| Author(s) | Friedrich Engels |
|---|---|
| Written | 24 November 1894 |
ENGELS TO NIKOLAI DANIELSON
IN ST. PETERSBURG
London, 24 November 1894
41 Regent's Park Road, N. W.
My dear Sir,
I am in possession of your kind letters 7 and 11 June, 15 October and 12 November.
Of Mr. Struve's works I have only seen the article in Braun's Centralblatt,[1] and cannot therefore speak as to what assertions he may have made. If in my letters you find any facts that may be useful to you in your reply, you are welcome to make use of them. 430 But as to any opinions of mine, I am afraid, your opponents—not perhaps Mr. Struve but the Russian press generally—would use them in a way they do not warrant. I am daily and weekly assailed by Russian friends to reply to Russian reviews and books in which the words of our author[2] are not only misinterpreted but misquoted and where they say my interference would suffice to set the matter right. I have constantly declined doing so, because I cannot, without giving up real and serious work, be dragged into controversies going on in a faraway country, in a language which I do not yet read with as much ease as the better known western languages, and in a literature whereof at best I but see occasional fragments and where it is utterly impossible for me to follow the debate closely and in all its phases and passages. There are people everywhere who, in order to defend a position once taken up by them, do not shrink from any distortion or unfair manoeuvre; and if this is the case with the writings of our author, I am afraid I should get no better treatment and be compelled, finally, to interfere in the debate, both for other people's sake and my own. In fact, if my
opinions as stated in private letters, did appear in the Russian press with my sanction, I should then have no defence via-à-vis my Russian friends here and on the Continent, who urge me actively to interfere in Russian debates and to set this or that man right on this and that point; I should not have any valid reason to decline, as they would be able to tell me: you have already once interfered in Russian debates; you must own that our present case is quite as important as that of Mr. D., so if you please, treat us as you have treated him. And then, my time would be no longer my own, and my interference in Russian debates would after all be extremely inefficacious and incomplete.
These are the reasons which compel me, to my very great regret, to request you, not to insist on quoting opinions of mine, at least not as mine.
I will try to forward to you some continuation of what you have already received.[3]
Yours very truly
L. K.[4]