Revolution and Counter-Revolution; Or, Germany in 1848Marx, Karl
History
Revolution and Counter-Revolution; Or, Germany in 1848
Marx, Karl
Germany -- History -- Revolution, 1848-1849
Bohemia and Croatia (another disjected member of the Slavonic family,
acted upon by the Hungarian, as Bohemia by the German) were the homes
of what is called on the European continent "Panslavism." Neither
Bohemia nor Croatia was strong enough to exist as a nation by herself.
Their respective nationalities, gradually undermined by the action of
historical causes that inevitably absorbs into a more energetic stock,
could only hope to be restored to anything like independence by an
alliance with other Slavonic nations. There were twenty-two millions
of Poles, forty-five millions of Russians, eight millions of Serbians
and Bulgarians; why not form a mighty confederation of the whole
eighty millions of Slavonians, and drive back or exterminate the
intruder upon the holy Slavonic soil, the Turk, the Hungarian, and
above all the hated, but indispensable _Niemetz_, the German? Thus in
the studies of a few Slavonian _dilettanti_ of historical science was
this ludicrous, this anti-historical movement got up, a movement which
intended nothing less than to subjugate the civilized West under the
barbarian East, the town under the country, trade, manufactures,
intelligence, under the primitive agriculture of Slavonian serfs. But
behind this ludicrous theory stood the terrible reality of the
_Russian Empire_; that empire which by every movement proclaims the
pretension of considering all Europe as the domain of the Slavonic
race, and especially of the only energetic part of this race, of the
Russians; that empire which, with two capitals such as St. Petersburg
and Moscow, has not yet found its centre of gravity, as long as the
"City of the Czar" (Constantinople, called in Russian Tzarigrad, the
Czar's city), considered by every Russian peasant as the true
metropolis of his religion and his nation, is not actually the
residence of its Emperor; that empire which, for the last one hundred
and fifty years, has never lost, but always gained territory by every
war it has commenced. And well known in Central Europe are the
intrigues by which Russian policy supported the new-fangled system of
Panslavism, a system than which none better could be invented to suit
its purposes. Thus, the Bohemian and Croatian Panslavists, some
intentionally, some without knowing it, worked in the direct interest
of Russia; they betrayed the revolutionary cause for the shadow of a
nationality which, in the best of cases, would have shared the fate of
the Polish nationality under Russian sway. It must, however, be said
for the honor of the Poles, that they never got to be seriously
entangled in these Panslavist traps, and if a few of the aristocracy
turned furious Panslavists, they knew that by Russian subjugation they
had less to lose than by a revolt of their own peasant serfs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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