Karl Marx/Friedrich Engels

From the English.

[“New-York Daily Tribune,” No. 3736, April 7, 1853]

London, Tuesday, March 22, 1853

In the present history of parties the most important event is the deposition of Disraeli as leader of the “great Conservative” minority. As has transpired, Disraeli himself had made preparations to throw his former allies overboard eight or nine weeks before the dissolution of the Tory Cabinet, and only desisted from his fixed resolution at the urgent request of Lord Derby. Now, conversely, he himself has been dismissed and formally replaced by Sir John Pakington, a reliable personality, cautious, not wholly without administrative abilities, but otherwise a dreary man; the incarnation of the decrepit prejudices and outlived sentiments of the old English squireocracy (landed aristocracy). This change in the leadership amounts to a complete and probably definitive transformation of the Tory Party. – Disraeli may congratulate himself on his emancipation from these landed blusterers. Whatever our opinion of the man may be, of whom it is asserted that he despises the aristocracy, hates the bourgeoisie, and does not love the people, he is unquestionably the ablest member of the present Parliament, and the pliability of his character all the better enables him to adapt himself to the changing needs of society.

As regards the refugee question, I reported in my last article that following Lord Palmerston’s speech in the House of Commons the Austrian papers asserted that it was pointless to demand redress from a Cabinet that had succumbed to Palmerston’s pernicious influence. Hardly, however, had Aberdeen’s remarks in the House of Lords been telegraphed to Vienna, when the state of affairs once more changed. The same papers now assert that “Austria has confidence in the magnanimity of the English Cabinet,” and the semi-official *Oesterreichische Correspondenz* publishes the following communication from its Paris correspondent:

“Lord Cowley declared, on the occasion of his return to Paris, to the Emperor of the French, that the diplomatic representatives of England at the courts of the Northern countries have been formally instructed to make every effort to dissuade the Northern Powers from addressing a joint note to the British government and, as the reason for such abstention, to emphasize that the British government would be all the better placed
to comply with the demand of those powers
, the more it could preserve the appearance, in the eyes of the whole of England,
of acting freely and independently in the matter
…

The British ambassador, Lord Cowley, urged the Emperor of the French to place unconditional confidence in the British Cabinet, all the more so since the Emperor would at all times be free, should this confidence prove unjustified, to take such steps as he deemed right … The Emperor of the French, reserving to himself full freedom of action for the future, was prevailed upon
to put the sincerity of the British Cabinet to the test
, and he is now endeavouring to persuade the other powers to follow his example.”

You see what is expected of “ce cher Aberdeen” (“that dear Aberdeen”), as Louis-Philippe used to call him, and what promises he must have made. These promises have indeed already been followed by deeds. Last week the English police drew up a list of the refugees from the European continent living in London. Several plain-clothes detectives went from square to square, from street to street, and from house to house, taking notes of the refugees’ particulars; in the majority of cases they applied to the publicans of the neighbourhood, but in some cases, under the pretence of pursuing criminals, they entered directly into the homes of some emigrants and rummaged through their papers.

While the police of the European continent vainly hunt after Mazzini, while in Nuremberg the police authorities have ordered the approaches to be closed (“The Nurembergers hang no one unless they have him,” runs an old German proverb), while the English press publishes report after report on his supposed whereabouts, Mazzini was in recent days safe and sound in London.

After Prince Menschikoff had reviewed the Russian troops stationed in the Danubian Principalities and inspected the army and fleet at Sevastopol, where, by his order and in his presence, manoeuvres took place consisting in the embarkation and disembarkation of troops, he entered Constantinople on 28 February in a most theatrical fashion; his suite consisted of twelve persons, including the Admiral of the Russian Black Sea Fleet (V. A. Kornilov), a divisional general (A. A. Nepokoychitsky), several staff officers, and Mr. Nesselrode junior as embassy secretary. He received such a reception from the Greek and Russian inhabitants as if he were the Orthodox Tsar himself, come to restore “Tsargrad” to the true faith. It caused the greatest sensation here in London and in Paris when it was learned that Prince Menschikoff, not satisfied with the dismissal of Fuad Effendi, had demanded of the Sultan that he should not only grant the Russian Emperor the protectorate over all Christians in Turkey, but also the right to appoint the Greek Patriarch; that the Sultan had appealed for the protection of France and England; that Colonel Rose, the British chargé d’affaires, had hastily sent the steamer “Wasp” to Malta to demand the immediate presence of the English fleet in the Archipelago; and that Russian ships had cast anchor at Kilia, near the Dardanelles. The Paris *Moniteur* reports that the French squadron at Toulon has been ordered to Greek waters. Admiral Dundas, however, is still in Malta. From all this it appears that the Eastern Question once again stands on the European “ordre du jour” (“order of the day”), a fact which can surprise no one who is familiar with history.

Whenever the revolutionary stormwind has subsided for a moment, one is sure to see an ever-recurring question emerge: the eternal
“Eastern Question.”
Thus it was when the storms of the first French Revolution had swept by and Napoleon and Alexander of Russia, after the Peace of Tilsit, divided the whole European continent between them; then Alexander took advantage of the brief calm, and sent an army into Turkey to “lend aid” to those elements which were hollowing out the decaying empire from within. Again, scarcely had the revolutionary movements of Western Europe been suppressed by the Congresses of Laibach and Verona, when Nicholas, Alexander’s successor, struck a new blow against Turkey. A few years later, when the July Revolution, with the accompanying uprisings in Poland, Italy, and Belgium, was over, and Europe, in the form it had acquired in 1831, apparently no longer had to reckon with internal storms, the Eastern Question, in 1840, again came close to embroiling the “Great Powers” in a general war. And now, when the shortsightedness of the ruling pygmies proudly boasts of having happily delivered Europe from the dangers of anarchy and revolution, there it reappears, the still unsolved question, the never-ending difficulty: What are we to do with Turkey?

Turkey is the sore point of European legitimism. The impotence of the legitimist, monarchical system of government has, since the first French Revolution, found expression in the one phrase: maintenance of the status quo. In this general agreement to leave things as they have become, either by themselves or by chance, lies a *testimonium paupertatis* (certificate of bankruptcy), an admission of the complete incapacity of the ruling powers to do anything for progress or civilisation. Napoleon could dispose of a whole continent in an instant, and truly knew how to dispose of it in a manner that revealed genius and purposefulness. All the “collective wisdom” of the representatives of European legitimism, who assembled at the Congress of Vienna, needed several years to accomplish the same thing; they fell out over it, made a miserable muddle of it, and in the end found the whole thing so deadly tedious that they lost all enthusiasm and have never since attempted to divide Europe. The myrmidons of mediocrity, as Béranger calls them, without historical knowledge or insight into facts, without ideas, without initiative, idolise the status quo which they themselves have bungled together, in the full consciousness of the botched character of their handiwork.

But Turkey stands still as little as the rest of the world; and just when the reactionary party has succeeded in restoring what it calls the *status quo ante* (the earlier state of things) in civilised Europe, it is discovered that in the meantime the status quo in Turkey has very much changed, that new questions, new relations, new interests have emerged, and that the poor diplomats there must begin again where they were interrupted by a general earthquake some eight or ten years ago. Preserve the status quo in Turkey! One might as well try to preserve the carcass of a dead horse at a particular stage of putrefaction in which it finds itself, before complete decomposition sets in. Turkey rots and will rot more and more as long as the present system of the “European equilibrium” and the maintenance of the status quo continue. And despite all congresses, protocols, and ultimatums, it will supply its annual share of diplomatic difficulties and international entanglements, just as any other decaying body supplies the neighbourhood liberally with carbonic hydrogen and other fragrant gases.

The really contentious point is always European Turkey, the great peninsula south of the Save and the Danube. This splendid territory is so unfortunate as to be inhabited by a conglomerate of the most diverse races and nationalities, of which it is difficult to say which of them is the least fitted for civilisation and progress. Twelve million Slavs, Greeks, Wallachians and Arnauts <Turkish name for Albanians> are held in subjection by one million Turks, and until recently it seemed doubtful whether, among all these different races, the Turks were not the most suited to maintain the supremacy which, with so mixed a population, could only fall to one of these nationalities. But when we see how lamentably all attempts at civilisation on the part of the Turkish government failed, how the fanaticism of Islam, relying chiefly on the Turkish mob of a few large cities, had always made use of the aid of Austria and Russia merely to return to power and to destroy any progress that might have been made; when we see how the central, i.e. the Turkish, government is weakened year after year by insurrections in the Christian provinces, none of which, thanks to the weakness of the Porte and the intervention of neighbouring states, remains wholly without success; when we see, finally, how Greece achieves its independence, parts of Armenia are conquered by Russia, Moldavia, Wallachia and Serbia successively come under the protectorate of Russia—then we shall have to admit that the presence of the Turks in Europe is a serious obstacle to the development of the resources of the Thracian-Illyrian peninsula.

We can hardly designate the Turks as the ruling class in Turkey, since the relations of the different classes of society there are just as confused as those of the different races. The Turk is, according to circumstances and locality, worker, peasant, small tenant, merchant, feudal landlord in the lowest and most barbaric stage of feudalism, civil servant or soldier; but whatever social position he may occupy, he belongs to the privileged religion and nation—he alone has the right to bear arms, and the most highly placed Christian must make way for the lowliest Muslim when he meets him. In Bosnia and Herzegovina the nobility of Slav descent went over to Islam, while the mass of the people remained raya, i.e. Christians. In this province, therefore, the dominant faith and the ruling class are identical, as indeed the Bosnian Muslim stands on a level with his co-religionist of Turkish descent.

The chief support of the Turkish population in Europe is—apart from the reserve always ready in Asia—the mob of Constantinople and of a few other large cities. It is predominantly of Turkish origin, and although it earns its livelihood mainly by employment with Christian capitalists, it maintains jealously the imaginary superiority and the actual impunity for all excesses which the privilege of Islam vis-à-vis the Christians confers upon it. It is well known that at every important coup d’état this mob must be won over by bribery and flattery. This mob alone is what, apart from a few colonised districts, constitutes the main mass of the Turkish population in Europe. And certainly, sooner or later, the absolute necessity will become apparent of freeing one of the finest parts of the European continent from the rule of a mob compared with which the mob of the Roman Empire was an assembly of sages and heroes.

Among the other nationalities we may dispose of the Arnauts in few words; they are a hardy, primitive mountain people, inhabiting the land sloping down to the Adriatic, speaking their own language, which nevertheless, as it seems, belongs to the great Indo-European linguistic stock. They are partly Greek Christians, partly Muslims, and, from all we know of them, still very little prepared for civilisation. Their predatory habits will compel every neighbouring government to keep them in the strictest military subjection, until industrial progress in the surrounding regions gives them employment as woodcutters or water-carriers, just as was the case with the Gallegos in Spain and other mountain dwellers.

The Wallachians or Daco-Romans, the principal inhabitants of the country between the lower Danube and the Dniester, are a very mixed population, belonging to the Greek Orthodox Church and speaking a language derived from Latin, similar in many respects to Italian. Of them, the inhabitants of Transylvania and the Bukovina are Austrian subjects, those of Bessarabia are subject to Russia; the inhabitants of Moldavia and Wallachia, the only two principalities where the Daco-Roman race has achieved a political existence, have their own princes, who are under the nominal suzerainty of the Porte and de facto under the supremacy of Russia. The Transylvanian Wallachians made a great deal of noise during the Hungarian war. They had hitherto stood under the feudal yoke of the Hungarian landed magnates, who—according to the Austrian system—served at the same time the government as instruments of oppression and spoliation. This brutalised mass was won over by the Austrians, in a way similar to the Ruthenian serfs of Galicia in 1846, with promises and by bribery; and thus the Wallachians began that war of destruction which turned Transylvania into a desert. The Daco-Romans of the Turkish principalities have at least a native nobility and political institutions, and despite all the efforts of Russia, the revolutionary spirit has broken through among them, as the uprising of 1848 amply proved. No doubt the oppressions and extortions to which they were exposed during the Russian occupation since 1848 must have nourished this spirit even further, despite the bond of common religion and the tsarist-papist superstition with which they had hitherto looked upon the imperial head of the Greek Church as their natural protector. And if that is really so, then the Wallachian nationality may one day play a prominent role in the final decision over those territories in question.

The Greeks in Turkey are mostly of Slav origin, but have adopted the modern Greek language; indeed, it is generally admitted that, apart from a few noble families in Constantinople and Trebizond, very little purely Hellenic blood would be found even in Greece itself. The Greeks, along with the Jews, constitute the main mass of traders in the seaports and many inland towns. In some districts they are also farmers. But nowhere, except in Thessaly and perhaps in Epirus, do they play any political role as a nation, either by their numbers, or by their compactness, or by their national consciousness. The influence which a few Greek noble families in Constantinople once had as dragomans (translators) is rapidly declining, since Turks in Europe receive education and since European legations have Turkish-speaking attachés.

We now come to the race that forms the great mass of the population and whose blood predominates wherever there has been a mixture of races. Indeed, it may be said that it forms the main stock of the Christian population from the Morea to the Danube and from the Black Sea to the Arnaut mountains. This race is the Slav, and particularly that branch of it which is comprehended under the name of Illyrian (Ilirski) or South Slav (Jugoslavenski). After the West Slavs (Poles and Bohemians) and the East Slavs (Russians), they form the third branch of that numerous Slav family which for the last twelve centuries has inhabited the east of Europe. These South Slavs inhabit not only the greater part of Turkey, but also Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia and the south of Hungary. They all speak the same language, which is closely akin to Russian and, for Western ears, by far the most musical of all Slav languages. The Croats and a part of the Dalmatians are Roman Catholic; all the rest belong to the Greek Orthodox Church. The Roman Catholics use the Latin alphabet, but the adherents of the Greek Church write in Cyrillic script, which is also used in Russian and Old Slavonic or Church Slavonic. This circumstance, along with the difference of confessions, has helped to delay all national development in the whole South Slav area. A resident of Belgrade may not be able to read a book printed in Agram or Becs <Serbian name for Vienna>; indeed, he will perhaps even refuse to take it in hand because of the “heretical” alphabet and orthography used in it. But he will find it by no means difficult to read and understand a book printed in Russian in Moscow, since both languages—especially in the Old Slavonic etymological system of orthography—are very similar to each other, and because this book is printed with the “orthodox” (pravoslavni) alphabet. The mass of the Slavs of Greek Orthodox faith will not even have their Bibles, liturgies and prayer books printed in their own country, convinced as they are that everything printed in holy Moscow or in the imperial printing office in St. Petersburg has a special correctness and orthodoxy and a smell of holiness about it. Despite all the Pan-Slavist efforts of the Agram or Prague enthusiasts, the Serb, the Bulgarian, the Bosnian raya, the Slav peasant from Macedonia and Thrace have more national sympathy, more points of contact, more means of intellectual intercourse with the Russian than with the Roman Catholic South Slav who speaks the same language. Whatever may happen, he expects from St. Petersburg his Messiah who shall deliver him from all evil; and when he calls Constantinople his Tsarigrad, his imperial city, he does so just as much in anticipation of the orthodox tsar coming from the north and making his entry into the city to restore it to the true faith, as in memory of another orthodox tsar who, according to tradition, ruled in Constantinople before the Turks invaded the land.

In the greater part of Turkey the Slavs, although subject to the direct rule of the Turks, elect their own local authorities; in several places (in Bosnia) they have been converted to the faith of their conquerors. Only in two areas of Turkey has the Slav race preserved or acquired its political life. One of them is Serbia, the valley of the Morava, a province with sharply drawn natural frontiers, which six hundred years ago played a prominent part in the history of these

For a long time subjugated by the Turks, the Serbs obtained, through the Russian war of 1806, the possibility of an independent existence, albeit under Turkish suzerainty. Since then Serbia has always remained under the direct Russian protectorate. But, just as in Moldavia and Wallachia, this political independence has given rise to new needs and has imposed upon Serbia a greater intercourse with Western Europe. Civilisation began to take root, trade expanded, new ideas arose, and so we find in the very stronghold of the Russian sphere of power, in Slav, Orthodox Serbia, an anti-Russian progressive party (naturally very modest in its reform aspirations), whose leader is the ex-Finance Minister Garaschanin.

Should the Graeco-Slavonic population ever come to rule in the land which it inhabits and in which it constitutes three-quarters of the total population (7 million), there is no doubt that the same needs would gradually lead to the emergence of an anti-Russian progressive party in its midst, a thing which has invariably happened whenever a part of this population became semi-independent of Turkey.

Montenegro is not a fertile valley with relatively large towns, but a barren, almost inaccessible mountain region. Here bands of robbers have nested, who pillage the plains and pile up the booty in their mountain fortresses. These romantic but rather rude gentlemen have long been a plague to Europe, but it entirely suits the policy of Russia and Austria that they should defend the right of the inhabitants of the Black Mountains to burn down villages, murder the inhabitants, and drive off the cattle.

Karl Marx