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possible only as between independent nations. What little republican internationalism there was in the years 1830-48 was grouped round the France that was to liberate Europe, and French chauvinism was thus raised to such a pitch that we are still hampered at every turn by France's mission as universal liberator and hence by its natural right to take the lead (seen as a caricature in the case of the Blanquists but also much in evidence in that of e. g. Malon & Co.⁸). In the International, too, the French not unnaturally took this view. They, and many others, had first to learn from events, and must still do so daily, that international co-operation is possible only among equals, and even a primus inter pares - at most for immediate action. So long as Poland remains partitioned and subjugated, therefore, there can be no development either of a powerful socialist party within the country itself or of genuine international intercourse between Poles other than the emigres and the rest of the proletarian parties in Germany, etc. Every Polish peasant and workman who rouses himself out of his stupor to participate in the common interest is confronted first of all with the fact of national subjugation; that is the first obstacle he encounters everywhere. Its removal is the prime requirement for any free and healthy development. Polish socialists who fail to put the liberation of the country at the forefront of their programme remind me of those German socialists who were reluctant to demand the immediate repeal of the Anti-Socialist Law ⁹ and freedom of association, assembly and the press. To be able to fight, you must first have a terrain, light, air and elbow-room. Otherwise you never get further than chit-chat.
    Whether, in this connection, a restoration of Poland is possible before the next revolution is of no significance. It is in no way our business to restrain the efforts of the Poles to attain living conditions essential to their further development, or to persuade them that, from the international standpoint, national independence is a very secondary matter when it is in fact the basis of all international cooperation. Besides, in 1873, Germany and Russia were on the brink of war ¹⁰ and the restoration of some kind of Poland, the embryo of a later, real Poland, was therefore a strong possibility. And if these Russian gents don't soon put a stop to their pan-Slav intrigues and rabble-rousing in Herzegovina, ¹¹ they may well find themselves with a war on their hands, a war neither they, nor Austria nor Bismarck will be able to control. The only people who are concerned that the

p.193. 112. Engels to Kautsky. 7 February 1882

Herzegovina affair should take a serious turn are the Russian Pan Slav Party and the Tsar; no one can really concern himself with the rapacious Bosnian riff-raff any more than with the idiotic Austrian ministers and officials who are presently pursuing their activities there. So even without an uprising, as a result, rather, of purely European conflicts, the establishment of an independent Little Poland would be by no means impossible, just as the Prussian Little Germany invented by the bourgeois owed its establishment not to the revolutionary or parliamentary methods they had dreamed of, but to war.
    Hence I am of the opinion that two nations in Europe are not only entitled but duty-bound to be national before they are international- Ireland and Poland. For the best way they can be international is by being well and truly national. That's what the Poles have understood in every crisis and proved on every revolutionary battleground. Deprive them of the prospect of restoring Poland, or persuade them that before long a new Poland will automatically fall into their laps, and their interest in the European revolution will be at an end.
    We, in particular, have absolutely no reason to impede the Poles in their necessary efforts to attain independence. In the first place they invented and put into practice in 1863 the methods of struggle which the Russians are now so successfully imitating (cf. Berlin und [St] Petersburg, Appendix 2) ¹² and, in the second, they were the only reliable and capable military leaders in the Paris Commune. ^13.
    Come to that, who are the people who oppose the Poles' national aspirations? First, the European bourgeoisie in whose eyes the Poles have been utterly discredited since the 1846 insurrection with its socialist tendencies ¹⁴ and, secondly, the Russian pan-Slavs and those they have influenced, such as Proudhon, who saw this through Herzen's spectacles. But up till today few Russians, even the best of them, are free of pan-Slav tendencies and recollections; they take Russia's pan-Slav vocation for granted, just as the French do France's natural revolutionary initiative. In reality, however, pan-Slavism is an imposture, a bid for world hegemony under the cloak of a non-existent Slav nationality, and it is our and the Russians' worst enemy. That imposture will in due course disintegrate into the void, but in the meantime it could make things very awkward for us. A pan-Slav war, as the last sheet-anchor for Russian Tsardom and Russian reaction, is presently in preparation; whether it will actually materialise is a moot

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point, but if it does there is one thing of which we may be certain, namely that the splendid progress in the direction of revolution now being made in Germany, Austria and Russia itself will be totally disrupted and forced into different and quite unpredictable channels. At best, this would set us back by 3-10 years; in all likelihood it would mean one last respite for a constitutional 'new era' ¹⁵ in Germany and also, perhaps, Russia; a Little Poland under German hegemony, a war of retribution with France, renewed racial incitement and, finally, another Holy Alliance. Hence pan-Slavism is now more than ever our mortal enemy, despite - or perhaps just because of - its having one foot in the grave. For the Katkovs, Aksakovs, Ignatievs and Co. know that their empire will be gone for ever the moment Tsardom is overthrown and the stage taken by the Russian people. And hence this ardent desire for war at a moment when the treasury contains less than nothing and not a banker is willing to advance the Russian government so much as a penny.
    That is precisely why the pan-Slavs have a mortal hatred of the Poles. Being the only anti-pan-Slav Slavs, they are consequently traitors to the sacred cause of Slavdom and must be forcibly incorporated into the Great Slav Tsardom of which the future capital is Tsarigrad, i.e. Constantinople.
    Now you may perhaps ask me whether I have no feeling of sympathy for the small Slav peoples and fragments thereof which have been split apart by those three wedges –the German, the Magyar and the Turkish –driven into the Slav domain? To tell the truth, damned little. The Czecho-Slovak cry of distress:
                "Boze! ... Ach nikdo neni na zemi
                Kdoby Slavum (sic) spravedlivost cinil? " (a)

[Original Foot-note: (a) '0 God ... there's no one on earth who would see that         justice be done to the Slavs'. From Jan Kollar's Slawy dcera, Part 111, 'Dunag', p.287].

p.195. 112. Engels to Kautsky. 7 February 1882

Slavs, I am sure that six months of independence will suffice to bring them begging for re-admittance. But in no circumstances will these little nationalities be granted the right they are presently arrogating to themselves in Serbia, Bulgaria and East Rumelia - of preventing, that is, the extension of the European railway network to Constantinople.
    Now as for the differences that have arisen between the Poles in Switzerland, these are emigre squabbles ¹⁶ such as are seldom of any consequence, least of all in the case of an emigration which will be celebrating its centenary in 3 years' time and which, owing to the urge felt by all emigres to do, or at any rate plan, something, has given birth to plan after plan, one new so-called theory after another. But, as you will see from the foregoing, we are not of the same opinion as the Rownosc people and, indeed, we told them as much in a message sent on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of 29 November 1830, which was read out at the meeting in Geneva. (See Vol. 24, pp. 343-45).  (You will find a Polish version of it in the report (Sprawozdanie, etc.- Biblijoteka Rownosci: No. 1, Geneva, 188 1), pp. 30 ff. The Rownosc people have apparently allowed themselves to be impressed by the radical-sounding slogans of the Genevan Russians and are now anxious to prove that they are not open to the reproach of national chauvinism. This aberration, of which the causes are purely local and transitory, will blow over without having any appreciable effect on Poland as such, and refuting it in detail would be more trouble than it was worth.
    How the Poles, by the way, will sort things out with the White and Little Russians and Lithuanians of the old Poland, or with the Germans as regards the frontier is, for the time being, no concern of ours.
    Proof, by the way, of how little the workers, even in allegedly 'oppressed' countries, are tainted by the pan-Slav yearnings of the academics and bourgeois is provided by the splendid accord between German and Czech workers in Bohemia.
                But enough for now. Kindest regards from
                                                                            Yours,
                                                                                    F. E.

LETTER ENGELS TO KARL KAUTSKY In Vienna
London, 12 September 1882
p. 320. 179. Engels to Kautsky. 12 September 1882;

Dear Mr Kautsky,
    You really must forgive me for having kept you waiting so long for an answer. I have had so many interruptions of every kind that finally, in order to get any work done at all, I had to give short shrift to

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everything of lesser importance and put aside all such correspondence as was not absolutely necessary. And since, with your colonial question ¹ you had set me a task that was by no means easy to tackle, your letters met with the same fate, and in the process the good Walter got overlooked.
    Should Walter and Dr Braun come over here, I shall be glad to see them and whatever can be done for them I will gladly do. As for the rest, it will no doubt turn out all right. But what is Walter actually expected to study over here? That's what needs clearing up first of all. Socialism as such? No need for him to come over here for that, since it's to be had everywhere save in Austria and Germany; moreover, he will quickly exhaust that field, i. e. such literature as is worth reading. Economics? History? Of these he will find an embarras de richesses a at the British Museum -so much so, indeed, that a newcomer runs the risk of instantly losing his bearings. Natural science? That would mean lectures which are wildly expensive here. It seems to me that, before the chap is sent over here, a definite curriculum should be laid down for his studies-at least in outline-and if this were sent to me, it would be easier to judge whether it could best be carried out in this country or somewhere else. Without at least some knowledge of English, he would be completely at a loss here. It would, I think, be a good idea to get him to study French and English for 6 months beforehand, so that he could at least read a modicum of both before he went abroad. He should, besides, have some previous knowledge of history, geography and, if possible, also mathematics and natural science if he wants to study profitably. What the situation is in this respect I cannot know; but if it's at all unsatisfactory, it would certainly be better if you first got him to come to Vienna, so that he might acquire these things under the guidance of his friends and generally learn exactly how one sets about learning something thoroughly off one's own bat. Otherwise, here in London, it would, for the most part, be money down the drain. These are simply thoughts that have passed through my mind when pondering on the case and which may be completely irrelevant, but after all I know little or nothing about the young man's level of education, and that is why I considered it necessary to raise these points. If you let me know more about this, you will not be kept waiting for an answer. All things being equal I am, as you know, always in favour of getting ambitious young people

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to come abroad so that they may extend their horizons and rid themselves of the parochial prejudices which they must needs acquire at home.
    You should not, by the way, count too much on Marx so far as Walter is concerned. He is unlikely to come home before next May, and even then he will probably have to take great care of himself if he is to get his work completed. In particular he is now strictly forbidden to talk overmuch, on top of which he has to spend his evenings quietly if he is not to have bad nights. In the daytime, however, he will, of course, be working. If one is trying to get rid of chronic bronchitis of many years' standing and ensure, after three serious bouts of pleurisy, not only that it disappears without trace, but also that it doesn't recur, and to do all this in one's sixty-fifth year, one has enough to contend with on that account alone.
    You ask me what the English workers think of colonial policy. Well, exactly what they think of any policy -the same as what the middle classes think. There is, after all, no labour party here, only conservatives and liberal radicals, and the workers cheerfully go snacks in England's monopoly of the world market and colonies. As I see it, the actual colonies, i.e. the countries occupied by European settlers, such as Canada, the Cape, Australia, will all become independent; on the other hand, countries that are merely ruled and are inhabited by natives, such as India, Algeria and the Dutch, Portuguese and Spanish possessions, will have to be temporarily taken over by the proletariat and guided as rapidly as possible towards independence. How this process will develop is difficult to say. India may, indeed very probably will, start a revolution and, since a proletariat that is effecting its own emancipation cannot wage a colonial war, it would have to be given its head, which would obviously entail a great deal of destruction, but after all that sort of thing is inseparable from any revolution. The same thing could also happen elsewhere, say in Algeria or Egypt, and would certainly suit us best. We shall have enough on our hands at home. Once Europe has been reorganised, and North America, the resulting power will be so colossal and the example set will be such that the semi-civilised countries will follow suit quite of their own accord; their economic needs alone will see to that. What social and political phases those countries will then have to traverse before they likewise acquire a socialist organisation is something about which I do not believe we can profitably speculate at present. Only one thing is certain, namely that a victorious proletariat cannot forcibly confer

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