After the first partition of their country, Poles who had left 
their fatherland crossed the Atlantic in order to defend the great 
American republic, which had just come into being.*” Koéciuszko 
fought side by side with Washington. In 1794, when the French 
Revolution was resisting the coalition forces with difficulty, the 
glorious Polish revolt deflected danger away from it.” Poland lost 
its independence, but the Revolution survived. The defeated Poles 
joined the army of the sans-culottes and helped to smash feudal 
Europe.’ Finally, in 1830, when Tsar Nicholas and the Prussian 
King* sought to carry out their plans to restore the Legitimist 
monarchy with a new attack on France, the Polish Revolution,**? 
whose memory you are celebrating today, blocked their path: 
“Order was restored in Warsaw.” 

The cry “Long live Poland!” which then resounded throughout 
Western Europe was not merely an expression of sympathy and 
admiration for the patriotic fighters who were crushed with brutal 
force—with this cry men hailed the people whose revolts all ended 
so unhappily for itself but always halted the advance of the 
counter-revolution, the people whose best sons never ceased to 
fight the struggle of resistance by everywhere going into battle 
under the banner of the popular revolutions. On the other hand, 
the partition of Poland consolidated the Holy Alhance, which 
served as a disguise for the Tsar’s hegemony over all the 
governments of Europe. Thus the cry “Long live Poland!” has 

really meant: Death to the Holy Alliance, death to the military 
despotism of Russia, Prussia and Austria, death to Mongol rule 
over modern society. 

Since 1830, when the bourgeoisie in France and England more 
or less took power in their hands, the proletarian movement began 
to grow. Since 1840 the propertied classes of England were 
already obliged to resort to force of arms to resist the Chartist 
Party, this first militant organisation of the working class. Then in 
1846 in the last corner of independent Poland, Cracow, the first 
political revolution to proclaim socialist demands broke out.*” 
From that time on, Poland forfeited all the ostensible sympathies 
of the whole of Europe.* 

In 1847 the first international congress of the proletariat **! met 
secretly in London. One outcome of this congress was the writing 
of the Communist Manifesto, which ended with the new revolution- 
ary watchword: “Working Men of All Countries, Unite!” Poland 
had its representatives at this congress, and at a public meeting in 
Brussels **? the famous Lelewel and his supporters declared their 
adhesion to the resolutions of the congress.—In 1848 and 1849 
numerous Poles served in the revolutionary German, Italian, 
Hungarian and Romanian armies, distinguishing themselves as 
soldiers and commanders.*” Although the socialist aspirations of 
this age were drowned in the bloodbath of the June days,” the 
revolution of 1848 nevertheless—and this should not be forgot- 
ten—turned Europe for a moment into one community by seizing 
it almost entirely with its flame, and in this way prepared the 
ground for the International Working Men’s Association. The 
Polish insurrection of 1863,°% by giving rise to a joint protest of 
English and French workers at the international machinations of 
their governments, formed the starting point for the International, 
which was founded with the participation of Polish exiles. Finally, 
the Paris Commune *” found its true champions among the Polish 
refugees and after its fall, it was sufficient to be a Pole to be shot 
by the war tribunals in Versailles. 

Thus outside the borders of their country the Poles have played 
a major part in the struggle for the emancipation of the 
proletariat; in this struggle they were predominantly its interna- 
tional combat force. 

May this struggle develop among the Polish people itself, may our 
propaganda and the refugee press” support it, and may it unite with 

the unequalled * endeavours of our Russian brothers; this will be yet 
another reason to echo the cry of old: “Long live Poland!” Fraternal 
Greetings! 

London, November 27, 1880 

(Signed) Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, 
Paul Lafargue, F. Lessner” 

December 4, 1880 paper, checked with the text of