The Russophobia and Slavophobia of Marxism

Part 1: The historic roots of Russophobia

Part 2: “Reactionary Peoples Will Disappear from the Face of the Earth…”

Russians Are Not Slavs, and the Russian Army “Has Nothing to Boast About”

Vladimir Ilyich Lenin at the unveiling of the temporary monument to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels on Voskresenskaya Square (now Revolution Square). 1918. Photo: RIA Novosti Karl Marx differed little from his friend Engels in his views on Slavdom (from which he excludes the Poles), Russia, and the Russian people. He wholeheartedly accepts the theory of the Polish Russophobes about the origin of the Russian people, whom he calls “Muscovites.” In a letter to Engels dated June 24, 1865, Marx writes:

“Ad vocem (regarding.—A. M.) Poland, I read with great interest the work of Elias Regnault, The European Question, Erroneously Called the Polish Question. From this book it is clear that Lapinski’s dogma¹ that the Great Russians are not Slavs, is defended by Mr. Duchinski² (from Kiev, a professor in Paris) in the most serious manner from linguistic, historical, ethnographic, etc. points of view; he asserts that the real Muscovites, i.e., the inhabitants of the former Grand Duchy of Moscow, are mostly Mongols or Finns, etc., as are the parts of Russia located further east and its southeastern parts. From this book it is clear… that the matter greatly worried the Petersburg cabinet³ (for it would decisively put an end to panslavism). All Russian scholars were called upon to write replies and objections, but the latter proved in fact infinitely weak. The argument about the purity of the Great Russian dialect and its closeness to Church Slavonic in these debates testified more as if in favor of the Polish concept than the Muscovite one… It was also proven from geological and hydrographic points of view that east of the Dnieper begin great “Asian” differences, compared to the places lying west of it, and that the Ural… in no way represents a boundary. The conclusions to which Duchinski comes: The name Rus’ was usurped by the Muscovites. They are not Slavs and generally do not belong to the Indo-Germanic race, they are intrus (illegal intruders.—A. M.), who need to be driven back beyond the Dnieper, etc. Panslavism in the Russian sense is a cabinet invention, etc. I would like Duchinski to be right, and for at least this view to become dominant among the Slavs.”⁴

So, according to Duchinski, Lapinski, and Marx, the Russians (Great Russians) are not Slavs at all, but mixed Mongolian and Finnish tribes that settled the Russian plain, not belonging to the “Indo-Germanic race,” who usurped the “name Rus’” and who need to be “driven back beyond the Dnieper.” This dovetails with the extremist racial theory of the Frenchman J.-A. de Gobineau and the racial doctrine of the ideologists of Hitler’s Nazism. One of its creators, the anthropologist-eugenicist⁵ Hans Günther (1891–1968), regarded the Russians as the result of mixing the Nordic race with the East Baltic race and eastern Finns. The same views were held by another Nazi anthropologist-eugenicist Egon von Eickstedt (1892–1965), author of the book “Racial Foundations of the German People” (1934). His assistant, a German woman of Polish origin Ilse Schwidetzky (1907–1997), published under his editorship the book “Racial Science of the Ancient Slavs” (1938), where she claimed that the proto-Slavs belonged to the Nordic race, but by the present time have lost the Nordic component, almost entirely suppressed as a result of mixing with other races. According to her, the “denordization” of the eastern Slavs (including Russians) is associated with the “East Europoid” race, the genotype of which was passed to them by ancient East Finnish tribes⁶. The delirious theories of Polish and Hitlerian Russophobes were taken up by the ideologists of anti-Russian Ukrainianism and the current Ukronazis. This racial theory was supported by Marx, who wanted “Duchinski to be right.” Hence his attitude to the Russians (“Muscovites”) as Asian barbarians threatening civilized Europe.

Hans Friedrich Karl Günther The fate of Poland, allegedly oppressed by Russia and divided, which they attributed to “civilized” Europe, was of special concern to Marx and Engels. As for the centuries-old oppression of Orthodox Slavs by the Polish gentry and the Roman Catholic Church, as well as the oppression of Poles by Austria and Prussia—these two true Europeans apparently forget, and concentrate all their attention on “drunken” Muscovy. But their concern for Poland was by no means dictated by a disinterested desire to free the Poles from “Muscovite oppression,” but rather by German interests. At the end of October 1863, Marx, together with a group of German socialists, writes his “Appeal of the London Educational Society of German Workers on Poland” with the aim of organizing the collection of funds for Poles among German workers in Europe and the United States. It stated:

“The Polish question is a German question. Without an independent Poland there can be no independent and united Germany, there can be no liberation of Germany from submission to Russia, which dates its beginning from the time of the first partition of Poland. The German aristocracy has long recognized the tsar as the unspoken supreme ruler of the country. The German bourgeoisie silently, passively and indifferently looks at the beating of the heroic [Polish] people, which alone still defends Germany from the Muscovite invasion.”⁷

That is, Marx and Engels fought for the liberation of Poland from under “Russian oppression” to create a shield from the invasion of “Asian barbarism” (that is, Russia) into Germany, and with it into innocent, sanctimonious Europe. Ideologically, this anticipates the European policy of the first half of the twentieth century in relation to Soviet Russia and the USSR.

The Marxist view of “Poland oppressed by Russia” was adopted by V. I. Lenin. Speaking at the end of April 1917 at the seventh All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP(b) with a speech on the national question, Lenin categorically disagreed with the opinion of the Pole F. E. Dzerzhinsky “about his oppressed Poland, that they all are chauvinists” and stated:

“The policy of Poland is completely national, thanks to the long oppression by Russia, and the entire Polish people is permeated through and through with one thought of revenge on the Moskals. No one oppressed the Poles like the Russian people. The Russian people, in the hands of the tsars, served as the executioner of Polish freedom. There is no people that would be so permeated with hatred of Russia, no people that would so terribly not love Russia as the Poles.”⁸

So, according to Lenin, “no one oppressed the Poles like the Russian people.” The Bolshevik leader accuses not the Russian government or “reactionary tsarist regime” of oppressing the Poles, but the Russian people, singling it out from all the peoples of the Russian Empire that constituted its ruling elite and also “oppressed” the Poles, including the Poles themselves. But Lenin sees only Russian people in the oppressors, calling them “Moskals” and forgetting about the historical sins and crimes of the Polish gentry, kings, military leaders, soldiers, and the masses of common people in relation to Russia and Russians, as well as other Orthodox peoples who fled from Polish oppression to the Russian tsars. Lenin seems to have forgotten about this. In his eyes, the Russians are to blame for everything—this is already blatant Russophobia, proceeding from Marx and Engels.

Here is how Marx interprets the abolition of serfdom in Russia under Alexander II. Speaking on January 22, 1867, at a Polish meeting in London, he stated:

“As for the emancipation of the serf peasants in Russia, it freed the supreme governmental power from the opposition that the nobles could offer to its centralizing activity. It created broad possibilities for recruitment into its army, undermined the communal property of the Russian peasants, divided them and strengthened their faith in the tsar-father. But it did not cleanse them of Asian barbarism, for civilization is created over centuries. Any attempt to raise their moral level is punished as a crime. It is enough for you only to recall the government repressions against temperance societies, which sought to save the Muscovite from what Feuerbach calls the material substance of his religion, that is, from vodka. It is unknown what consequences the emancipation of the peasants will entail in the future, but today it is obvious that it has increased the tsar’s available forces.”⁹

Marx repeats the myth widespread in Europe about the drunkenness of “Muscovites”¹⁰ and blasphemously links drunkenness and Orthodoxy. And further, speaking about the rise of Prussia under Bismarck, Marx said:

“This former vassal of Poland turned into a power of the first rank only under the protection of Russia and thanks to the partition of Poland. If tomorrow it lost its Polish prey, it would dissolve in Germany instead of swallowing it. To exist as a separate power within Germany, it must necessarily rely on the Muscovite. The recent expansion of its dominion not only did not weaken these ties, but, on the contrary, made them unbreakable and intensified the antagonism with France and Austria. At the same time, Russia is the support on which the unlimited power of the Hohenzollern dynasty and its feudal vassals rests. It is their shield against popular discontent. Thus, Prussia is not a bulwark against Russia, but a tool intended for invasion of France and conquest of Germany… So, for Europe there is only one alternative: either the Asian barbarism led by Muscovites will collapse, like an avalanche, on its head, or it must restore Poland, thus shielding itself from Asia with twenty million heroes, to gain time for the completion of its social transformation.”¹¹

The same thing was done by Europe in the last century–it created a Polish shield against the Bolsheviks, and this is a carbon copy of the current policy of the hapless leaders of the European Union, who, frightening the European peoples with the Russian threat, shield themselves with millions of Ukrainian “heroes” protecting Europe from “aggressive” Russia, supposedly thirsting to invade the “European garden,” while its inhabitants arm themselves to save themselves from this invented invasion. It turns out that in the 1920’s–30’s, the leaders of England and France, as well as the current leaders of the European Union and most European countries, are Marxists in their Russophobic ideology and policy!

In their pathological hatred for Russia, Marx and Engels, distorted history and denigrated the Russian army in every possible way

In their pathological hatred for Russia, Marx and Engels, distorted history and denigrated the Russian army in every possible way. In 1855 Engels produced a pseudo-historical study “Armies of Europe,” where in the chapter called “The Russian Army” he gives various categories of Russian servicemen such characterizations as are unthinkable when describing the armies of other countries. Here is what he writes about the lower non-commissioned officers:

“The non-commissioned officers are for the most part recruited from soldiers’ sons, brought up in government institutions. Penetrated from early childhood with the spirit of military discipline, these lads have nothing in common with those soldiers whom they are subsequently to train and lead. They form a separate group, detached from the people. They belong to the state and cannot exist without it; left to themselves, they are capable of nothing. To continue living under the tutelage of the government—that is all they want [isn’t it the same in other armies?!—A. M.]. These non-commissioned officers represent in the army the same thing that the lower class of officials represents in the Russian civil service, recruited from the children of the same officials. This is a circle of people playing a subordinate role—cunning, narrow-minded and selfish, whose superficial education makes them even more repulsive; vain and greedy for gain, sold soul and body to the state, they themselves at the same time daily and hourly try to sell it in small parts, if this can give them any advantage.”¹²

In this paragraph, knowing nothing about the Russian soldiery and having no objective data for a general characterization of the junior commanders of the Russian army, Engels issues his inventions, referring to the Russophobic pasquinade of the Marquis A. de Custine, “Russia in 1839,” the author of which draws his “profound” conclusions from conversations with the feldjäger who accompanied him on his journey through Russia.

And here is what Engels writes about the Russian officer corps:

“With the officers things are perhaps even worse… A large number of young men enter the army in the rank of ensign or lieutenant, whose entire education at best consists in being able to converse comparatively easily in French on the most ordinary topics and to have some understanding of elementary mathematics, geography, and history—all this is drummed into them simply for appearance… Up to the present time the Russians, whatever class they belong to, are still too barbarous to find pleasure in scientific pursuits or in mental work (except intrigues), therefore almost all outstanding people serving in the Russian army are foreigners, or—what is almost the same thing—“Ostsee” Germans from the Baltic provinces… Thus, among the officers of the Russian army there are very good and very bad ones, but the former constitute an infinitesimally small quantity compared with the latter.”¹³

In the opinion of the German Engels, Russian officers are “too barbarous,” little suited to military affairs, although among them there is a stratum of educated Europeans—“Ostsee Germans”—who bring the light of European civilization into the “barbarous” army, and “all outstanding people serving in the Russian army are foreigners.” But this is complete nonsense! Russian officers in their combat qualities were in no way inferior to, and more often surpassed, the officers of European armies, and in readiness for self-sacrifice they far surpassed them (the equivalent to the Russian word for “self-sacrifice” is absent from European dictionaries). And all the commanders who served in the Russian Imperial Army, regardless of their ethnic origin, were subjects of the Russian Empire, the overwhelming majority of which (Sheremetev, Apraksin, Rumyantsev, Suvorov, Kutuzov, Ushakov, Nakhimov, and others) were Russians, or else natives of the Russian Empire (Bagration). As for foreigners (Münnich, Barclay de Tolly, and others)—they served the Russian emperors, and such a practice was common throughout Europe.

Engels’ opinion of the Russian soldier is more benevolent, but still with a spoonful of tar:

“The Russian soldier is one of the bravest in Europe. His stubbornness is hardly inferior to that of English and some Austrian battalions (?!—A. M.)… He does not feel that he is beaten. A square of Russian infantry resists and fights hand-to-hand for a long time after the cavalry has broken through them; and it has always been considered easier to shoot down Russians than to make them retreat. Sir George Cathcart, who observed them in 1813 and 1814 as allies, and in 1854 in the Crimea as opponents, respectfully testifies that they ‘never give way to panic.’ Moreover, the Russian soldier is well built, robust in health, an excellent marcher, undemanding, can eat and drink almost anything, and is more obedient to his officers than any other soldier in the world. The main drawback of Russian soldiers is that they are the most clumsy in the world. They are unfit for service either in light infantry or in light cavalry. The Cossacks, who in some respects are excellent light cavalry, are on the whole so unreliable that when in contact with the enemy a second line of outposts is always placed behind the Cossack outposts (?!—A. M.). Moreover, the Cossacks are completely unfit for attack (?!—A. M.)… Russians, being imitators in everything, will carry out everything they are ordered to do, or everything they are forced to do, but they will do nothing if they have to act on their own responsibility. This is difficult to expect from those who have never known what responsibility is, and who will go to death with the same submissiveness as if ordered to pump water or flog their comrade.”¹⁴

And to conclude his venomous opus Engels writes:

“The Russian army has nothing in particular to boast about. Throughout the entire existence of Russia as such, the Russians have not won a single battle against Germans, French, Poles or English, without significantly surpassing them in numbers. Under equal conditions they have always been beaten by other armies, with the exception of the Prussians and Turks, but at Chetaté and Silistria the Turks won victories over the Russians, although they were numerically weaker.”¹⁵

But this is brazen falsehood! Engels “forgot” the history of the eighteenth century, when the Russian army beat all the best European armies (Charles XII, Frederick II), not to mention the Turks, who were “incited” by the English. And at the beginning of the nineteenth century the Russian army crushed Napoleon’s army of a united Europe that invaded Russia. Engels, of course, knew all this, but in a fit of hatred for the Russians he spits his European venom on the Russian army, wishing to humiliate it. He threw into European public consciousness the pernicious untruth that the Russian soldier is good, but the officer corps is bad (with the exception of a narrow stratum of Ostsee Germans), and Russian generals are all “butchers” who win battles by overwhelming the enemy with the corpses of their soldiers.

The Russian Imperial Army enters Paris     

Contempt and hatred for Russians (“Muscovites”) also permeates Marx’s work “Revelations of the Diplomatic History of the Eighteenth Century” (1866)¹⁶, where he writes that “the cradle of Muscovy was the bloody swamp of Mongol slavery, and not the harsh glory of the Norman epoch. And modern Russia is nothing but a transformed Muscovy.” Therefore all Russian people are slaves, and Russian princes and tsars are slaves who have become sovereigns.

“Even after their emancipation,” writes Marx, “Muscovy continued to play its traditional role of slave become master. Subsequently Peter the Great combined the political art of the Mongol slave with the proud aspirations of the Mongol sovereign to whom Genghis Khan bequeathed the execution of his plan for the conquest of the world.”¹⁷

Marx invented a certain special “Slavic race” forming around the “Russian race,” striving for world domination, which opposes the civilized European peoples (“Germano-Romanic race”) and with which Europe must wage merciless war.¹⁸ Marx considered ethnic Germans in the state apparatus, education, economy, army, and at the Russian court to be the “civilizers” of Russia, who “had to drill the Russians, giving them that external veneer of civilization which would prepare them for the perception of the technique of Western peoples, without infecting them with the ideas of the latter.”¹⁹ The ideologist of Hitler’s Nazism Alfred Rosenberg thought exactly the same way, distinguishing in pre-revolutionary Russia a “Germanic” ruling nucleus surrounded by a barbarous Slavic mass, which in 1917 the “Judeo-Bolsheviks” set upon the Russian “Aryans.”

In his publications and speeches Marx contrasts the “barbarous Muscovites” with civilized Europeans. In the “Confidential Communication,” written in March 1870 to the International on the occasion of his conflict with Bakunin, who had entered the Geneva League of Peace, Marx writes that surveillance was established over Bakunin there “as over a suspicious Russian,” and continues:

“Soon after the Brussels Congress of the International (September 1868) the League of Peace held a congress in Bern. This time Bakunin appears as a firebrand (instigator.—A. M.) and… denounces the Western European bourgeoisie in the tone in which Muscovite optimists usually attack Western civilization, in order to conceal their own barbarism.”²⁰

Marx’s blatant Russophobia intensified over time. Marx could not stand representatives of Russia in the First International; his clash with Bakunin is well known. He also could not tolerate A. I. Herzen, who fought against Russian autocracy. In his biographical narrative, “My Past and Thoughts,” this episode is described:

“Marx and Engels, living in the 1850s–60s—like Herzen—in London, considered joint political appearances with him impossible for themselves. This was revealed already in connection with the international meeting ‘in memory of the great revolutionary movement of 1848,’ organized in 1855 on the initiative of the leader of the Chartist movement, Jones. On the poster of the meeting, Herzen’s name stood next to the names of the most prominent representatives of the international emigration, including Marx. However, Marx, who participated in the preliminary negotiations for organizing the meeting, then refused to speak at it. One of the reasons for the refusal was Marx’s unwillingness to appear together with Herzen.”²¹

Because he was a Russian from Russia, and that was enough.

Marx, like Engels, perceived Russia through the prism of European interests and revolutions, seeing in it an obstacle to his global social utopias, and therefore included in the program of the International Workingmen’s Association (First International) this ninth point:

“The necessity of destroying the Muscovite influence in Europe on the basis of applying the principle of the right of nations to self-determination…”²².

And this idea of Marx worked.

To be continued…