Ladies and Gentlemen,(1)
Some 30 years ago, a Revolution broke out in France.(2) It was an event not foreseen by the St. Petersburg providence which had just concluded a secret treaty with Charles X for the better administration and geographical arrangement of Europe. On the arrival of the awkward news, the Czar Nicholas summoned the officers of his horseguard and addressed them a short, warlike speech, culminating in the words: à cheval, Messieurs![147] This was no empty threat. Paskiewitch. was despatched to Berlin there to settle the invasion of France. A few months later, all was ready. The Prussians were to concentrate on the Rhine, the Polish army to march into Prussia, and the Muscovites(3) to follow in the rear. But then, as Lafayette said in the French Chamber of Deputies— "l'avant garde tournait contre' le gros de l'armée" (the advanced guard turned round upon the main body).(4) The insurrection of Warsaw saved Europe from a second Anti-Jacobin war.
Eighteen years later, there was another eruption of the revolutionary volcano, or rather an earthquake shaking the whole continent. Even the Germans began to fidget, despite the maternal leading-strings in which Russia had kept them ever since their so-called war of independence.3 Still more strange. Of all German cities, Vienna was the first to try its hands at barricade building, and successfully too. This time, and, perhaps, for the first time in his history, the Russ lost his temper. The Czar Nicholas did no longer address his horseguard. He issued a manifesto to his people, telling them that the French plague had infected even the Germans, that it approached the frontiers of the Empire and that Revolution, in its madness, casts its delirious eyes upon Holy Russia. No wonder! he exclaimed. This same Germany has been the hotbed of infidelity for many years past. The cancer of a sacrilegious philosophy has eaten into the vitals of that apparently solid people. And then, he winds up with the following apostrophe to the Germans:
"With us is God! Know that, ye heathens, and submit to us, for God is with us!
Very soon after, through the hands of his trusted servant Nesselrode, he sent another bull to the Germans, but quite overflowing with tenderness for that heathenish people.0 Whence this change?
Why, the Berliners had not only made a Revolution, they had proclaimed the restoration of Poland, and the Prussian Poles deceived by the popular enthusiasm were forming military camps in Posnania. Hence the courtesies of the Czar. It was again Poland, the immortal Knight of Europe, that had warned off the Mongol! Only after the betrayal of the Poles by the Germans, especially the German National Assembly at Frankfurt,[148] Russia recovered her forces and waxed strong enough to stab the Revolution of 1848 in its last asylum, Hungary. And even here, the last man who bestrode the battlefield against her, was a Pole, General Bern.
Now there are many people silly enough to believe that all this has changed, that Poland has ceased to be "une nation néces-saire", as a French writer calls it, and dwindled to a sentimental souvenir, and you know that sentiments and souvenirs are not quoted at the Stock Exchanges. When the last Russian ukases for the abolition of Poland became known in this country,[149] the organ of the leading purses exhorted the Poles to turn into Muscovites.[3]
Why should they not, if it were only to give further security for the six mill. 1. st. just lent to the Czar by the English capitalists? [150]
A mere Tim^s-reading Englishman may tell me that, let the worst arrive to the worst, and Russia seize Constantinople, England will then appropriate Egypt and thus secure the road to her great Indian market.[13] Lastly, as to The Times saying that Russia may seize Constantinople, if she does not prevent England from seizing upon Egypt, what does it all mean? That England will surrender Constantinople to Russia, if Russia allows England to have a fight with France over Egypt. This is the comfortable vista opened to you by The Times. As to Russian love for England, fond as she is of British £.s.d., it suffices to quote the words of the Gazette de
Moscou, d.d. Dec. 1831:
"Non, il faut que le tour de perfide Albion vienne, et dans quelque temps nous ne devons plus faire de traite avec ce peuple qu'à Calcutta." (No, it is necessary that the turn of perfidious Albion come, and soon we shall conclude no more treaty with that people, save at Calcutta.)0
But I ask you, what has changed? Has the danger grown less? No. Only the judicial blindness of the governing classes of Europe has reached its climax.
In the first instance, the policy of Russia is unchangeable, as averred by her official historian, the Muscovite Karamzin.d Her methods, her tactics, her manoeuvring may change, but the leading star of her policy is a fixed star — the empire of the world. Only a civilised government[6] swaying barbarian masses can nowadays
a Here and below the reference ii to the leading article in The Times, No. 25701, January 7, 1867. In Marx's rough manuscript this and the next phrase are at the beginning of the speech and crossed with a vertical line.— Ed.
b In the rough manuscript this phrase is at the end of the paragraph beginning "A continental European" and crossed with a vertical line. In the Glos Wolny the beginning of the phrase reads: "If the worst comes to the worst, The Times wrote, let Russia take Constantinople after all, England..."—Ed.
hatch such a plan, and execute it. As the greatest Russian dip-lomatist of modern times, Pozzo di Borgo, wrote to Alexander I, at the epoch of the Vienna Congress,[151] Poland is the great tool for the execution of the world-embracing schemes of Russia, but also her invincible obstacle, until the Pole, fatigued by the accumulated treacheries of Europe, becomes her scourge in the hand of the Muscovite.
Now, apart from the dispositions of the Polish people, has anything happened to thwart the plans of Russia or paralyse her action?
I need not tell you that in Asia, her progress of conquest is continuous. I need not tell you that the so-called Anglo-French war against Russia(5) handed over to her the mountain fortresses of Caucasus, the domination of the Black Sea, and the maritime rights which Catherine II, Paul and Alexander I had vainly tried to wrest from England. Railways are connecting and concentrating her vastly disseminated bonds. Her material resources in Congress Poland,[152] which forms her entrenched camp in Europe, have enormously increased. The fortifications of Warsaw, Modlin, Ivangorod — points singled out by the first Napoleon — domineer the whole course of the Vistula and constitute a formidable basis of attack to the North, West and South. The Panslavonian propaganda has kept pace with the enfeeblement of Austria and Turkey, and what that Panslavonian propaganda means, you had some foretaste in 1848-49, when Hungary was overrun, Vienna laid waste, Italy countered by the Slavs, fighting under the banners of Jellachich, Windischgrätz and Radetzky! And besides all this, England's wrongs against Ireland have raised a new powerful ally of Russia on the other side of the Atlantic.
The plan of Russian policy remains unchangeable, her means of action have wonderfully increased even since 1848, but as yet there is one thing out of reach, and Peter the First hit the weak point when he exclaimed that to conquer the world, the Muscovites wanted nothing but souls. Well, this living spirit, which Russia lacks, will be infused into her carcass the moment the Poles turn into Russian subjects. What then will you have to throw into the opposite balance? (6)
A continental European will, perhaps, answer that Russia, by the emancipation of the serfs, has entered the family of civilised nations, that the German power recently concentrated in Prussian hands can stand any Asiatic shock, and, lastly, that Social Revolution in Western Europe will do away with all "international" conflicts.(7)
In the first instance, the emancipation of the serfs has emancipated the supreme government from the impediments the nobles were able to oppose to its centralised action. It has created a vast recruiting place for its army, broken up the common property of the Russian peasants, insulated them, and, above all, strengthened their faith in their pope-autocrat. It has not deodorised their Asiatic barbarism, the slow growth of centuries.(8) Any attempt at raising their moral standard is punished as a crime. I remind you only of the official provocations against the temperance societies which had undertaken to wean the Muscovite from what Feuerbach calls the practical substance of his religion, namely brandy. However it may work in the future, for the present the serf emancipation has increased the disposable forces of the Czar.
Now, as to Prussia. Once a vassal of Poland, she has but grown into a first rate power under the auspices of Russia, and by the partition of Poland. If she lose to-morrow her Polish booty, she would merge into Germany instead of absorbing it. To maintain herself as a power distinct from Germany, she must fall back upon the Muscovite. Her recent access of domain, instead of loosening these ties, has rendered them indissoluble, because it has heightened her antagonism to France and Austria. At the same time Russia is the prop upon which the arbitrary rule of the Hohenzollern dynasty and its feudal retainers rest. This is their safeguard against popular disaffection. Prussia is, therefore, not a bulwark against the Muscovite but his predestined tool for the invasion of France and the enslavement of Germany.
As to social revolution, what does it mean if not a struggle of classes? It is possible that the struggle between the workmen and the capitalist will be less fierce and bloody than the struggles between the feudal lord and the capitalist proved in England and in France.
We will hope so. But at all events, although such a social crisis may rouse the energies of the Western peoples, it will, like all internal feuds, also invite aggression from abroad. It will clothe anew Russia with the character she bore during the Anti-Jacobin war and since the Holy Alliance, thai of the predestined saviour of order. It will enlist in her ranks all the privileged classes of Europe. Already during the revolution of February it was not only the Count of Montalembert, who laid his ear to the ground to listen whether there was a distant troop of Cossack horses.(9) It was not only Prussian squires who proclaimed in the midst of German representative bodies the Czar their " Oberlandesvater" .(10) It was all the Stock Exchanges of Europe that rose with every Russian victory over the Magyars(11) and fell at every Russian defeat.
There is only one alternative left for Europe. Asiatic barbarism under Muscovite leadership will burst over her head like a lawine,(12)
or she must restore Poland, thus placing between herself and Asia 20 millions of heroes, and gaining breathing time for the accomplishment of her social regeneration.
Endnotes
[148] Four Following Days, Sheffield, 1866. In Marx's draft manuscript, a newspaper clipping with the text of the resolution was pasted in. The Holy Alliance—an association of European monarchs founded in 1815 to suppress revolutionary movements and preserve feudal monarchies in European countries. Later, this expression was used to denote a coalition of counter-revolutionary powers. This resolution was submitted by Marx at a meeting of the General Council (as the Central Council was officially named according to the Rules adopted at the Geneva Congress) on September 18, 1866, .which heard the report of its delegates to the Geneva Congress (see Note 138) on the latter's work and results. The Council's official representatives at the Congress were James Carter, George Odger, Johann Georg Eccarius and Hermann Jung. The Congress was also attended by other Council members, including Eugène Dupont as delegate for the French section in London, Matthew Lawrence for the Operative Tailors' Association in London and William Randal Cremer for the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners in London. Marx made this speech at a meeting held in Cambridge Hall, London, on January 22, 1867 to mark the fourth anniversary of the Polish insurrection of 1863-64. The meeting was organised by the General Council of the International jointly with the Central London Section of the United Polish Exiles. Marx took an active part in preparing and organising this meeting (see this volume, p. 414). On March 12 the Central London Section of the United Polish Exiles expressed gratitude to the General Council for the organisation of the meeting and to Marx, among other speakers, for his report. A detailed report of the. meeting, Marx's speech included, was published in the Polish-language newspaper Gios. Wolny, Nos. 129 and 130, January 31 and February 10, 1867. Moreover, the editors noted that "the speech, remarkable for its accurate observations and logical conclusions, is given word for word". A draft manuscript in English has survived. Presumably it was in the possession of Marx's daughter, Laura Lafargue, who made it available to the editors of Le Socialisme for the publication of a French translation in No. 18 for March 15, 1905. The English text was published in Cahiers de l'Institut de Science économique appliquée, No. 4 (109), Paris, 1961. Some passages in the manuscript were crossed by Marx with a vertical line. Collation of the manuscript with the publication in Polish shows that Marx did not omit the crossed-out passages, but merely changed their placing. With the exception of these alterations and some minor amendments to the text, the English original and the Polish translation, which may have been made from the lost fair copy, coincide almost word for word. In this volume the speech is reproduced from the draft manuscript in English with allowances made for the rearrangements by the author and reproduced in the Polish version. The most important discrepancies of meaning are given in the footnotes. "To horse, gentlemen!" — Nicholas I pronounced these words on learning about the February revolution in France in 1848. Marx has in mind the hostile position of the majority in the all-German National Assembly in Frankfurt (convened in May 1848 to work out an all-German constitution) in regard to the Polish national liberation movement
[3] Garottes—robbers who strangled their victims. In the early 1860s such attacks often occurred in London and were a subject of special debate in Parliament.
[13] 15 16 1866. The Italian translation was published in L'Unità Italiana, February 18, 1865 (Milan) and 77 Dovere, August 26, 1865 (Genoa). At its sitting on September 5, 1866, the Geneva Congress of the International Working Men's Association confirmed the text of the Rules (General Rules) supplementing it with the Regulations which were confirmed at the sitting of September 8, 1866 and were later called the Administrative Regulations.
[6] The phrase from Gladstone's speech on April 16, 1863, quoted here by Marx, appeared in almost all the London newspaper reports of this parliamentary session (The Times, The Morning Star, The Daily Telegraph, April 17, 1863) but was omitted in Hansard's semi-official publication of parliamentary debates in which the text was corrected by the speakers themselves. In the magazine Concordia, No. 10, March 7, 1872 the German bourgeois economist Brentano used this as a pretext for accusing Marx of unscrupulous misquotation. Marx replied to this libel in his letters to the editor of Der Volksstaat on May 23 and July 28, 1872 (see present edition, Vol. 23). After Marx's death, the same accusation was made in November 1883 by the British bourgeois economist Taylor. The lie to this assertion was given by Eleanor Marx in two letters to the magazine To-Day in February and March 1884, and then by Engels in the Preface to the fourth German edition of Capital in June 1890 and in the pamphlet Brentano Contra Marx in 1891. P. 7
[151] 153 154 in the Grand Duchy of Posen, a dependency of Prussia. The debates on this subject held on July 24-27 resulted in the Assembly giving consent to the punitive police measures of the Prussian authorities in Posen and charging the government "to guarantee the security of Germans residing in Posen". For details, see Engels' series of articles, "The Frankfurt Assembly Debates the Polish Question" (present edition, Vol. 7).
[152] In 1866-67, after the suppression of the Polish insurrection of 1863-64, the Russian Government promulgated "Regulations on the Gubernia and Uyezd Administration in the Kingdom of Poland" and a number of ukases aimed at the abolition of local Polish institutions and the consolidation of the administrative apparatus — the chief means of national oppression. The number of gubernias was increased, the prerogatives of the governors appointed by the Russian Government were extended, supreme bodies (State Council and others) were abolished, different administrative departments (post, communications) were subordinated to the respective ministries in St. Petersburg.