Marx-Engels Correspondence 1884

Engels to Eugenie Papritz

Abstract

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

June 26, 1884

Are you not being somewhat unjust to your fellow-countrymen? The two of us, Marx and I, had no grounds for complaint against them. If certain schools were more notable for their revolutionary ardour than for their scientific study, if there was and still is a certain groping here and there, on the other hand a critical spirit has evinced itself there and a devotion to research even in pure theory worthy of the nation that produced a Dobrolyubov and a Chernyshevsky. I am not speaking only of active revolutionary Socialists but also of the historical and critical school in Russian literature, which is greatly surpassing anything produced in this line in Germany or France by official historical science.