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Title: Pan-Slavism Author: Mikhail Bakunin Date: April 9, 1870 Language: en Topics: national liberation, eastern europe, Libertarian Labyrinth Source: Retrieved on 25th April 2021 from https://www.libertarian-labyrinth.org/bakunin-library/pan-slavism-1870/ Notes: Bulletin russe (supplément du Kolokol), No. 2, April 9, 1870, Geneva
Pan-Slavism is the order of the day in our official and unofficial
world. It is the dominant idea of the present reign. After having
emancipated our peasants, as they say, after having given them liberty
and happiness, our generous benefactor, Czar Alexander II, no longer has
any thought today but that of going to deliver the Slavic people, our
brothers, who still groan under the yoke of the Germans and the Turks.
They speak of nothing but this in the court at St. Petersburg, in the
higher regions of the army and the bureaucracy. The salons of St.
Petersburg and Moscow offer at this moment a spectacle that is as
amusing as it is instructive. Some great ladies who ordinarily only
speak French and who look down on the Russian language, because it is
the language of our peasants; some pure-blooded Germans, in the service
of the Emperor; men of state, generals, officers civil servants, who
have only two ideas in their head, two sentiments in their heart: first
to please the Emperor, and then to make their fortune and career, – all
these people are now dying with love for our unfortunate brethren, the
Slavic peoples. The marvelous discipline of a well-organized empire! The
master has ordered it, and everyone is immediately animated by suitable
inclinations and ideas.
We have had a memorable example of this enchanting staging of sentiments
on command, during and after the Slavic Congress, held in 1867 in
Moscow, when with the permission of their master, or to speak still more
truthfully, when following an order they had received from their master,
the more or less titled lackeys of the emperor of Russia offer a
generous hospitality to the Slavic subjects of the emperor of Austria
and the sultan of Turkey. The program of sentiments consistent with the
political situation and officially imposed, was formulated, we know,
with great care, by the minister of foreign affairs. The roles once
divided up, each learned their own by heart, and recited it in a manner
so natural and with such a great appearance of liberty, that our Slavic
guests, who asked nothing better than to let themselves be fooled, were
delighted with it.
It was a high comedy, where everyone played at the same timethe role of
spectator and actor. There were also naturally a good number of
simpletons who took their roles seriously and believed in good faith
that it was a question of Slavic emancipation. They lavished
congratulations and sincere tears of joy, while the leaders gave the
Judas kiss.
That Congress was a real saturnaliaof slaves, an orgy of mutual
hypocrisy and official lies. On the part of all the Russian members, it
was an act of cynicism, and on the part of the Slavic members, a low
deed; for the introduction and basis of this Congress was the massacre
of a great Slavic nation, Poland; the enslavement of another Slavic
nation, Little Russia; and finally the slavery in fact, which, under the
name of emancipation, still weighs today on a third great Slavic people,
the people of Great Russia.
And it was in the name of the Czar, organizer of all these massacres,
cause and supreme aim of all this slavery, that the Russian slavophiles
have promised, and that the Slavic delegates have announced to their
fellow citizens, the resurrection and deliverance! Our Russian
slavophiles, in large part civil servants or official agents of the
Empire, and only in small part saps, have obviously acted in the
interest of the Empire. But in what interest have the Slavic delegates,
the Riegers, the Palackis, the Brauners, sought to mislead their
populations?
We do not hesitate to speak of trickery, because the eminent men we have
just namedare too intelligent, too learned, too practical, too clever to
let themselves be fooled. They know better than anyone what the Russian
Empire is, and what the Slavic peoples can expect from it.
They see very well how this boa constrictor attempts to crush, in its
immense entrails, the last vestiges of the nationality of the people,
Slavic or non-Slavic, this it has swallowed. Profound experts on the
history of the Slavic peoples, they know that nothing would have been so
dire for them so far as the protection of the government of St.
Petersburg, who, after having drawn from their agitation, fomented by
himself, all the desired utility, has never failed to deliver them
defenseless to the vengeance of their Turkish or German oppressors. In
the end, they are political men too perceptive and too well informed to
be ignorant that at this very hour when a crowd of countless agents of
this government roam all the Slavic countries from Austria to Turkey,
preaching holy war and announcing to all, in the name of the liberating
Czar, the coming hour of common deliverance, that at that very hour,
Russian diplomacy, which is too wise to dream of the impossible conquest
of all the Slavic countries at once, already prepares the elements of a
new division, and that it will ask no better than to conceded, at least
temporarily, Turkish Serbia, Montenegro and perhaps even Bosnia to
Austria, provided that they let it get its hands on all of Romania, and
that it is allowed to erect, under the high and very liberal protection
of the emperor of Russia, with a prince of the house of Romanov, the
quasi-independent viceroyalty of the Bulgarians.
On the other side, Palacki, Rieger, Brauner and Co. also cannot be
ignorant that between the court of St.-Petersburg and the court of
Berlin there has long existed an understanding, according to which, in
the case of a triumph obtained by the by the united armies of Prussia
and Russia, over the Austro-French coalition, Russia will seize Galicia,
while the kingdom of Prussia, transformed a German Empire, will help
themselves to Bohemia, Moravia and a large part of Silesia.
They know all of that, and they have always known it. why then are they
allied to Moscow? Why do they mislead their populations, by representing
the emperor Alexander II to them as the future liberator of the Slavic
world?
It is a question that Slavic patriots must resolve for themselves. We
are content simply to pose it. However we may be permitted to give them
advice. Let all the Slavic peoples who feeloppressed today, warned by
sad experience, especially by the example of the unfortunate Poland, and
followingthat today given them by the Bulgarians, seek their
emancipation, their salvation in the revolution and in the revolutionary
solidarity of all peoples, Slavicor non-Slavic, but never in the
reaction, never in the combinations of diplomacy, and especially not in
the dissolving, corrupting and misleading protection of the emperors of
all the Russias.