Marxism before Marxism: Nikolaj Sieber and the birth of Russian social-democracy

Abstract

The Swiss-Russian economist Nikolaj Sieber was one of the first who wrote about Marx in Russia. In this article we reconstruct the development of his thought by mobilising evidence about the intellectual and political context he lived in. We document his involvement within the Ukrainian national movement of the 1870 s and argue that this closeness was consistent with his take on the capitalist evolution of the Russian Empire. We discuss his importance in the Russian debates on the future of the peasant commune and of Russia and conclude that his interpretation of Marx and capitalism was crucial for the development of the Russian social-democratic party.

Keywords:

• Nikolaj Sieber
• Marxism
• Marx
• Russia
• future of capitalism

JEL CODES:

• B14
• B31
• P10

Acknowledgement

This article is based on the results of the project IZLRZ1_163856, Scientific & Technological Cooperation Programme Switzerland-Russia (STCPSR) of the Swiss National Science Foundation. The support from RFFI (Russian Foundation for Basic Research), Project No 16-23-41003 and from the grant “Marxism before Marxism: socio-economic and epistolary heritage of N.I. Sieber” (50848911) of St. Petersburg State University is gratefully acknowledged. The authors thank two anonymous reviewers, Hanna Perekhoda, Ilija Magin, the members of the Mokum community for their assistance in St. Petersburg and Kyiv and members of the Centre Walras Pareto at the University of Lausanne.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Karl Marx read Sieber’s 1871 book, and even annotated it. The copy is located at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam (IISG, R 165/102 K). See Marx and Engels (1999, 691–92).

2 The authors of this paper are preparing the first English edition of this work.

3 While most of the characters that appear in this story were ethnic Ukrainians, almost all our sources are in Russian and we have therefore decided to transliterate the Russified version of names of people and places that appeared in the sources, therefore Kiev rather than Kyiv, Mikhail Dragomanov rather than Mihailo Drahomaniv, etc. In transliterating Russian names, we have adopted the simple – without diacritics – system named GOST 16876-71B.

4 The most recent example of this attitude in Mullin’s brief and dismissive mention of Sieber (Mullin 2015, 7).

5 See Shtejn (1948); Krandievskij (1966); Polyanskij (1965).

6 With Malthus and Senior being exceptions to a certain extent.

7 Translation of Sieber’s book by Jessica Mroz, page numbers refer to Russian.

8 “Sie setzt die Lokale, Temporelle, Subjektive immer soviel möglich in Entfernung, und steuert auf die allgemeinsten Grundsätze los,” (Baumstarck quoted in Sieber 1871, 102)

9 CDIAK, 442, 47, 348, sheet 1-13, Delo ob otkritii v g. Kieve tovarishestva potrebitelej 19.8.1868-6.10.1868 prilagaetsja ustav tovarisshestva. On the government cautious support for co-operatives, see Figurovskaja and Institut èkonomiki (Rossijskaja akademija nauk) (1998, tom 1, kniga 3, chast’ 1, p. 6).

10 The full list of members appeared in “Otkrytie destvij kievskago tovarishchestva potrebitelej”, Kievkij Telegraf, N. 3, 6.1.1869. Antipenko (2012) considers Kistjakovskij a representative of the “liberal-democratic tendency” among “Ukrainian democrats” but also a supporters of social reforms in favour of “peasants and urban workers”; On Bernshtam, see Ivanic’ka (2012).

11 For an interesting portrait of the Russian community in Zurich during the 1870s, see Kuljabko-Koreckij (1931, 42–48).

12 On the Russian Library, see Bankowski-Züllig (1991); Kropotkin recalls the conflict culminating with the beating of Valerian Smirnov, and mentions the presence of a typography belonging to the Chajkovskij group (Kropotkin 2011).

13 The correspondence between Podolinskij, Smirnov and Lavrov has been published to a great extent in Sapir (1970, vols. 2, appendices); Danila Raskov found two letters exchanged by Sieber and Lavrov in the GARF, 1762-4-653.

14 V. N. Smirnov to V. M. Aleksandrovich, Zurich, 6.02.1873 (in Sapir 1970, 61; Sapir incorrectly identified Jo. Ka. Sieber with N. I. Sieber). See Kuljabko-Koreckij (1931, 57).

15 DAK, fond 16 opys 314 dela 163, sheet 25.

16 The Kievljanin was edited by Vitalij Shulgin and counted among its authors Mikhail Aleksandrovich Juzefovich who was the director of Kiev archaeological committee and the curator of cultural activities in Kiev for the central government.

17 CDIA, 1865–1875, Delo o cenzurnom prosmotre statej, pomeshenniykh v otdel'nykh nomerakh izdavaemoj v g. Kieve gazety “Kievskij Telegraf”. Imeetsja programa gazety ukazan god osnovanija. Redaktor Snezhko Blockij, 294, 1, 4, sheets 1-64.

18 When writing in Russian, the authors discussed in this article used the word malo-russkie or “Little-Russians” to define Ukrainians.

19 Letter from S.A. Podolinskij to Smirnov, 17.05.1875 (in Sapir 1970, vols. 2, 439 and 445).

20 See Podolinskij (1880a), originally published in Vienna in 1875, which witnesses his involvement with the radicals.

21 Sapir (1970, vols. 2, 444f) assumes that Podolinskij referred to De Paepe (1874), which was published in Russian in Vpered! in 1875. On de Paepe and the federalist and collectivist stream of socialism he represented, see the rare biographical essay contained in Dandois (1974).

22 CDIAK Fond 442 Opis 51 Delo 106 list 1-89.

23 “Izvlechenie iz Otcheta o dejatelnosti Jugo-Zapdnago Otdela Imper. Russk. Geograficheskago Obschestva za 1875 g.”, Kievsij Telegraf, 1875, N. 48, p. 2.

24 The method of budgets was developed in particular by Frédéric Le Play and his followers (see Kalaora and Savoye 1989).

25 The article “O zhilishhakh bednago naselenija Kieva” (On Housing of the Poor Population in Kiev) appeared in the Kievskij Telegraf in January 1875, N. 6, signed N. It could have been authored by Sieber or by S. V. Zavojko, but Sieber’s authorship is more likely. The results of the census were published in 1875 by the society (Southwestern Branch of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society 1875); see also Sieber’s publication in Znanie (Sieber 1876b, III, 31).

26 The Ministry of public education also claimed that that census had been the work of Ukrainophiles, even trying to increase the number of little-Russians with respect to other ethnic groups, CDIAK Fond 707 opys 261 delo 17.

27 It has been translated into English (Sieber 2011; see the translator’s introduction: White 2011).

28 CDIAK, fond 707 opys 261 delo 17.

29 According to Podolinskij, letter to Lavrov, Vienna 15.08.1875, the USDP group had actually left the redaction of the Kievskij Telegraf on 1st August 1875, because of disagreements with Gogockaja (Sapir 1970, vols. 2, 450).

30 Juzefovich had been denouncing the “ukrainofilia” of the Society since he resigned from membership in April 1875, CDIAK, fond 442, opis 825, delo 41, list 1-04.

31 CDIAK, O prekrashenii izdanija gazety Kievskij Telegraf. Iz predpisanija Glavnogo upravlenija po delam pechati ot 4 Junija 1876 g., Fond 442, Opis 388, delo 73 is interesting essentially for two reasons: it contains an order from the Third section (the political policy) dated 28.8.1875 to the governor of Kiev to create a committee that should include Juzefovich “due to the appearance of ukrainophile activities and particularly of translations and printing of handbooks and prayerbooks in the little-Russian language.” This order is followed on 10.6.1876 by a decision of the Central administration for the affairs of the press, N. 3148, ordering not to allow documents printed in Ukrainian to enter the borders of the Empire or to be published inside the Empire and ordering to “cease any further publications of the newspaper Kievskij Telegraf”. Up to point 4, this order was included in the circular letter N 3570 sent on 23.6.1876 that repeats the N. 3148 literally except that it does not include mention of the Kievskij Telegraf. It must have been a very important case, though, decided at the highest level of the Russian state. See also CDIAK, O zakritii gazety Kievskij Telegraf. Iz soobsshenija nachal’nika kievskogo okhrannogo otdelenia ot 8 Maja 1876 g., Fond 274, opis 1, delo 3226, 193f. On the genesis of the Ems decree, see Remy (2007).

32 SAB 1278 1 4, Fremdenregister Niedergelassene IV (1872–1884).

33 GARF f. 109, op. 230, d. 1741, l. 1–3.

34 In any case, Sieber left Kiev without waiting for the necessary documents. The Saint-Vladimir University of Kiev officially accepted Sieber’s resignation from the post of professor only in December 1875, when Sieber was already in Bern, DAK, fond 16, opys 314 delo 163, sheets 16-20. The documents were sent to Sieber’s mother in Jalta.

35 All of the 27 female students at the University of Bern in the Winter semester 1875–76 came from the Russian Empire. Of them, 25 studied at the Medical School, one at the Law School, and one at the Faculty of Philosophy. Ekaterina Shumova, Nadezhda’s sister, enrolled one semester before the Siebers arrived (Universität Bern 1875). On the experience of Russian female students in Bern, see Rogger (1999); Rogger and Bankowski (2010).

36 Getting married was a characteristic way to emigrate and study abroad for young Russian women. This had been for instance the case of Idel’son, who is said to have entered in a sham-marriage in order to go to Switzerland (Kuljabko-Koreckij 1931, 15–16).

37 Rezul’ (1931) counts a total of 46 articles between 1876 and 1888, excluding those “published in Kriticheskoe Obozrenie, Vol’noe Slovo, Kievskij Telegraf and Russkie Vedomosti.” Incredibly, he claims that “Sieber’s collaboration to these journals is already more or less well documented” (143).

38 The cathegory of “thick journals” with reference to Russia is discussed in Maguire (1997). See also Belknap (1997).

39 Interestingly – but it could be a mere coincidence – B. I. Utin, another key contributor and among the founders of the journal, was the brother of N. I. Utin – the founder of the first Russian section of the IWA in Geneva.

40 RGIA, F. 776, op. 6, delo 245, list 75, 11 December 1875; Salz-Jacobson explained the transition from the preventive to the reactive system of censorship in Nikitenko and Jacobson (1975, xvi).

41 Sieber (1876a); Glogau’s anti-semitism is discussed in Raphael (1995, 109).

42 CDIAK, f. 442 o. 834 d. 60, sheet 64.

43 “Both Aksel’rod and Kravchinskij were orthodox followers of Bakunin at that time.” (R.S.F.S.R 1924): Zhukovskij claimed that the objective of the organisation of which Obshchina was an organ (the Social-revolutionary party?) was “the federal, provincial and communal autonomy” (Zhukovskіj 1878, 4; our emphasis).

44 Lavrov basically accepted that the primacy of the terrorist Narodnaja Vol’ja, at the beginning of the 1880s, and, in contrast with the pedagogical approach he had defended until then against the anarchists, came to see the revolution as an imminent possibility (Pomper 1972, 204ff).

45 Rjazanov acknowledged Sieber’s influence on Plekhanov while at the same time diminishing the former’s role: “incomparably more influence on Plekhanov was exerted by the early Russian Marxist, N. Sieber, whom Plekhanov, in his first programmatic article, called ‘one of the most talented students and vulgarisators of Marx’” (in Plekhanov 1923).

46 Ziber to Aksel’rod, 5.8.1881, Archives of the IISH, 139.45a.

47 Sieber (1882a), extensively discussed in Dubjanskij (2016).

48 Sieber’s article was published in Geneva on the columns of the newspaper Vol’noe Slovo. Apparently, Vol’noe Slovo, which was edited by Mikhail Dragomanov and A. P. Malshinskij was a project of a secret organisation, the Svjataja Druzhina, established by some Russian conservative aristocrats and functionaries in order to fight the revolutionary movement. Malshinskij was actually a spy in the service of the Third Section (Russia’s secret police) and his intent in founding the newspaper was to split the exiles community in Geneva, by voicing a moderate liberal-constitutional position. The controversies around this newspaper continued until the 1960s. Then B. V. Anan’ich and R. Sh. Ganeli even tried to demonstrate that Dragomanov had been an accomplice of the Svjataja Druzhina under the orders of Sergej Ju. Vitte, future Finance minister of the Empire, (Anan’ich and Ganeli 1964).

49 In Paris he met Ovsjaniko-Kulikovskij who recalls the meeting in his memoirs. “In 1881 and 1882 we saw each other often in Paris, where Sieber had come to study in the National Library. He was at that point studying literature on savages, having set for himself the goal of tracing the process of how legal and ethical norms arose based on the economic conditions of so-called ‘primitive cultures’. Again I listened to a number of his improvised lectures, which were of enormous interest to me” (quoted in Raskov 2018). The publication of Sieber's book was discussed in a letter exchange preserved in CIAM, fond 2244.1, op. 1551.

50 Sieber (1883, 44–45; quoted in Raskov 2018, see also 2016).

51 Shtejn (1948, 194; on which, see Shirokorad 2012, 75; and Krandievskij 1966) grouped Sieber with the “legal Marxists”, while Polyanskij (1965) – and maybe not without good reasons – insisted on his failure to understand the revolutionary role of proletariat; on the latter authors, see also Guelfat (1970).

52 On Soviet historiography on Plekhanov, see Pokidchenko (2017).

Additional information

Funding

Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung; Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFFI), St. Petersburg State University.