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
Thus ended for the present, and most likely for ever, the attempts of
the Slavonians of Germany to recover an independent national
existence. Scattered remnants of numerous nations, whose nationality
and political vitality had long been extinguished, and who in
consequence had been obliged, for almost a thousand years, to follow
in the wake of a mightier nation, their conqueror, the same as the
Welsh in England, the Basques in Spain, the Bas-Bretons in France, and
at a more recent period the Spanish and French Creoles in those
portions of North America occupied of late by the Anglo-American
race--these dying nationalities, the Bohemians, Carinthians,
Dalmatians, etc., had tried to profit by the universal confusion of
1848, in order to restore their political _status quo_ of A.D. 800.
The history of a thousand years ought to have shown them that such a
retrogression was impossible; that if all the territory east of the
Elbe and Saale had at one time been occupied by kindred Slavonians,
this fact merely proved the historical tendency, and at the same time
physical and intellectual power of the German nation to subdue,
absorb, and assimilate its ancient eastern neighbors; that this
tendency of absorption on the part of the Germans had always been,
and still was, one of the mightiest means by which the civilization of
Western Europe had been spread in the east of that continent; that it
could only cease whenever the process of Germanization had reached the
frontier of large, compact, unbroken nations, capable of an
independent national life, such as the Hungarians, and in some degree
the Poles; and that, therefore, the natural and inevitable fate of
these dying nations was to allow this process of dissolution and
absorption by their stronger neighbors to complete itself. Certainly
this is no very flattering prospect for the national ambition of the
Panslavistic dreamers who succeeded in agitating a portion of the
Bohemian and South Slavonian people; but can they expect that history
would retrograde a thousand years in order to please a few phthisical
bodies of men, who in every part of the territory they occupy are
interspersed with and surrounded by Germans, who from time almost
immemorial have had for all purposes of civilization no other language
but the German, and who lack the very first conditions of national
existence, numbers and compactness of territory? Thus, the
Panslavistic rising, which everywhere in the German and Hungarian
Slavonic territories was the cloak for the restoration to independence
of all these numberless petty nations, everywhere clashed with the
European revolutionary movements, and the Slavonians, although
pretending to fight for liberty, were invariably (the Democratic
portion of the Poles excepted) found on the side of despotism and
reaction. Thus it was in Germany, thus in Hungary, thus even here and
there in Turkey. Traitors to the popular cause, supporters and chief
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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