Pamphlet by Engels responding to an "open letter" by the Russian revolutionary Pyotr Tkachev, in which Tkachev had criticized Engels' understanding of the Russian situation. Engels was writing shortly after the "Going to the People/Narod Movement" in Russia, which had largely failed in inspiring a revolution among the peasantry (and which Tkachev had also critiqued). Despite Engels' extensive criticisms of Tkachev's celebration of the Russian mir/peasantry, he still writes that there is a possibilty for Russia to avoid capitalist development on the basis of the Russian commune should Russia be assisted by a proletarian revolution in Western Europe.
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Engels wrote: The Russian…
It's neither here nor there, but it's interesting to note that Bakunin also (correctly) critiqued Russian peasants' admiration for the tsar in the Appendix to his work Statism and Anarchy, along with other aspects of the Russian peasantry/mir. Nonetheless, Bakunin also called on Russian radicals to "go to the people" in the same work. Prior to the emancipation, serfs would often petition the tsar if their lords behaved cruelly or unfairly (not that Russian serfdom wasn't already cruel and unfair); so to a large extent, peasants directed their frustrations at their lords rather than at the tsar or political order itself. If it's of any interest, one can see some historical examples of serfs petitioning the tsar during uprisings in this text here.
Some relevant quotes from Statism and Anarchy:
(One could also note that workers, many of them former peasants who had migrated to the cities, were en route to deliver a petition to the tsar before being shot down in the Bloody Sunday Massacre of 1905, sparking the 1905 Revolution.)
Pdf of Marx's full comments…
Pdf of Marx's full comments here; https://libcom.org/article/notes-bakunins-book-statehood-and-anarchy-karl-marx