The Russophobia and Slavophobia of Marxism

Part 1: The historic roots of Russophobia

The only surviving page from the first draft manuscript of the “Communist Manifesto” The explosion of hatred for the Slavs and the Russian Empire in Marx and Engels arose after the defeat of the European revolutions of 1848–1849. These events, which flared up in the spring of 1848 throughout Europe (in France, the Austrian Empire, in Sicily and the Italian states, in Southern Prussia, Poland, Wallachia, and Moldova) and called the “spring of nations,” were expressed in the form of disobedience to the existing power, armed uprisings, and the declaration of new statehood. The movements that flared up at once in many places had an anti-feudal and national-liberation character. The participants in the performances demanded the overthrow of the monarchy (in France), national liberation (in the Austrian Empire) and unification (Germany, Italy) or separation from existing states (Hungary, Poland), and also demanded the democratization of public life.

The January 1848 demonstrations in Sicily and the anti-monarchist revolution in France became the catalysts of the pan-European “troubles.” In the spring, the revolutionary uprisings swept almost all of Europe and everywhere seemed close to success. In France, the monarchy was overthrown again and replaced by a republic. A number of major German and Italian states, as well as Austria, adopted liberal constitutions. Vienna granted Hungarians and Czechs autonomy and national status. It seemed that the Italian and German states would arise on the revolutionary wave, which would quickly form united nations.

But in the summer of 1848, a split occurred among the revolutionaries. The German reformers endlessly argued about further actions, not consolidating the initial success. In France, street fights broke out between reformers from the middle class bourgeoisie and proletarian radicals calling for a communist revolution, the ideologues of which wrote the “Manifesto of the Communist Party.” The “ghost of communism” wandered through Europe, breaking the unified revolutionary wave. Taking advantage of this, in the fall of 1848, the aristocrats and their supporters caught off guard went on the counteroffensive. In the summer of 1849, the revolutionaries suffered a series of defeats. The former political forces returned to power in Europe, and many leaders of the revolutions were killed or went into exile. The European revolutions were suppressed, although some social reforms remained in force, and the national movements in Germany, Italy, and Hungary later achieved their goals.

These events had a significant influence on the course of political processes in Europe. They shook the Austrian Empire, which was a multinational state with strong centrifugal tendencies, governed by the Habsburg-Lorraine house, which came from the Holy Roman Empire. Seeking to strengthen central power in the “loose” state, the German elite of Vienna relied on preserving and strengthening the socio-economic hegemony of ethnic Germans, who constituted less than a quarter of the empire’s population with a Slavic majority, and therefore the imperial authorities conducted a policy of Germanization. A special role in this process was played by German cities and fortresses in the center, north, and east of the country, founded during the Saxon colonization of the twelfth–thirteenth centuries.

Carl Marx in 1861 But the policy of Germanization encountered resistance from national minorities and peoples who, before entering the Austrian Empire, had a long history of their own statehood (Hungarians, Czechs, Poles). The resistance of the Hungarians was especially strong, resulting in 1848 in a national uprising, in the suppression of which (at the request of Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph I) Russian troops sent by Nicholas I participated. The defeat of the Hungarian uprising was also facilitated by the passive position of the Slavic peoples inhabiting the empire, who did not provide the Hungarians with due support. Then, among the Slavs oppressed by the Germans, a public movement of pan-Slavism¹ arose, based on the idea of national liberation of the Slavic peoples of Eastern and Southern Europe, which received support in Russia at the public level and in power. Pan-Slavism became one of the important ideologemes of Russian foreign and internal policy. One of the ideologues of pan-Slavism was the Russian thinker and revolutionary, theorist of populism and social anarchism M. A. Bakunin.

Marx and Engels considered the Slavs guilty of the defeat of the pan-European revolution. Engels in those days wrote:

“For this cowardly, vile betrayal of the revolution, we (who, Germans?—A. M.) will someday cruelly avenge the Slavs”².

The founders of communist ideology hated the Slavs (excluding Poles).

The founders of communist ideology hated the Slavs (excluding Poles), their aspiration to unification, and put forward a theory in the spirit of Gobineau about revolutionary (progressive) and counterrevolutionary (reactionary) peoples, calling for merciless war of the former against the latter. To the progressive peoples, the German Jew Marx (whose descendants would experience the “civilization” of Europeans), and the pure-blooded German Engels, attributed the “large” and “viable” peoples of Europe, and to the reactionary—small Slavic peoples (living in the Habsburg and Ottoman empires) and “barbarian Muscovites,” as these two Europeans called Russian people according to European tradition. Meanwhile, on the wave of the revolutions of 1848, the Slavic peoples developed a pull toward unification, expressed in the ideology of pan-Slavism, which Marx and Engels viewed with hostility. In January 1849, F. Engels published in the newspaper Neue Rheinische Zeitung (No. 194) the article, “The Struggle in Hungary,” where he gave this definition of pan-Slavism:

“Pan-Slavism arose not in Russia or Poland, but in Prague and Agram.³ Pan-Slavism is an alliance of all small Slavic nations and nationalities of Austria, and secondarily Turkey for the struggle against the Austrian Germans, Magyars, and, possibly, against the Turks… Pan-Slavism in its main tendency is directed against the revolutionary elements of Austria, and therefore it is knowingly reactionary. This reactionary tendency of pan-Slavism is immediately revealed by double betrayal—it sacrificed to its wretched national narrowness the only Slavic nation that has hitherto acted on the side of the revolution—Poles; it sold itself and Poland to the Russian tsar. The immediate goal of pan-Slavism is the creation of a Slavic state under the dominion of Russia from the Ore and Carpathian Mountains to the Black, Aegean, and Adriatic Seas—a state that, in addition to German, Italian, Magyar, Wallachian, Turkish, Greek, and Albanian languages, would encompass approximately another dozen Slavic languages and main dialects. All this taken together would be connected not by those elements that have hitherto connected Austria and contributed to its development, but by abstract qualities of Slavdom and the so-called Slavic language, of course common to the majority of the population. But where does this Slavdom exist, if not in the head of some ideologues; where does the ‘Slavic language’ exist, if not in the fantasy of Messrs. Palacký, Gaj, and Co. and partly in the Old Slavonic divine service of the Russian Church, no longer understandable to any Slav? In reality, all these peoples are at the most different levels of civilization, starting with the rather highly developed (thanks to the Germans) modern industry and culture of Bohemia and ending with the almost nomadic barbarism of Croats and Bulgarians; therefore, in reality, all these nations have the most opposing interests. In reality, the Slavic language of these ten to twelve nations consists of the same number of dialects, which are mostly incomprehensible to each other and can even be reduced to different main groups (Czech, Illyrian, Serbo-Bulgarian); as a result of complete neglect of literature, due to the unculturedness of most of these peoples, these dialects have turned into a real vernacular speech, and with a few exceptions, always had over themselves as a literary language some foreign, non-Slavic language. Thus, pan-Slavist unity is either pure fantasy or—the Russian knout.”⁴

Friedrich Engels between 1840 and 1859 In this quote, Engels’s Germanophilic racism is visible. By “elements that have hitherto connected Austria and contributed to its development” he means Germans, and to “uncultured peoples” he attributes the Slavs, who, in confrontation with the German world, need the “Russian knout.” And further, speaking about the Hungarian uprising, Engels writes:

“Even with the fall of Budapest, the Magyars will still have the large Lower Hungarian steppe, a locality as if purposely created for cavalry partisan war and having many almost inaccessible points among the swamps, where the Magyars can consolidate. And the Magyars, almost all masters of horseback riding, possess all the qualities for conducting such a war. If the imperial army dares to enter this desert area, where it must get all its provisions from Galicia or Austria, for here it will literally find nothing, then it is hard to say how it can hold out there… The Magyars’ cause is far from being so bad as the bribed black-and-yellow (colors of the flag of the Austrian Empire.—A. M.) enthusiasm wants to assure us. They are not yet defeated. But if they fall, they will fall with honor, as the last heroes of the revolution of 1848, and this defeat will be only temporary. Then for one moment the Slavic counterrevolution will flood the Austrian monarchy with all its barbarism, and the camarilla will see what its allies are like. But at the first victorious uprising of the French proletariat, which Louis Napoleon is trying to provoke with all his might, the Austrian Germans and Magyars will be freed and repay the Slavic barbarians with bloody revenge. The general war that will then break out will scatter this Slavic Sonderbund and wipe from the face of the earth even the name of these stubborn little nations. In the next world war, not only reactionary classes and dynasties will disappear from the face of the earth, but also whole reactionary peoples. And that too will be progress.”⁵

The “counterrevolutionary” Slavic peoples (except Poles), in Engels’s opinion, must disappear from the face of the earth!

That is, in the coming pan-European war, “not only reactionary classes and dynasties must disappear, but also whole reactionary peoples,” to which Engels attributes the Slavs, and this, in his opinion, “will be progress.” The “counterrevolutionary” Slavic peoples (except Poles), in Engels’s opinion, must disappear from the face of the earth! Compare this with the quote from Himmler’s speech before SS troops sent in 1941 to the Eastern Front (near Leningrad):

“This is a war of ideologies and a struggle of races. On one side stands National Socialism: an ideology based on the values of our Germanic, Nordic blood. A world as we want to see it: beautiful, ordered, fair in social terms, a world that, perhaps, still suffers some shortcomings, but in general a happy, beautiful world filled with culture, which is exactly what Germany is. On the other side stands one hundred eighty-million people, a mixture of races and peoples, whose names are unpronounceable and whose physical essence is such that the only thing that can be done with them is to shoot them without any pity or mercy.”⁶

I will leave this without comment.

About the merciless struggle with Slavdom and “Muscovites,” who allegedly stand in the way of European revolutions and historical progress, Engels writes in other works of his. In February 1849, he prints in the newspaper Neue Rheinische Zeitung the article “Democratic Pan-Slavism,” in which, analyzing the reasons for the failures of the European revolutions and polemicizing with Bakunin, he extremely frankly sets forth his views on Slavdom, Russia, and the Russian people. Engels states:

“Bitter experience has led to the conviction that the ‘fraternal union of European peoples’ can be realized not by means of empty phrases and pious wishes, but only by means of radical revolutions and bloody struggle; that it is not about a fraternal union of all European peoples under one republican banner, but about a union of revolutionary peoples against counterrevolutionary, a union that can be realized not on paper, but only on the battlefield. Throughout Western Europe, this bitter but necessary experience destroyed all trust in Lamartine’s⁷ phrases. On the contrary, in Eastern Europe there still exist factions, allegedly democratic, revolutionary factions, which continue to serve as an echo of these phrases and sentimental feelings and preach the gospel of the fraternity of European peoples. These factions… are democratic pan-Slavists of various Slavic peoples.”⁸

Then he writes:

“What are the great, terrible crimes of the Germans and Magyars against the Slavic nationality? We are not talking here about the partition of Poland, which does not belong here; we are talking about the ‘age-old injustice’ allegedly caused to the Slavs. The Germans again reconquered from the Slavs in the north the previously German, and subsequently Slavic, area from the Elbe to the Varta. This conquest was conditioned by ‘geographical and strategic considerations’ stemming from the partition of the Carolingian monarchy. These Slavic areas are completely Germanized; this is already done and cannot be reversed, unless the pan-Slavists find the disappeared Serbian, Wendish, and Obodrite languages and impose them on the inhabitants of Leipzig, Berlin, and Stettin. But that the indicated conquest was in the interests of civilization—no one has disputed this to this day.”⁹

That is, Engels justifies the Germanization of the Slavs who lived in the interfluve of the Elbe and Varta by the fact that it was done “in the interests of civilization.” This is pure racism! In exactly the same way, English colonizers justified (and justify) the conquest of India and other British colonies. This is the Anglo-Saxon racial theory of “cultivating wild peoples” (according to Kipling, “the white man’s burden”), which Engels applies to the Slavs, again anticipating the ideology of the leaders of the Third Reich.

Let us read his article further. Engels writes:

“For all pan-Slavists, nationality, i.e. fantastic pan-Slavic nationality, stands above the revolution. Pan-Slavists agree to join the revolution on the condition that they are allowed to unite all Slavs without exception into independent Slavic states, regardless of the most essential material needs. If we Germans put forward the same fantastic conditions, how far we would go! But the revolution does not allow any conditions to be set for itself. One has to be either a revolutionary and accept the consequences of the revolution, whatever they may be, or throw oneself into the arms of the counterrevolution and one fine morning find oneself, perhaps against one’s own will, in one camp with Nicholas [I] and Windischgrätz.¹⁰ We and the Magyars must guarantee the Austrian Slavs their independence—this is what Bakunin demands… From us and other revolutionary nations of Europe they demand that we guarantee the forces of the counterrevolution unhindered existence directly at our gates, guarantee them free right to arrange conspiracies and arm against the revolution; we must in the heart of Germany create a counterrevolutionary Czech state (which Hitler destroyed in 1939.—A. M.), we must break the power of the German, Polish, and Hungarian revolutions with Russian outposts wedged between them on the Elbe, on the Carpathians, and on the Danube!

We do not intend to do this. To the sentimental phrases about brotherhood addressed to us on behalf of the most counterrevolutionary nations of Europe, we reply: Hatred of Russians was and continues to be the first revolutionary passion of the Germans; since the revolution, hatred of Czechs and Croats has been added to this, and only by means of the most decisive terrorism against these Slavic peoples can we jointly with Poles and Magyars safeguard the revolution from danger. We now know where the enemies of the revolution are concentrated: in Russia and in the Slavic regions of Austria; and no phrases and references to the indefinite democratic future of these countries will prevent us from treating our enemies as enemies.”¹¹

Hatred of Russians was the “first revolutionary passion” of the German Engels, to which hatred of other Slavic peoples was later added, against which Engels wants to apply methods of “decisive terrorism” for the sake of European revolutions, calling the Slavs “our enemies”—enemies of “progressive” European nations (Germans, Poles, Magyars).

Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin in 1843. Portrait by Heinrich Detlef Mitreiter And, finally, citing Bakunin’s quote from his “Appeal to the Slavs”: “Truly, the Slav must lose nothing, but must gain! Truly, he must live! And we will live. As long as the smallest part of our rights is disputed, as long as at least one member of our common organism remains separated or torn from us, until then we will fight to the end, until then we will mercilessly fight not for life, but for death, until Slavdom finally becomes great, free, and independent,” Engels exclaims:

“If revolutionary pan-Slavism takes these words seriously and renounces the revolution wherever it concerns the fantastic Slavic nationality, then we too will know what to do. Then the struggle, ‘merciless struggle not for life, but for death’ with Slavdom betraying the revolution, struggle for destruction and merciless terror—not in the interests of Germany, but in the interests of the revolution!”¹²

How about that?! It is therefore not surprising that Soviet and current Russian communists stubbornly do not notice this opus of Engels, in which he attributes the Slavs living in the Russian and Austrian empires to the “most counterrevolutionary nations of Europe,” calls them enemies, and calls on Europeans to struggle with Slavdom “not for life, but to death,” to “struggle for destruction,” to “merciless terrorism”; that is, he calls for the genocide of the Slavs, although this word was not used then. Hence the question: How do Engels’s views on the Slavs differ from the concepts of the ideologues of Hitler’s Nazism?! In essence—nothing! Judging by this article, Slavophobia and Russophobia had already transformed in the twenty-eight-year-old Engels into an irrational feeling poisoning his consciousness, not subject to treatment by reason, with which Engels lived his whole life.

All of Engels’s bilious hatred for Russia poured out in the article, “The European War,” written in January 1854, on the eve of England and France’s entry into the Russo-Turkish war. In it, the author calls on the main European powers to come to the aid of the Turks, to attack Russia in the Baltic and Black Seas, and writes:

“What must be undertaken in the Baltic Sea is as self-evident as what must be undertaken in the Black Sea. It is necessary at any cost to achieve an alliance with Sweden, if necessary, to intimidate Denmark, to unleash an uprising in Finland by landing a sufficient number of troops and promising that peace will be concluded only on the condition of reuniting this area with Sweden. Troops landed in Finland would threaten St. Petersburg, while fleets would bombard Kronstadt. True, this fortress occupies a very strong position. The fairway leading to the roadstead can barely pass two warships going side by side, the latter being forced to expose their sides to the fire of batteries located not only on the main island, but also on small rocks, on shallows, and adjacent islets. Some sacrifices not only of people, but also of ships are inevitable… But what do three or four screw line ships mean compared to Kronstadt, this key to the Russian Empire, the possession of which would leave Petersburg unprotected? What would Russia turn into without Odessa, Kronstadt, Riga, and Sevastopol, if Finland were liberated, and an enemy army were positioned at the gates of the capital, and all Russian rivers and harbors were blocked? A giant without arms, without eyes, who has nothing left but to try to crush the enemy with the weight of his clumsy torso, throwing it at random now here, now there, depending on where the enemy battle cry sounds. If the maritime powers of Europe acted with such determination and energy, then Prussia and Austria could free themselves from Russian control to such an extent as to even join the allies. For both German powers, if they felt safe in their own home, would gladly take advantage of Russia’s difficult position.”¹³

Engels calls on all the main European powers to declare a crusade against Russia, to which Prussia and Austria could join in order to “free themselves from Russian control.” Then “Russia, forced to keep its troops in the Danubian principalities and on the Caucasian border, to occupy Poland, to have an army to protect the Baltic coast and, especially, Petersburg and Finland, will have very few troops left for offensive operations,” while an all-European war would awaken an all-European revolution, which “with youthful ardor would overthrow the plans of the old European powers and their generals, as it did in 1792–1800.”¹⁴

Engels’s concept of turning an all-European war into an all-European revolution would later be adopted by left-wing European socialists. And Lenin, at the beginning of the First World War in his manifesto, “The War and Russian Social-Democracy” (1914),¹⁵ in a number of articles and speeches, would put forward a program of action for his party that included the threefold slogan: to work for the defeat of Russia in the war, the disintegration of the Russian Empire, and the transformation of the imperialist war in Europe into a civil war in Russia with the goal of the Bolsheviks seizing power and building a communist utopia on earth through proletarian revolutions.

And Engels’s calculation that Austria and Prussia would enter the Crimean War on the side of the Anglo-French-Turkish coalition proved correct. Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph I, whose throne Nicholas I had saved in 1849, betrayed his savior and, together with Prussia, threatened Russia with war. In April 1854, Austria signed an allied convention with Prussia, and in July they jointly demanded that Russia withdraw its troops from the territory of Moldavia and Wallachia, backing their demands with the concentration of one hundred twenty-five thousand Austrian troops in Galicia and one hundred eighty thousand Prussian troops near the borders of Poland. Because of the threat of Austro-Prussian invasion, Russia was forced to disperse its forces and lost the Crimean War. Engels understood the German soul better than the Russian tsar did—a soul in which lived an ancient hatred of Russians. It lives on today. Look at and listen to modern German politicians—the most primitive Russophobia oozes out of them, and peeking through their faces is the familiar bearded visage.

“Viable” and “Non-Viable” Peoples

Engels in 1879 A special place in F. Engels’s writings is occupied by the theme of the self-determination of European peoples, where his Slavophobic views are fully manifested. In the spring of 1866 he wrote the article “What Is the Working Class to Poland?” for the English newspaper The Commonwealth, where, setting forth his view on this subject, he writes:

“The right of the great national formations of Europe to political independence, recognized by European democracy, could not, of course, fail to receive the same recognition especially from the working class. This was in fact nothing other than the recognition for other great, undoubtedly viable nations of the same rights to independent national existence that workers in each separate country demanded for themselves. But this recognition and sympathy for national aspirations applied only to the great and clearly defined historical nations of Europe; these were Italy, Poland, Germany, Hungary. France, Spain, England, Scandinavia, which were not divided and were not under foreign domination, were only indirectly interested in this matter; as for Russia, it can be mentioned only as the possessor of a huge amount of stolen property, which she will have to give back on the day of reckoning.”¹⁶

And in a letter to K. Kautsky on February 7, 1882, Engels writes:

“Pan-Slavism is now more than ever our deadly enemy, despite the fact that it stands on the edge of the grave or precisely because of that. For the Katkovs, Aksakovs, Ignatyevs and Co. know that as soon as tsarism is overthrown and the Russian people come onto the scene, their dominion will be over forever. Hence this thirst for war at a moment when the treasury is empty and when no banker will lend the Russian government a penny. That is why all pan-Slavists hate the Poles so mortally—they are the only anti-pan-Slavic Slavs, and consequently traitors to the holy Slavic cause, and must be forcibly included in the great Slavic tsarist empire, whose future capital will be Tsargrad, that is, Constantinople. You might ask me whether I really have no sympathy for the small Slavic peoples and fragments of peoples divided by three wedges driven into Slavdom: the German, the Magyar, and the Turkish? In truth, devilishly little… Only when, after the collapse of tsarism, the national aspirations of these dwarf peoples are freed from connection with pan-Slavic tendencies toward world domination, only then can we grant them freedom of action; and I am convinced that for the majority of the Austro-Hungarian Slavs six months of independence will suffice for them to beg to be taken back. But these small peoples in no case will be granted the right that they now claim for themselves.”¹⁷

The right to self-determination, in Engels’s opinion, belongs only to “viable” European peoples.

Thus, pan-Slavism and Slavdom (excluding “anti-Slavic” Poland) Engels again calls the deadly enemy of Europe and European socialists, because the pan-Slavists, expressing the will of the Slavs, strive for world domination (?!). The right to self-determination, in Engels’s opinion, belongs only to “viable” European peoples, while he denies this right to the oppressed Slavic peoples because they are “dwarfish” and stand under the shadow of great Russia—although in June 1848 he supported the Prague uprising of the Czechs against the Germano-Austrian yoke and branded the oppressors.¹⁸ But when the Czechs and other Slavic peoples in their aspirations for freedom turned to Russia, they became enemies to Engels because, together with the Russian Empire, they supposedly hinder the development of Europe and threaten it. Russia itself Engels sees not as a centuries-old community of different peoples, but as “the possessor of a huge amount of stolen property” (“foreign” land), which in the moment of the empire’s collapse will have to be given back. Thereby he reflects the long-standing anti-Russian policy of Europe, which dreams of the disintegration of Russia.

“To Struggle Not for Life, but for Death…”

Slavophobia and Russophobia are present in many of Engels’s works, conceptually repeating what we have set forth above, so we will not quote them all. We will stop only on his late article “The Foreign Policy of Russian Tsarism” (1889/1890), where Engels wrote:

“We, the West European workers’ party, are doubly interested in the victory of the Russian revolutionary party. First, because the tsarist Russian Empire is the chief bulwark, the reserve position, and at the same time the reserve army of European reaction; because its mere passive existence represents a threat and danger to us. And second, because… by its constant interference in the affairs of the West this empire delays and disrupts the normal course of our development and does so with the aim of conquering for itself such geographical positions as would secure it domination over Europe and thereby make impossible the victory of the European proletariat. It is to Karl Marx’s credit that he was the first to point out in 1848 and thereafter repeatedly emphasized that precisely for this reason the West European workers’ party is compelled to struggle not for life, but to death with Russian tsarism.”¹⁹

Engels believes that the very existence of the Russian Empire disrupts the normal course of European development and makes impossible the victory of the European proletariat. Hence the conclusion:

“Ruthless struggle not for life, but to death with the Slavdom treacherous to the revolution… —exterminatory war and unrestrained terror.”²⁰

This applies to all Slavic peoples and countries, but above all to Russia, as the chief Slavic Orthodox power, which the founders of Marxism wanted to destroy, and with it the Slavs living in the Russian Empire—Great Russians, Little Russians, and Belarusians.

Until the end of his days Engels struggled against Russia. In the article “Socialism in Germany” (1891–1892) Engels sets a task before German social-democracy:

“If the victory of the Russians over Germany means the suppression of German socialism, then what will constitute the duty of German socialists in such a prospect? Should they passively submit to the course of events that threaten their destruction, should they without resistance abandon the post they have conquered, for which they bear responsibility before the proletariat of the whole world? In no way. In the interests of the European revolution they are obliged to defend all conquered positions and not capitulate either before the external or internal enemy. And this they can accomplish only in irreconcilable struggle with Russia and all her allies, whoever they may be.”²¹

The German social-democrats heeded this testament of Engels. In the years of the First World War they became ardent patriots of Germany, advocating war with Russia and her allies unto complete victory, which led to their break with the Bolsheviks and their leader Lenin, who in his articles denounced the German “social-patriots,” although he himself struggled “to the death” with Russian tsarism, for the defeat of Russia in the war, for the disintegration and death of the Russian Empire. Speaking in February 1915 at the conference of the foreign sections of the RSDLP in Bern, Lenin declared:

“The victory of Russia entails the strengthening of world reaction, the strengthening of reaction within the country and is accompanied by the complete enslavement of the peoples in the already captured areas. For this reason the defeat of Russia under all conditions appears the lesser evil.”²²

This is an apology for betrayal according to the precepts of Engels, which led the leader of the Bolsheviks to an alliance with Germany.²³

To be continued…