In online battles around the USSR, fake quotes from the works of the classics of Soviet ideology: Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin are often used. The "record holder" in terms of invented and shockingly brutal statements is Leon Trotsky. This is due to the fact that all the works of the first four leaders were published in the format of the Complete Collected Works and are easily accessible on the Internet, while the works and recordings of Trotsky's speeches, on the contrary, were banned for many years.
Nevertheless, the Complete Works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels is full of real and, moreover, very harsh statements about Russia, the Russian people and the Slavs in general. "Reedus" decided to compile a small quotation book, with an exact indication of the source - from the Moscow edition of 1960.
- Shameless approval, feigned sympathy or idiotic indifference with which the upper classes of Europe looked at how Russia took possession of the mountain fortresses of the Caucasus and mortified heroic Poland, the huge and unopposed seizures of this barbaric power, whose head was in St. Petersburg, and the hands in all the offices of Europe, pointed out to the working class its duty - to master the secrets of international politics, monitor the diplomatic activities of their governments and, if necessary, counteract it with all the means at its disposal (K. Marx, vol. 16, p. 11).
- Peter the Great defeated Russian barbarism with barbarism (K. Marx, volume 16, p. 30).
- The Slavic peoples are at the most varied stages 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 the Croats and Bulgarians; therefore, in reality, all these nations have very opposite interests. In reality, the Slavic language of these ten or 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); due to complete disregard for literature, due to the lack of culture of the majority of these peoples, these dialects turned into a real common dialect and, with a few exceptions, always had some foreign, non-Slavic language over them as a literary language. Thus,Pan-Slavic unity is either pure fantasy, or - the Russian whip (K. Marx, F. Engels, vol. 5, p. 182).
- As for Russia, it can only be mentioned as the owner of a huge amount of stolen property, which it will have to give back on the day of reckoning (F. Engels, vol. 16, p. 160).
- What happened to Russia in those days when the old Polish state was formed by unification with Lithuania? She was then under the heel of the Mongol conqueror, whom the Poles and Germans had driven back to the east, beyond the Dnieper, by joint efforts 150 years earlier. Only after a long struggle did the Grand Dukes of Moscow finally cast off the Mongol yoke and began to unite the numerous principalities of Great Russia into a single state. But this success seemed to only increase their ambition. As soon as Constantinople fell into the hands of the Turks, the Grand Duke of Moscow inscribed the double-headed eagle of the Byzantine emperors in his coat of arms, thus declaring himself their successor and avenger in the future; since then, as is known, the Russians have sought to conquer Constantinople, the royal city, as they call Constantinople in their own language (F. Engels, vol. 16, p. 164).
- Even in completely barbaric countries, the bourgeoisie is making progress. In Russia, the development of industry is proceeding with giant strides and is turning even boyars more and more into a bourgeois (F. Engels, vol. 4, p. 468).
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- Russia has always known how important it is to have public opinion on its side whenever possible, and it did not fail to get it. The court of Catherine II became the headquarters of the then enlightened people, especially the French; The empress and her court professed the most enlightened principles, and she was so successful in misleading public opinion that Voltaire and many others sang "northern Semiramis" and proclaimed Russia the most progressive country in the world, the fatherland of liberal principles, a champion of religious tolerance (F. Engels, vol. 16, p. 164).
- According to its official historian Karamzin, Russia's policy remains unchanged. Its methods, its tactics, its methods may change, but the guiding star of this policy - world domination - remains unchanged. Only a dodgy government dominating the masses of barbarians can contemplate such plans at this time. As Pozzo diBorgo, the largest Russian diplomat of the modern era, wrote about this to Alexander I during the Congress of Vienna, Poland is the most important instrument for the implementation of Russian claims to world domination, but at the same time it remains an insurmountable obstacle as long as the Pole, tired of endless betrayals Europe, will not turn into a terrible scourge in the hands of the Muscovite (K. Marx, vol. 16, p. 206).
- Peter I once exclaimed that the Muscovites lack only a soul to conquer the world (K. Marx, vol. 16, p. 207).
- As for the emancipation of the serfs in Russia, it saved the supreme government power from the opposition that the nobles could render its centralizing activity. It created wide opportunities for recruiting into its army, undermined the communal property of the Russian peasants, divided them and strengthened their faith in the Tsar-father. It did not cleanse them of Asian barbarism, for civilization has been created over the centuries. Any attempt to raise their moral level is punishable as a crime. Suffice it to remind you of the government repressions against the temperance societies, which sought to save the Muscovite from what Feuerbach calls the material substance of his religion, that is, from vodka. It is not known what consequences the emancipation of the peasants will entail in the future, but today it is obvious that it increased the available forces of the tsar (K. Marx, vol. 16, p. 207).
- The existence of such a power as Russia already gives grounds to all other countries to retain their armies (K. Marx, vol. 16, p. 556).
- We now know where the enemies of the revolution are concentrated: in Russia and in the Slavic regions of Austria; and no phrases and indications of an uncertain democratic future of these countries will prevent us from treating our enemies as enemies (K. Marx, F. Engels, vol. 5, p. 306).
It should be borne in mind that the founders of Marxism viewed the peoples of Europe and the policies of their contemporary states through the prism of their class theory. When Marx and Engels were in the prime of their creative powers, serfdom still existed in the central part of the Russian Empire, and the labor movement and democratic processes were noticeable only in its western outskirts, in particular in Poland, which determined the attitude of the classics to Russian reality.
There is no doubt that if Marx and Engels had lived a quarter of a century longer and caught the revolution of 1905, they would have been completely ecstatic and praised the Russian working class with all their might. From its nineteenth century, tsarism in Russia seemed to them endless, and the revolutionary movement hopeless.
Sergey Bolotov
