Democratic Panslavism

How hollow and confused the phantasy of the Slav Congress was, is proved by its fruits. The bombardment of a town like Prague would have filled any other nation with the most inextinguishable hatred against the oppressors. What did the Czechs do? They kissed the rod that had chastised them till they bled, they enthusiastically swore allegiance to the banner under which their brothers had been butchered, their wives violated. The Prague street fighting was the turning-point for the Austrian democratic Panslavists. For the prospect of their wretched “national independence,” they sold democracy, the revolution, to the Austrian total monarchy, to “the centre,” “the systematic implementation of despotism in the heart of Europe,” as Bakunin himself says on p. 29. And for this cowardly, base betrayal of the revolution we shall one day take bloody revenge on the Slavs.

That they have nonetheless been swindled by the counter-revolution, that there is no prospect of a “Slavic Austria,” nor of a “federative state with equal rights for nations,” and least of all of democratic institutions for the Austrian Slavs—this has finally become clear to these traitors. Jellachich, who is no greater scoundrel than most of the other democrats among the Austrian Slavs, bitterly regrets how he has been exploited, and Stratimirovich, in order not to be exploited any longer, has proclaimed open insurrection against Austria. The Slovanská Lípa societies are once again everywhere in opposition to the government and daily make painful new discoveries about the trap into which they have allowed themselves to be lured. But it is now too late; in their own homeland without power against the Austrian soldiery they themselves helped reorganise, rejected by the Germans and Magyars whom they have betrayed, rejected by revolutionary Europe, they will have to endure the same military despotism that they helped to impose on the Viennese and the Magyars. “Be submissive to the emperor, so that the imperial troops do not treat you as if you were rebellious Magyars”—in these words of the Patriarch Rajachich it is expressed what they have to expect in the immediate future.

How completely differently the Poles have acted! For eighty years oppressed, held in bondage, sucked dry, they have always placed themselves on the side of the revolution, have declared the revolutionising of Poland and the independence of Poland to be inseparable. In Paris, in Vienna, in Berlin, in Italy, in Hungary, the Poles have fought in all revolutions and revolutionary wars, unconcerned whether they fought against Germans, against Slavs, against Magyars, even whether they fought against Poles. The Poles are the only Slav nation that is free from all Panslavist aspirations. But they have very good reasons for that: they have been subjugated mainly by their own so-called Slav brothers, and in the Pole the hatred of the Russian takes precedence even over the hatred of the German, and with full right. For that very reason, however, because the liberation of Poland is inseparable from the revolution, because Pole and revolutionary have become identical words, for that very reason the Poles enjoy the sympathy of all Europe, and the restoration of their nationality is just as certain as the Czechs, Croats and Russians are certain of the hatred of all Europe and the bloodiest revolutionary war of the entire West against them.

The Austrian Panslavists ought to realise that all their wishes, in so far as they are at all capable of fulfilment, are fulfilled in the establishment of the “Austrian total monarchy” under Russian protection. If Austria disintegrates, they face the revolutionary terrorism of the Germans and Magyars, but by no means, as they imagine, the liberation of all the nations enslaved under Austria’s sceptre. They must therefore desire that Austria remain together, indeed that Galicia remain with Austria, so that the Slavs retain the majority in the state. The Panslavist interests here thus come directly into opposition to the restoration of Poland; for a Poland without Galicia, a Poland that does not extend from the Baltic to the Carpathians, is no Poland. For that reason, however, a “Slavic Austria” is still also a mere dream; for without the supremacy of the Germans and Magyars, without the two centres of Vienna and Budapest, Austria falls apart again, as its whole history up to the last months proves. The realisation of Panslavism would accordingly have to confine itself to Russian patronage over Austria. The openly reactionary Panslavists were therefore quite right to cling to the preservation of the total monarchy; it was the only means of saving anything at all. The so-called democratic Panslavists, however, were in a dire dilemma: either abandonment of the revolution and at least partial salvation of nationality through the total monarchy, or abandonment of nationality and salvation of the revolution through the disintegration of the total monarchy. At that time the fate of the East European revolution depended on the attitude of the Czechs and South Slavs; we shall not forget that at the decisive moment, for the sake of their petty national hopes, they betrayed the revolution to Petersburg and Olmütz!

What would be said if the democratic party in Germany opened its programme with the reclamation of Alsace, Lorraine and Belgium, which in every respect belongs to France, on the pretext that the majority of the population there is Germanic? How ridiculous the German democrats would make themselves if they wanted to establish a pan-Germanist German-Danish-Swedish-English-Dutch alliance for the “liberation” of all German-speaking countries! Fortunately, German democracy has got beyond such phantasy. The German students of 1817 and 1830 busied themselves with such reactionary enthusiasms and today are appreciated throughout Germany according to their deserts. The German revolution first came about, the German nation first began to become something, when it had completely freed itself from these futilities.

Just as childish and reactionary as Pan-Germanism, however, is Panslavism. If one reads through the history of the Panslavist movement of last spring in Prague, one thinks oneself transported thirty years back: tricoloured ribbons, old-fashioned costumes, ancient Slav masses, complete restoration of the time and the customs of the primeval forests; the Svornost a complete Burschenschaft, the Slav Congress a new edition of the Wartburg festival; the same phrases, the same enthusiasm, the same lamentation afterwards: “We had built a stately house” etc. Whoever wants to read this famous song translated into Slav prose, let him read Bakunin’s brochure.

Just as among the German Burschenschaft members in the long run the most decided counter-revolutionary disposition, the most furious hatred of the French and the most narrow-minded national feeling emerged, just as later they all became traitors to the cause for which they had pretended to be enthusiastic—just so, only more rapidly because the year 1848 was a revolutionary year, the democratic veneer among the democratic Panslavists very soon dissolved into fanatical hatred of Germans and Magyars, into indirect opposition to the restoration of Poland (Lubomirski), and into direct association with the counter-revolution.

And when individual sincere Slav democrats now call upon the Austrian Slavs to join the revolution, to regard the Austrian total monarchy as their chief enemy, and even in the interest of the revolution to side with the Magyars, they are reminiscent of the hen that runs around on the edge of the pond in despair over the ducklings she has herself hatched and which now suddenly escape her onto a wildly alien element whither she cannot follow them.

Let us, incidentally, cherish no illusions. With all Panslavists, nationality, i.e. the fantastic, general Slav nationality, takes precedence over the revolution. The Panslavists wish to join the revolution on condition that they are permitted to constitute all Slavs without exception, without regard to the most material necessities, into independent Slav states. If we Germans had wanted to set the same fantastic conditions, we would have got far in March! But the revolution does not allow conditions to be set. Either one is revolutionary and accepts the consequences of the revolution, whatever they may be, or one is driven into the arms of the counter-revolution and finds oneself, perhaps quite contrary to one’s knowledge and will, one morning arm in arm with Nicholas and Windischgrätz.

We and the Magyars are supposed to guarantee the Austrian Slavs their independence—so demands Bakunin, and people of the calibre of a Ruge are capable of actually having made him such promises in private. They demand of us and of the other revolutionary nations of Europe that we guarantee the herds of the counter-revolution, right at our door, an unhindered existence, free right of conspiracy and arms against the revolution; that we constitute, in the very heart of Germany, a counter-revolutionary Czech realm, break the power of the German, Polish and Magyar revolutions by Russian outposts interposed on the Elbe, the Carpathians and the Danube!

We have no thought of that. To the sentimental phrases of brotherhood that are here offered us in the name of the most counter-revolutionary nations of Europe, we reply: that hatred of the Russians was and still is the first revolutionary passion among the Germans; that since the revolution hatred of the Czechs and Croats has been added; and that we, together with the Poles and Magyars, can ensure the safety of the revolution only by the most decisive terrorism against these Slav peoples. We now know where the enemies of the revolution are concentrated: in Russia and the Austrian Slav lands; and no phrases, no drafts on an indefinite democratic future of these countries will deter us from treating our enemies as enemies.

And when Bakunin finally exclaims: “Verily, the Slav shall lose nothing, but shall gain! Verily, he shall live! And we shall live. As long as the smallest part of our rights is contested, as long as a single member is severed from our whole body or held torn loose, so long shall we fight till the blood flows, shall we fight implacably for life and death, until Slavdom finally stands there great and free and independent in the world”—when revolutionary Panslavism means this passage seriously, and wherever it is a matter of the fantastic Slav nationality, leaves the revolution entirely out of the game, then we also know what we have to do.

Then struggle, “implacable struggle for life and death” with the revolution-betraying Slavdom; war of annihilation and ruthless terrorism—not in the interest of Germany, but in the interest of the revolution!