Marx, Engels, and Russia: A Tale of Forgery, Mistranslation, and False Attributions

What the paper says

Russian politician Vladimir Medinsky’s criticisms of Marx turn out, on close inspection, to be poorly sourced and inaccurate; this is unsurprising, given their author’s ideological stance and his track record of falsifications. But examination of Marx and Engels’ writings does reveal alarming rhetoric about Slav peoples (in the aftermath of the failed 1848 revolutions), along with inaccuracies of their own: a mistranslation from the Russian historian Karamzin, and repeated references to a fake document, the so-called “Will of Peter the Great.” Marx used these supposed citations to support his view that Russia was the most serious threat to the revolutionary movement in Europe, and to the wider world. While his concerns in his earlier years were understandable, the nature of the Russian regime had changed by the 1870s, requiring new policies and terminology. Meanwhile, Marx gained a closer acquaintance with Russian language and culture, allowing him to develop a more nuanced position; this led to his writing influential texts (in particular, letters addressing topics of historical inevitability and the existence of diverse paths for societal development).