Marx-Engels Correspondence 1868

Marx to Ludwig Kugelmann

Abstract

Source: Marx Engels On Literature and Art, Progress Publishers, 1976;
Transcribed: by Andy Blunden;

October 12, 1868

Russian aristocrats are educated as youths at German universities and in Paris. They always snatch up the most extreme of what the West has to off er. This is pure gourmandise, and a part of the French aristocracy also carried on in this way during the eighteenth century. “Ce n'est pas pour les tailleurs et les bottiers,” said Voltaire at the time, speaking of his own Enlightenment philosophy. This does not prevent these Russians from becoming scoundrels as soon as they enter the civil service.