Letter to Eduard Bernstein, October 22, 1886

Author(s) Friedrich Engels
Written 22 October 1886


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 47


ENGELS TO EDUARD BERNSTEIN

IN ZURICH

London, 22 October 1886

Dear Ede,

This is to inform you that our friend Belfort Bax will probably be visiting you towards the end of this month. He is a thoroughly good sort, very erudite, especially in German philosophy, and speaks German, though in all political matters he's of a childlike innocence that can drive one to despair and is also much in evidence in The Commonweal. But among the 'eddicated' here he and Aveling are the only ones who not only are in earnest where the cause is concerned, but also devote some study to it.

Kautsky will have informed you about the legal niceties involved in getting married over here; I hope it can be arranged.

As regards Becker,[1] August writes[2] to say he has asked you to clarify matters with the old man. I trust you have already written to him — the old man—, as it is something he has very much at heart. August says that Becker is already getting an annual allowance of 200 frs from the party — I know I had omitted one item from the amounts I had stated; this was it. I merely raise the point lest the impression should have been given that Becker had concealed it from me, which was not the case.

If the stories put about by the Zankovists in Sofia are true

Alexander III can safely recall his discredited Kaulbars,[3] for he will then have everything he wants. It will be an improved version of the treaty of Unkiar-Skelessi (1839, see Louis Blanc, Dix ans,[4] where it is set out in the last volume). The Black Sea will then belong to him and Constantinople will be his for the asking. This would be the result of the appropriation of parts of Turkey, namely Bosnia and Egypt, by Austria and Britain respectively, who thus revealed themselves in Constantinople as Russia's equals when it came to plundering Turkey. That was why the peace-loving Gladstone had to bombard Alexandria and wage war in the Sudan.[5] —However the story is being contested and it is probable that no formal agreement has yet been concluded; but at all events we must watch out for further news of the affair. For even if it were true, Austria in particular would try to hush it up lest it be compelled to attack before the Russians really showed signs of occupying the Dardanelles, i. e. when it was too late.

Meanwhile Alexander seems to have gone really insane — he is said to have taken one of his aides-de-camp for a Nihilist[6] and shot him—, while old William[7] is going rapidly downhill. The Russian revolution — be it ushered in by a palace revolution — is becoming more necessary than ever and would at once help to clear up the whole wretched business.

Your

F.E.

  1. ↑ Johann Philipp Becker. See this volume, p. 501.
  2. ↑ The reference is to August Bebel's letter to Engels of 12 October 1886.
  3. ↑ The reference is to the political crisis which emerged in Bulgaria in the autumn of 1886 after Prince Alexander Battenberg was toppled from the throne by a group of military conspirators associated with the secret service of the Russian government. The interim government set up on 9 August survived for just a few days and was replaced by a pro-Austrian regency. An attempt to restore Alexander Battenberg to the throne was unsuccessful, meeting with overt Russian resistance. In September 1886, the Russian government sent Major-General Nikolai Kaulbars to Sofia with the mission of preparing the ground for the installation of a Russian candidate on the Bulgarian throne. The mission was unsuccessful, partly due to the position taken by the West European powers, notably Britain. On 5 November Kaulbars was recalled and the government of the Russian Empire broke off diplomatic relations with Bulgaria (see also Note 445).
  4. ↑ L. Blanc, Histoire de dix ans. 1830 1840, in 5 volumes.
  5. ↑ The reference is to the bombardment of Alexandria by the British Navy under Admiral Beauchamp Seymour on 11 July 1882. It represented one of the crucial actions carried out by the British in their quest to colonise Egypt. Following the seizure of Alexandria on 2 August, units of the Anglo-Indian army occupied the Suez Canal zone, and on 15 September Cairo was taken. Whilst nominally remaining a part of the Ottoman Empire, Egypt was actually turned into a British colony. The British colonisers' penetration into the Sudan from the early 1870s met with stiff resistance from the local people; an uprising of national liberation in 1881 drove British forces from almost the entire country. An independent centralised state was formed in the course of the uprising, and the British did not manage to break the Sudanese until 1899.
  6. ↑ Nihilists — a term used in the 1860s to describe the progressive-minded Russian intellectuals of different social estates. The Nihilists refused to recognise the dominant ideology and morality, rejected religion and demanded freedom of the personality. They advocated equality between the sexes and called for the study of the natural and exact sciences. Towards the end of the 1860s the term almost completely disappeared from polemic writing, although it was used later on occasions by reactionary political commentators as a label for revolutionaries. In West European writing, the term was applied to participants in the Russian revolutionary movement of the 1870s and 1880s, notably the members of the Narodnaya Volya (People's Will).
  7. ↑ William I