2021-07-07
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The second after the first or the first before the second?
'The Holy Trinity' Lenin-Marx-Engels was the most famous union in the Soviet Union. And, if many people have heard about Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx already because their names are called socio-political ideology-Marxism-Leninism, then Engels remains a 'dark horse' against their background.
Meanwhile, it is unlikely that a poor German emigrant, in whose status Karl Marx and his family lived all his adult life in London, could have become the 'father' of world communism without the support of his comrade-in-arms, manufacturer and entrepreneur Friedrich Engels.
Born into a wealthy family of a textile industrialist, Friedrich had to follow in his father's footsteps and inherit his capital. Actually, that's what happened. The young man received a specialized education and continued the family business. He did not show particularly brilliant intellectual aspirations, believing that everything in the world is enough to 'half-know'.
It was the 40s of the XIX century. Europe was plunging into that troubled period when the 'ghost of communism' began to wander through it. Discussion of political events became a fashionable trend among young people, and the meaning and purpose of life was the improvement of the mind, the liberation of the spirit. Therefore, the general eyes of intellectuals turn towards the removal of all restrictions in social and cultural life, the application in practice of the foundations of the Hegelian dialectic.
Subsequently, this will lead to mass revolutionary events, with which the world will enter the twentieth century. Lenin will try to translate the theory of Marx and Engels into reality, making an attempt to create a society 'from everyone according to their ability, to everyone according to their needs' and sacrificing thousands and thousands of human lives on the altar of the revolution...
However, old Engels did not suspect anything of this. He went through life adhering to his favorite principle of 'treating everything with ease'. Having come close to Marx, he was captivated by his powerful intellect and charisma. Living in pleasure, Friedrich did not forget about his professional activity, constantly developing and increasing the family capital.
The material support that Engels provided to the starving Marx family was priceless. In fact, the founder of the theory of Marxism, who did not work anywhere, interrupted himself from time to time by writing newspaper articles. He even went to jail for debts, so he learned all the hardships of life from his own experience.
Friedrich Engels outlived his colleague by 12 years. During this time, he managed to edit handwritten texts and publish Marx's fundamental work 'Capital'. According to Engels himself, it was ' hard for him to work, and he understood almost nothing.' Nevertheless, if it had not been for the popularization of Marxist theory by Engels, perhaps Marxism would not have gained such a scope later.
Despite only co-authorship, in the Soviet Union, the image of Engels was elevated to the same rank as the founding fathers of the theory of the world revolution. In May 1935, a postage stamp was issued to mark the 40th anniversary of the death of Friedrich Engels. The author is the Honored Artist of the RSFSR Vasily Zavyalov. His brush owns a lot of postage stamps, which later became a rare rarity, such as, for example, a series dedicated to World Spartakiad.
The four stamps depict a portrait of Engels in half-face, created from a photograph of 1879. The nominal value of these postal payment signs is 5, 10, 15 and 20 kopecks. At that time, having stamps depicting Marxist theorists in the collection was like having a rare icon or a painting by Leonardo da Vinci. And today the series is also of great interest for philatelists.
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