I. To the Editor of The Commonwealth
[The Commonwealth, No. 159, March 24, 1866]
Sir,—Wherever the working classes have taken a part of their own in political movements, there, from the very beginning, their foreign policy was expressed in the few words—Restoration of Poland. This was the case with the Chartist movement so long as it existed;- this was the case with the French working men long before 1848, as well as during that memorable year, when on the 15th of May they marched on to the National Assembly to the cry of "Vive la Pologne!"—Poland for ever![106] This was the case in Germany, when, in 1848 and '49, the organs of the working class(1)
demanded war with Russia for the restoration of Poland.[107] It is the case even now;—with one exception — of which more anon — the working men of Europe unanimously proclaim the restoration of Poland as a part and parcel of their political programme, as the most comprehensive expression of their foreign policy. The middle-class, too, have had, and have still, "sympathies" with the Poles; which sympathies have not prevented them from leaving the Poles in the lurch in 1831, in 1846, in 1863,[108] nay, have not even prevented them from leaving the worst enemies of Poland, such as Lord Palmerston, to manage matters so as to actually assist Russia while they talked in favour of Poland. But with the working classes it is different. They mean intervention, not non-intervention; they mean war with Russia while Russia meddles with Poland; and they have proved it every time the Poles rose against their oppressors. And recently, the International Working Men's Association has given a fuller expression to this universal instinctive feeling of the body it claims to represent, by inscribing on its banner, "Resistance to Russian encroachments upon Europe — Restoration of Poland." [109]
This programme of the foreign policy of the working men of Western and Central Europe has found a unanimous consent among the class to whom it was addressed, with one exception, as we said before. There are among the working men of France a small minority who belong to the school of the late P. J. Proudhon. This school differs in toto from the generality of the advanced and thinking working men; it declares them to be ignorant fools, and maintains, on most points, opinions quite contrary to theirs. This holds good in their foreign policy also. The Proudhonists, sitting in judgment on oppressed Poland, find the verdict of the Staleybridge jury, "Serves her right." They admire Russia as the great land of the future, as the most progressive nation upon the face of the earth, at the side of which such a paltry country as the United States is not worthy of being named. They have charged the Council of the International Association with setting up the Bonapartist principle of nationalities, and with declaring that magnanimous Russian people without the pale of civilised Europe; such being a grievous sin against the principles of universal democracy and the fraternity of all nations. These are the charges.[110] Barring the democratic phraseology at the wind-up, they coincide, it will be seen at once, verbally and literally with what the extreme Tories of all countries have to say about Poland and Russia. Such charges are not worth refuting; but, as they come from a fraction of the working classes, be it ever so small a one, they may render it desirable to state again the case of Poland and Russia, and to vindicate what we may henceforth call the foreign policy of the united working men of Europe.
But why do we always name Russia alone in connection with Poland? Have not two German Powers, Austria and Prussia, shared in the plunder? Do not they, too, hold parts of Poland in bondage, and, in connection with Russia, do they not work to keep down every national Polish movement?
It is well known how hard Austria has struggled to keep out of the Polish business; how long she resisted the plans of Russia and Prussia for the partition. Poland was a natural ally of Austria against Russia. When Russia once became formidable, nothing could be more in the interest of Austria than to keep Poland alive between herself and the newly-rising Empire. It was only when Austria saw that Poland's fate was settled, that with or without her, the other two Powers were determined to annihilate her, it was only then that in self-protection she went in for a share of the territory. But as early as 1815 she held out for the restoration of an independent Poland; in 1831 and in 1863 she was ready to go to war for that object, and give up her own share of Poland, provided England and France were prepared to join her. The same during the Crimean war. This is not said in justification of the general policy of the Austrian Government. Austria has shown often enough that to oppress a weaker nation is congenial work to her rulers. But in the case of Poland the instinct of self-preservation was stronger than the desire for new territory or the habits of Government. And this puts Austria out of court for the present.
As to Prussia, her share of Poland is too trifling to weigh much in the scale. Her friend and ally, Russia, has managed to ease her of nine-tenths of what she got during the three partitions.[111] But what little is left to her weighs as an incubus upon her. It has chained her to the triumphal car of Russia, it has been the means of enabling her Government, even in 1863 and '64, to practise unchallenged, in Prussian-Poland, those breaches of the law, those infractions of individual liberty, of the right of meeting, of the liberty of the press, which were so soon afterwards to be applied to the rest of the country; it has falsified the whole middle-class Liberal movement which, from fear of risking the loss of a few square miles of land on the eastern frontier, allowed the Government to set all law aside with regard to the Poles. The working men, not only of Prussia, but of all Germany, have a greater interest than those of any other country in the restoration of Poland, and they have shown in every revolutionary movement that they know it. Restoration of Poland, to them, is emancipation of their own country from Russian vassalage. And this, we think, puts Prussia out of court, too. Whenever the working classes of Russia (if there is such a thing in that country, in the sense it is understood in Western Europe) form a political programme, and that programme contains the liberation of Poland — then, but not till then, Russia as a nation will be out of court too, and the Government of the Czar will remain alone under indictment.
Endnotes
[105] Engels wrote this series of articles between the end of January and April 6, 1866, at Marx's request in connection with the controversy that developed in the International at the 1865 London Conference and after it over the inclusion of the demand for Poland's independence in the agenda of the forthcoming Geneva Congress. In order to substantiate the position of the Central Council on the nationalities question, it was necessary, on the one hand, to criticise the nihilism displayed in this vital matter by the Proudhonists, and their allegations that such political problems as the liberation of the oppressed nations had nothing to do with the working class and diverted it from its aims; on the other hand, it was necessary to reveal the demagogic essence of the so-called principle of nationalities which helped the Bonapartist circles to use national movements in their interests. This series of articles remained un-finished. During Engels' lifetime they were translated only into Polish and published in the London Przedswit, No. 7, 1895.
[106] On May 15, 1848, the Paris workers led by Blanqui, Barbes and others took revolutionary action against the anti-labour and anti-democratic policy pursued by the bourgeois Constituent Assembly which opened on May 4. The participants in the mass demonstration forced their way into the Assembly premises, demanded the formation of a Ministry of Labour and presented a number of other demands, including aid to the fighters for Poland's independence. An attempt was made to form a revolutionary government. The National Guards from the bourgeois quarters and tne regular troops succeeded, however, in restoring the power of the Constituent Assembly. The leaders of the movement were arrested and put on trial.
[107] T h e Neue Rheinische Zeitung, published under Marx's editorship in Cologne in 1848 and 1849, resolutely championed Poland's independence, whose liberation it associated with the overthrow of the Tsarist regime in Russia, then one of the main bulwarks of the feudal and absolutist reaction in Europe.
[108] A reference to the national liberation insurrections of 1830-31 and 1863-64 in Poland put down by Tsarist Russia, and the 1846 insurrection in the so-called free city of Cracow, which was under the joint protectorate of Austria, Prussia and Russia by decision of the 1815 Vienna Congress. After the suppression of the Cracow insurrection by Austrian troops, the city was annexed to the Austrian Empire. Engels has in mind point 9 on the agenda of the forthcoming congress of the
[109] International which was discussed at the London Conference (see this volume, p. 376). On the London Conference, see Note 103.
[110] Engels is referring to a series of articles on the Polish question written by the no Tribune du peuple, the Proudhonist Hector Denis and published in the newspaper of the International's Belgian sections, between March and July 1864, and also to the accusations levelled at the Central Council in the Echo de Verviers in December 1865 (see this volume, pp. 388-89, 392-400).
[111] Poland was partitioned in 1772, 1793 and 1795 between Russia, Prussia and Austria. Austria participated in the first and the third partitions. The partition treaties were signed in St. Petersburg on August 5, 1772, January 23, 1793 and October 24, 1795.