Afterword to On Social Relations in Russia

An important work by Engels dealing with the fate of the Russian rural commune and the prospects for the Russian revolution. Written in the first half of January 1894, appeared in Engels’ Internationales aus dem ‘Volksstaat’ (1871–1875), published in 1894 in Berlin, and later included in Friedrich Engels über Rußland together with Soziales aus Rußland.

In 1894, Engels’ articles on international questions published in the Volksstaat were solicited to be reprinted and published in a collection under the title Internationales aus dem ‘Volksstaat’ (1871–1875). Faced with “Russians at home and abroad” who “urged” him to express his opinion on the Russian question, and a “letter from Marx which Engels quoted has been given the most diverse interpretations by the Russian socialists”, Engels, on the occasion of the reprint, “undertook the attempt to draw some conclusions from the historical-comparative enquiry into the economic position of Russia today” and and thus wrote this document “in expansion of this old essay”.

The main contents of the Afterword to On Social Relations in Russia are as follows: First, Engels criticized the erroneous idea that Russia could transition from the rural commune to socialism. By analyzing the new socio-economic developments in Russia, he criticized the view that the rural commune was a means of direct transition to a socialist society without regard to the objective socio-historical conditions, pointing out that it was historically impossible for a lower stage of economic development to solve the problems and conflicts that had arisen and that could only have arisen at a much higher stage of development. In social history, each specific economic formation should solve its own problems, arising from itself, so that socialism can only be the most unique and final product of capitalist society. Second, Engels analyzed the necessary conditions for Russia to embark on the path of socialism. He pointed out that, generally speaking, the countries which have only just succumbed to capitalist production, could make use of the remnants of the communal ownership of the land to shorten the process of development into a socialist society and spare themselves the suffering which had been inflicted on Western Europe, and that the indispensable condition for this was the success of the proletarian revolutions in the capitalist countries of Western Europe and the active assistance of these countries.

As a result, with regard to Russia at that time, which was “transform[ed] into a capitalist industrial nation, the proletarianisation of a large proportion of the peasantry and the decay of the old communistic commune proceeds at an ever quickening pace,” Engels pointed out in his analysis that only the outbreak of a Russian revolution overthrowing the Tsar’s absolutism would “give the workers’ movement of the West fresh impetus and create new, better conditions in which to carry on the struggle, thus hastening the victory of the modern industrial proletariat, without which present-day Russia can never achieve a socialist transformation, whether proceeding from the commune or from capitalism.”

Afterword to On Social Relations in Russia is an important document in the history of Marxist development. Engels recalled and introduced his exposition of the Russian rural commune and Russian revolution in the Afterword to On Social Relations in Russia, quoted Marx’s judgment and prediction of the development prospects of Russian rural commune, and made a new elaboration and analysis in the light of the constantly evolving and changing new situation, which provided methodological insights for the later generations to examine the socio-historical problems on the basis of historical materialism.