsch pays him for selling Turkey to him and Russia pays him again just for selling Turkey. The fact is that Russian diplomacy does business in the grand manner, with none of your small shopkeeper's niggardly, envious eye to his competitors and hence, if there's no other way of doing it, it can even permit an adversary like Austria an apparent or momentary advantage and nevertheless turn this to its own account. Kindest regards to you and Kautsky.

Yours,

F. E.

  1. ↑ Engels is referring to the establishment of a quadrilateral of Russian fortresses to counterbalance the Turkish one on Bulgarian territory. Rustchuk, Shumla, Silistria and Varna were a stronghold where the main Turkish forces were concentrated at the outset of the Russo-Turkish war of 1877-78.
  2. ↑ K. Marx and F. Engels, 'Preface to the Second Russian Edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party (see present edition, Vol. 24, pp. 425-26).
  3. ↑ Abdul Hamid II