Late Marx and the Russian Road. Теодор Шанин
government to interfere with “bayonet and knout” ’ is a criticism directed against the extreme assertion Tkachev made in his open letter to Engels, but is actually not much different from the argument which Tkachev set forth in ‘The tasks of revolutionary propaganda in Russia’. As a matter of fact, Engels here points out Tkachev’s self-contradiction by quoting a passage from the essential part of his article where it is stated that ‘among the peasantry, there are being formed different classes of usurers (kulaks).’ Where Engels points out that ‘under the burden of taxes and usury, the communal property in land is no longer an advantage, but a fetter’, and refers to the peasants running away as migratory workers,45 he relies, as he indicates in a footnote, on the description by Skaldin, which was also provided by Marx. Marx might have hesitated to definitively call the rural commune a ‘fetter’, but it is clear that this is not a point around which Engels’s argument pivots.
In conclusion of his argument, Engels makes the following statement:
We see that communal property long ago passed its highpoint in Russia, and to all appearances is nearing its doom. Yet there exists, doubtless, the possibility of transforming this social organization into a higher form in the event that it persists until the time when circumstances are ripe for such a change, and in case the institution of communal property proves to be capable of development so that the peasants do not continue to cultivate the land individually but jointly. Society would have to be transformed into this higher form without the Russian peasants going through the intermediate step of bourgeois individual private ownership of land.46
It is clear that this statement, which is in agreement with the conclusion reached by Chernyshevskii (including the use of phrases such as ‘higher form’ and ‘intermediate step’), is the joint view of Marx and Engels in 1875.
What matters is the condition required for such transformation of the Russian community. Engels underlined the importance of a ‘victorious proletarian revolution’ in Western Europe ‘before the complete disintegration of communal property’, since ‘this would provide the Russian peasant with the preconditions for such a transformation of society, chiefly the material conditions which he needs, in order to carry through the necessary complementary change of his whole system of agriculture.’ This too was a conclusion that could be derived from the assertion of Chernyschevskii. From what we have seen so far it is natural for us to regard this as a conclusion made jointly by Marx and Engels. This does not mean to say that they are not thinking about a Russian revolution. As a matter of fact, this article is concluded with a prophecy of the inevitability of an imminent Russian revolution ‘which will be started by the upper classes in the capital, perhaps by the government itself, but which must be driven further by the peasants beyond its first constitutional phase.’ What is envisaged here is clearly not a mere bourgeois revolution. It is stated furthermore that the revolution ‘will be of the utmost importance for all Europe’ in the sense that ‘it will destroy the last, until now intact, reserve of all-European reaction with one coup.’47 Although it is not stated explicitly, it would have been clear for both Marx and Engels that if a proletarian revolution were to become an actual issue in Europe – which in the aftermath of the defeat of the Paris Commune was as silent as the grave – it would do so only after Europe was shaken by a Russian revolution.
Engels insisted nevertheless that ‘if there was anything which can save the Russian system of communal property, and provide the conditions for it to be transformed into a really living form, it is the proletarian revolution in Western Europe.’ This, of course, was an exaggeration, in support of his point that ‘it is pure hot air’ for Tkachev to say that the Russian peasants, although ‘owners of property’ are ‘nearer to socialism than the propertyless workers of Western Europe’.48 It was a product of his experiences in the first International which led him to see Bakunin behind Tkachev and to stand out against Bakunin’s ‘Panslavism’, in defence of Western European hegemony in the international proletariat movement. I believe that on this point too there was virtually no difference between Marx and Engels. Russia had two alternative paths of development to choose from; it could either follow the path of capitalist development or the route that led directly from the village commune to socialism. Chernyshevskii was well aware that Russia had embarked upon the former path, yet considered it possible for Russia to reject this path and pursue the latter course, without mentioning this precondition. Tkachev also insisted that since capitalist development was already under way in Russia, a revolution must be started at the earliest possible opportunity so as to enable it to switch paths before it became too late. Marx and Engels, accepting Chernyshevskii’s assertion, came to think that it would be possible for Russia to start from its village commune and jump directly to socialism. But their treatment of Tkachev’s thesis was affected both by the memory of their own struggle with Bakunin and Nechaev and by the exaggerated way in which Tkachev expressed it. They therefore argued against Tkachev that a precondition for the success of the communal path would be a victorious proletarian revolution in Western Europe and the material aid this revolution would offer. It thus seemed also that, in reaching this conclusion, Marx and Engels did not see any difference between their positions.
III
In the period from 1875 to 1876, Marx made further progress in his Russian studies. He read Die Agrarverfassung Russlands [The Agrarian Constitution of Russia] by Haxthausen, Communal Ownership of Land in Russia by A.I. Koshelev, Appendix A of Statism and Anarchy by Bakunin, an article by A.N. Engel’gardt entitled ‘Various problems of Russian agriculture’, a voluminous Report of the Committee of Direct Tax, and other materials, and made careful notes of their contents. Of these, Marx was particularly impressed by the criticisms which Bakunin directed at the patriarchal aspect and the closed character of the village communes. After a brief interruption, in the spring of 1877 Marx proceeded to read such works as Outlines of the History of Village Communes in Russia and Other European Countries by A.I. Vasil’chakov and Outline of the History of Village Communes in Northern Russia by P.A. Sokolovskii.49
The year 1877 saw the outbreak of the Russo-Turkish War. The desperate battles the Russian forces had to fight in its first phases led to the expectation of another Sevastopol and the hope that a revolution would follow soon after the Russian defeat. On 27 September of the same year, Marx wrote to F.A. Sorge:
This crisis is a new turning point for the history of Europe. Russia – I have studied the situation in this country on the basis of official and non-official original sources in the Russian language – has for a long period been on the brink of revolution. All the factors for this are already present. The brave Turks, by the hard blow they struck against not only the Russian army and Russian finance but also the dynasty in command of the army … have advanced the date of explosion by a number of years. The change will begin with a constitutional comedy, puis il y aura un beau tapage [then all hell will break loose]. If Mother Nature is not extraordinarily hard on us, we will perhaps be able to live long enough to see the delightful day of the ceremony. The revolution this time starts from the East, that same East which we have so far regarded as the invincible support and reserve of counter-revolution.50
We see how excited Marx was at the prospect of Russian defeat in the Turkish war, followed by a Russian revolution, and then a revolution in Europe. However, these expectations were miserably disappointed. Somehow or other, Russia managed to reduce the Fort of Plevna by the end of 1877, and drove Turkey to admit its defeat in March the following year. In the face of this turn of events, Marx had to admit that ‘things have turned out differently from our expectations.’51
According to widely accepted hypothesis, Marx is supposed to have written his so-called ‘Letter to the Editor of Otechestvennye Zapiski’ some time in November 1877. This view, however, is completely without foundation. It is much more likely that Marx wrote this letter at the end of 1878 after his hopes of an imminent Russian revolution had already been disappointed. My hypothesis is supported by Marx’s letter of 15 November 1878 to Danielson, which reads in part as follows:
As regards the polemics which B. Chicherin and several others are directing against me, I haven’t seen anything other than what you sent me in 1877 (… an article by N.I. Ziber written as a response to Yu. Zhukovskii and another article,