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Das Kapital Comes to Russia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

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Pro captu lectoris habent sua fata libelli.

TERENTIANUS MAURUS

The triumph of Marxism in backward Russia is commonly regarded as a historical anomaly. Yet, some forty-five years before the Bolshevik Revolution, Marx's Das Kapital in Russian translation had already won quick acclaim. Indeed, the book for a brief time enjoyed greater renown in Russia than in any other country, and it won a warm reception—for highly varied reasons— in many political quarters. Although valuable studies have been written on the first responses to Marxism in Russia, little note has been taken of the rapid and widespread success the book scored, and the reasons for this success have received even less attention. An exploration of these reasons will therefore cover a rarely traveled byway of Russian intellectual history.

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Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1970 

References

1. For example, see Alexander, Gerschenkron, “Economic Development in Russian Intellectual History of the Nineteenth Century,” in his Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective (New York, 1965), pp. 152–87 Google Scholar; Richard, Pipes, “Russian Marxism and Its Populist Background : The Late Nineteenth Century,” Russian Review, 19, no. 4 (October 1960) : 316–37.Google Scholar The standard Soviet works are Reuel's, A. L.KapitalKarla Marksa v Rossii 1870-kh godov (Moscow, 1939)Google Scholar and his Russkaia ekonomicheskaia mysl' 60-70-kh godov XIX veka i marksizm (Moscow, 1956). For the most complete account of Marx and Engels on Russia see Helmut, Krause, Marx und Engels und das zeitgenössische Russland (Giessen, 1958).Google Scholar

2. Marx to Victor Schily, Nov. 30, 1867, Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich, Werke, 39 vols. (Berlin, 1964-68), 31 : 573.Google Scholar

3. N. F. Danielson and N. N. Liubavin to Marx, Sept. 18 (30)-Oct. 2, 1868, K. Marks, F. Engel's i revoliutsionnaia Rossiia (Moscow, 1967), pp. 158-59. This collection of Marx-Engels correspondence with Russians and their statements on revolutionary Russia is more complete than Perepiska K. Marksa i F. Engel'sa s russkimi politicheskimi deiateliami (Moscow, 1947, and 2nd ed., 1951). Hereafter the collection is cited as Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia.

4. Marx to Danielson, Oct. 7, 1868, Werke, 32 : 563-65. Mikhail Bakunin, owing to his desperate financial straits, accepted a commission to do the translation, but his interest in the work soon flagged, and he quit after completing part of the first chapter. G. A. Lopatin did chapters 2 and 3 and the first part of chapter 4. The remainder of chapter 4 and chapters 5 and 6 were completed by Danielson. The first chapter was probably done by N. N. Liubavin. Iu. M., Rapoport, Iz istorii sviasei russkikh revoliutsionerov s osnovopoloshnikami nauchnogo sotsializma (K. Marks i G. Lopatin) (Moscow, 1960), p. 37.Google Scholar

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6. Mseriants, Z. M., Zakony o pechati, 4th ed. (Moscow, 1876), pp. 4, 14.Google Scholar

7. “Tsarskaia tsenzura o proizvedeniiakh F. Engel'sa Tolozhenie rabochego klassa v Anglii, '” Krasnyi arkhiv, 1935, no. 4 (71), p. 6. G. A. Lopatin to Marx, Dec. 15, 1870, Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, p. 185.

8. “Sochineniia Karla Marksa v russkoi tsenzure (Arkhivnaia spravka), ” Dela i dni, 1920, bk. 1, p. 321.

9. “Karl Marks i tsarskaia tsenzura, ” Krasnyi arkhiv, 1933, no. 1 (56), pp. 6-10. The censors soon gave proof that they had not relaxed their vigilance. The following month they proscribed the Communist Manifesto. “ ‘Kommunisticheskii Manifest’ i tsarskaia tsenzura (Dokumenty), ” Istorik-Marksist, 1938, no. 2, p. 106.

10. Danielson to Marx, Mar. 15 (27), 1872, Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, p. 233.

11. Poliakov's fate illustrates the capriciousness of the censors. Denis Diderot, not Marx, brought about his ruin. Ten months after Poliakov published the Russian translation of Das Kapital, the censors burned his latest publication, a collection of Diderot's novels and short stories in Russian translation, and “arrested” books he had in stock worth hundreds of thousands of rubles. Knizhnik, I. (Vetrov), “N. P. Poliakov—izdatel' 'Kapitala’ Karla Marksa,” Voprosy istorii, 1947, no. 6, pp. 75–77.Google Scholar

12. They knew each other from their student days at the St. Petersburg Commercial Institute or at the university. All but Liubavin later worked together at the St. Petersburg Mutual Credit Society. N. K., Karataev, “O ‘spornykh’ voprosakh istorii pervogo russkogo perevoda ‘Kapitala’ K. Marksa,” Izvestiia Akademii nauk SSSR : Otdelenie ekonomiki i prava, 1947, no. 4, pp. 254–55.Google Scholar

13. M. Nevedomsky, “G. A. Lopatin o svoikh vstrechakh s Marksom, ” interview, Den', May 4, 1918, quoted in V., Antonov, Russkii drug Marksa—German Aleksandrovich Lopatin (Moscow, 1962), p. 16.Google Scholar

14. Karataev, “0 ‘spornykh’ voprosakh, ” pp. 256-57. Negreskul, Peter Lavrov's son-in-law, was translating Marx's Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie when he was arrested on December 28, 1869. He died in prison shortly thereafter. Franco, Venturi, Roots of Revolution (New York, 1966), p. 357.Google Scholar

15. Reuel, Russkaia ekonomicheskaia viysl', p. 225. Rapoport, Is istorii sviasei russkikh revoliutsionerov, p. 36.

16. Published under his pseudonym Nikolai-on, “Ocherki nashego poreformennago obshchestvennago khoziaistva, ” Slovo, October 1880, this and subsequent articles were the basis of his book by the same title published in St. Petersburg in 1893.

17. N. F., Danielson, “Zametka k perevodu pisem K. Marksa i F. Engel'sa k Nikolaionu,” Minuvshie gody, 1908, no. 1, pp. 38–39.Google Scholar

18. Thanks to Danielson, the first translations of volumes 2 and 3 were again the Russian translations, each being published in St. Petersburg within one year of the German originals. These volumes were eagerly awaited by Danielson, because Marx had said that Russian agriculture would play the same role in the sections on ground rent in these volumes that British industry had played in volume 1. But Engels could find little or nothing on Russian agriculture in Marx's papers that he could include in the posthumous volumes of Das Kapital. Engels to Danielson, June 3, 1885, Werke, 36 : 322; Engels to Danielson, Mar. 5, 1895, Werke, 39 : 422-33

19. On Marx's high regard for Chernyshevsky, see G. A. Lopatin to X. P. Sinelnikov, Feb. 15, 1873, in Shilov, A. A., ed., German Aleksandrovich Lopatin (1845-1918) (Petrograd, 1922), p. 71.Google Scholar Marx was certainly conversant with Chernyshevsky's work, but there is no direct evidence that Chernyshevsky knew Marx's work, despite diligent efforts to establish that he did. See V. M., Korochkin, “Byl li znakom N. C. Chernyshevskii s ‘Kapitalom’ Marksa?,” Voprosy istorii, 1968, no. 3, pp. 201–5.Google Scholar Chernyshevsky did, however, evolve “a simple form of historical materialism” (Isaiah Berlin, “Introduction, ” in Venturi, Roots of Revolution, p. xxi).

20. Marx to L. Kugelman, Oct. 12, 1868, Werke, 32 : 566-67. Surprised, however, by the extraordinary popularity the book won in Russia—“where Das Kapital is read and valued more than anywhere“—and by the valor displayed by the terrorists of Narodnaia Volia, Marx subsequently took a far more favorable view of his Russian “well-wishers.” Marx to F. A. Sorge, Nov. 5, 1880, Werke, 34 : 477.

21. Gradovsky, Alexander D., “Sotsializm na Zapade Evropy i v Rossii,” in his Trudnye gody (1876-1880) : Ocherki i opyty (St. Petersburg, 1880), p. 228.Google Scholar

22. Danielson to Marx, May 23 (June 4), 1872, Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, p. 244. While the German edition came out in 1867 in one thousand copies (some of which found their way to Russia) and did not go into a second edition until 1872, the Russian edition came out in three thousand copies and was, according to Marx, almost sold out within a year. Marx, , Capital, English ed. (Moscow, n.d.), 1 : 16.Google Scholar A British historian of socialism pointed out in 1883 that Das Kapital had already been translated into Russian and was widely read in Russia, while scant notice was paid the work in Britain. John, Rae, Contemporary Socialism (New York, 1884), p. 105.Google Scholar The first English translation came out in 1887.

23. Joseph Dietzgen to Marx, Oct. 24, 1867, Werke, 31 : 674.

24. De-Roberti, Evgenii, Politiko-ekonomicheskie etiudy (St. Petersburg, 1869), pp. 58–60.Google Scholar Four months earlier, in a review published in Paris, De-Roberti had described Marx as a moderate socialist because Marx accepted the necessity of capitalism instead of railing against it as the Utopians had done. La Philosophie positive, 3 (July-December 1868) : 508.

25. Eliseev, G, “Otvet na kritiku,” Otechestvennye zapiski, 1869, no. 4, pp. 347, 350-54Google Scholar. Marx, Capital, 1 : 267.

26. A. Mikhailov, “Proizvoditel'nye assotsiatsii, ” Delo, 1870, no. 4, pp. 219-39, and 1870, no. 6, pp. 1-31. Iakobi, N. la., “O polozhenii rabochikh v Zapadnoi Evrope s obshchestvenno-gigienicheskoi tochki zreniia,” Arkhiv sudebnoi meditsiny i obshchestvennoi gigieny, 1870, bk. 3, pp. 160–216.Google Scholar Although this article did not refer to conditions in Russia, the censors ordered that the entire article be excised. The editor was discharged for publicizing “extreme socialist ideas.” Pashkov, A. I., ed., Istoriia russkoi ekonomicheskoi mysli, 3 vols. (Moscow, 1955), 2, pt. 2, pp. 20–21.Google Scholar

27. [Pokrovsky], V. P., “Chto takoe rabochii den'? (Po Marksu, Das Kapital, Hamburg, 1867)Google Scholar, ” Otechestvennye sapiski, 1860, no. 4, pp. 407-34.

The first study of Das Kapital in Russia was N. I. Ziber's University of Kiev dissertation, Teoriia tsennosti i kapitala Rikardo s nekotorymi is posdneishikh dopolnenii i raziasnenii, published in installments (Kievskie Universitetskie Izvestiia, 1871), and published as a book in the same year. Treating Marx's theories of value, of money, and of capital, the book made little impact on the intelligentsia until the late 1870s. Since copies of Das Kapital were in short supply, Ziber's exposition of Marx's economic theories became instrumental in popularizing the book with the Russian reading public. Ziber brought out a second edition of his dissertation in 1885, David Rikardo i Karl Marks v ikh obshchestvenno-ekonomicheskikh issledovaniiakh (St. Petersburg), which added considerably more material on Marx, especially the articles on Marx that Ziber wrote in the 1870s (see note 42).

28. E. L. Tomanovskaia (Dmitrieva) to Marx, Jan. 7, 1871, Revoliutsionnaia Rossiia, p. 186.

29. Syn otechestva, Apr. 28, 1872, quoted in Reuel, Russkaia ekonomicheskaia mysl', p. 242.

30. Syn otechestva, Apr. 28, and Apr. 29, 1872, quoted in Markova, O, “Otkliki na 'Kapital’ v Rossii 1870-kh godov : Bibliografiia,” Letopisi Marksisma, 1930, no. 1, p. 125.Google Scholar

31. Sanktpeterburgskie vedomosti, Apr. 8 (20), 1872. To rebut criticisms of his style, Marx cited this review in the afterword of the second German edition of the book. See Capital, p. 16.

32. Editorial, Novoe vremia, Apr. 23 (May 5), 1872, quoted in Reuel, Russkaia ekonomicheskaia mysl', pp. 238-40. The censors warned I. Sukhomlin, the editor, against repeating such seditious views. He denied any seditious intent in the editorial, “the main idea of which is not the idea of socialism, but the idea of limiting the privileges and the abuses of capital with respect to the toiling classes.” Quoted in Ocherki istorii ideinoi bor'by vokrug “Kapitala” K. Marksa (Moscow, 1968), pp. 115-16. Marx thought the editorial was quite laudatory. Marx to Sorge, May 23, 1872, Werke, 33 : 469.

33. Birzhevye vedomosH, May 30 (June 11), 1872

34. Tugan-Baranovsky, M. I., Russkaia fabrika v proshlom i nastoiashchem, 7th ed. (Moscow, 1938), p. 325–26.Google Scholar

35. Mikhailovsky, N, “Literaturnye i zhurnal'nye zametki,” Otechestvennye sapiski, 203, pt. 2 (August 1872) : 366.Google Scholar A majority of the congress, most of the delegates being professional men or civil servants, not industrialists, favored legislation to protect labor. Tugan-Baranovsky, Russkaia fabrika, p. 322.

36. Mikhailovsky, “Literaturnye i zhurnal'nye zametki, ” pp. 378, 395-98. 37. Mikhailovsky, N, “Po povodu russkogo izdaniia kniga Karla Marksa,” Otechestvennye zapiski, 1872, no. 4, pp. 176, 183.Google Scholar

38. K., Marx, Kapital : Kritika politichcskoi ekonomii, vol. 1 (St. Petersburg, 1872), p. xi.Google Scholar Capital, pp. 8-9. Marx subsequently denied that the process of “the primary accumulation of capital” that he described in Western Europe was inevitable in Russia or elsewhere. Marx to the editor of Otechestvennye zapiski, n.d., probably late 1877, in Blackstock, P. W. and Hoselitz, B. F., eds., The Russian Menace to Europe (Glencoe, 111., 1952), pp. 216–18.Google Scholar

39. Mikhailovsky, “Po povodu, ” pp. 183-84; Kapital, p. xii.

40. Mikhailovsky, “Po povodu, ” p. 184. Mikhailovsky's misreading of Marx became a stock argument used by Populists to deny the possibility of capitalism developing in Russia. For example, see Plekhanov in his Populist phase : Plekhanov, G. V., Sochineniia, 24 vols. (Moscow and Leningrad, 1923-27), 1 : 57–58.Google Scholar See also Richard, Kindersley, The First Russian Revisionists : A Study of “Legal Marxism” in Russia (London and New York, 1962), pp. 20, 238-39.Google Scholar

41. [Kaufmann], I., “Tochka zreniia politiko-ekonomicheskoi kritiki u Karla Marksa,” Vestnik Evropy, May 1872, pp. 427–29.Google Scholar

42. [Ziber], N., “Ekonomicheskaia teoriia Marksa,” Znanie, 1874, no. 1, pp. 43–90Google Scholar; 1876, no. 10, pp. 1-52; 1876, no. 12, pp. 1-49; 1877, no. 2, pp. 1-47; 1877, no. 4, pp. 1-50; Slovo, 1878, no. 1, pp. 174-204. Also see I., Ziber, Isbrannye ekonomicheskie proisvedeniia, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1959), 1 : 555–85, 683-722.Google Scholar

43. See Reuel, Russkaia ekonomicheskaia mysl', pp. 252-86

44. Kavelin, K. D., “Razgovor (1880),” Sobranie sochitienii, 4 vols. (St. Petersburg, 1897), vol. 2, cols. 1001–2.Google Scholar

45. Conversation cited in Biilow, Bernhard von, Dcnkiviirdigkeiten, ed. Stockhammern, Franz von, 4 vols. (Berlin, 1930-31), 4 : 573.Google Scholar

46. Marx to Danielson, Apr. 10, 1879, Werke, 34 : 375. N., Mikhailovsky, Literaturnye vospominaniia i sovremennaia smuta (St. Petersburg, 1900), 1 : 339 Google Scholar, quoted in Kindersley, First Russian Revisionists, p. 9.

47. Plekhanov to P. L. Lavrov, n.d., probably spring 1882, Dela i dm, 1921, bk. 2, p. 91.

48. Plekhanov, “Nashi raznoglasiia, ” Sochineniia, 2 : 337-38