Citizens,
At its meeting of March 22, the General" Council declared by unanimous vote that your programme and rulesb accord with the general rules of the International Working Men's Association. It immediately admitted your section into the International. I am pleased to accept your proposal to take on the honourable duty of being your representative on the General[2] Council.
You say in your programme:
"...that the imperial yoke oppressing Poland is a brake equally hampering the political and social emancipation of both nations — the Russian just as much as the Polish."
You might add that Russia's violent conquest of Poland provides a pernicious support and real reason for the existence of a military regime in Germany, and, as a consequence, on the whole Continent. Therefore, in working on breaking Poland's chains, Russian socialists take on themselves the lofty task of destroying the military regime; that is essential as a precondition for the general emancipation of the European proletariat.
A few months ago I received from St. Petersburg Flerovsky's work The Condition of the Working Class in Russia.[147] This is a real eye-opener for Europe. Russian optimism, which is spread over the Continent even by the so-called revolutionaries, is mercilessly exposed in this work. It will not retract from its worth if I say that in one or two places it does not fully satisfy criticism from the purely theoretical point of view. It is the book of a serious observer, a courageous worker, an unbiased critic, a great artist and, above all, of a person intolerant of oppression in all its forms and of all national anthems, and ardently sharing all the sufferings and all the aspirations of the producing class.
Such works as Flerovsky's and those of your teacher Chernyshevsky do real honour to Russia and prove that your country is also beginning to take part in the movement of our age.
Fraternal greetings,
Karl Marx London, March 24, 1870
Printed in Narodnoye Dyelo, No. 1, Gene-Printed according to the news-va, April 15, 1870 paper
Endnotes
[3] Marx wrote this item on the basis of a letter from Johann Baptist Schweitzer dated April 29, 1868. The item was included in the report of the General Council meeting of May 12, 1868 published in The Bee-Hive Newspaper, No. 344, May 16, 1868, but is not to be found in the Minute Book. Informing Engels of Schweitzer's letter, Marx wrote to him on May 4, 1868 that he intended "to use this question in the interests of the Party", and insisted on an inquiry into the condition of the workers employed in the iron trade of the Rhine Province (see this letter and Marx's letter to Engels of May 7 and the latter's reply of May 6-7, 1868, present edition, Vol. 43).
[146] The Russian Section of the International was founded in Geneva in the spring of 1870 by a group of Russian political emigrants, young people influenced by the ideas of the Russian revolutionary democrats Chernyshevsky and Dob-rolyubov. A great part in setting up this section was played by A. A. Serno-Solovyovich, a member of the International who died in 1869. On March 11 the Committee of the Russian Section sent a letter to Hermann Jung enclosing its Programme and Rules (they were published in the section's newspaper, Narodnoye Dyelo, No. 1, April 15, 1870). In a letter of March 12 to Marx, the'Committee asked him to be the Russian Section's representative on the General Council of the International. Johann Philipp Becker on his own behalf wrote letters of recommendation to Marx and Jung. At its meeting on March 22, the General Council admitted the Russian Section to the International and Marx agreed to represent it in the Council. An official reply to the section was written by Marx, in the name of the General Council, on March 24 and published in Narodnoye Dyelo, No. 1, April 15, 1870. The Russian Section was of great help to Marx and Engels in their struggle against the divisive activities of the Bakuninists. Its members — Nikolai Utin, Anton Trusov, Yekaterina Barteneva, Victor Bartenev, Yelena Dmitriyeva, Anna Korvin-Krukovskaya — took an active part in the Swiss and international working-class movement. Some of them participated in the Paris Commune. The section sought to establish contacts with the revolutionary movement in Russia. It virtually ceased its activity in 1872. This document was first published in English in K. Marx and F. Engels, Selected Correspondence, 1848-95. Translated by Dana Fori, New York, International Publishers, 1942.
[2] Marx means an extensive amnesty granted by President Lincoln in A 863 and President Johnson in 1865 to persons who had fought in the US Civil War on the side of the South.
[147] For Flerovsky's book The Condition of the Working Class in Russia, see Marx's letters to Engels of February 10 and 12, 1870 (present edition, Vol. 43).