On the Latest Caper of the Paris Police

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Engels wrote this article in connection with the arrests of Polish émigrés in France on a charge of plotting to assassinate Tsar Alexander III. He had been informed about the arrests by the Polish socialist Maria Mendelson. The article was printed anonymously in the Vorwärts, No. 11, January 13, 1893 in the "Politische Übersicht" column. The editorial board supplied it with the following introductory note: "On the latest Paris police outrage, which we mentioned in passing yesterday, we are informed from most competent sources."

The bourgeois press of Paris announces with great pomp that the police have uncovered a very vile plot. A number of “Russian Nihilists” have conspired to dispatch to eternity the gentle Tsar and Autocrat of All the Russiasa; but the policme have been on their guard, the “transgressors and aggressors“ have been caught, the magnanimous Father of the Russian Fatherland has been saved.

Seen in the light of day it turns out that the “Russian Nihilists“ deserve this name insofar as they have nihil—nothing—to do with Russians. They are simply Poles who only have the misfortune to have been born under the sceptre of the Little Father in Petersburg, people who lived very quietly and retiringly in Paris, and were not simple-minded enough to hatch murder plots sensible people today leave such business to the police. The simple necessity of presenting to the public the Polish names of these “Russian Nihilists“ was sufficient to make untenable the whole rigmarole of murder and plotting even for the police. They had to instruct their Havas-Reuter that the persons would simply be expelled from France.

Why such a hubbub everywhere? Very simple.

The rulers of the opportunist-radical bourgeois republic—the ministers, senators, deputies—are, all of them, mixed up in the Panama scandal, some as bribe-takers, others as accomplices and hushers-up. In their view, the public has occupied itself long enough with this side of their grimy existences. They think: the world has now said enough about us discrediting the Republic with our swindling. Let us now demonstrate that we are also capable of discrediting this Republic politically. Let us demonstrate that in grovelling to the Tsar we can beat the blessed Bismarck by six boot-licking lengths. The Russian Embassy wishes to inspect the papers of the Polish émigrés, so let us prove our burning desire to lay before it everything it wants: not only the papers, but the Poles themselves at the same time, and the whole of France if need be.

We cannot complain if the bourgeois Republic ruins itself in this way. Its heirs stand at the door: not the monarchists, busily plotting again but not dangerous for all that, but the socialists who will be the heirs. But what is beyond the pale, even for us, is the stupidity of these people, the powers-that-be in France at this time. They beg for the grace and favour of official Russia, they lick its boots, they demean themselves before this Russian robber band, they appoint the Tsar real ruler of France and director of French policy—and this Tsar is in a position of impotence which makes it absolutely impossible for him to render any sort of real service to France. The present winter proves that a permanent state of starvation for years to come has been declared in Russia  ; the resources of the country have been exhausted for a long time to come, the financial situation is absolutely desperate. It is not France which needs Russia, on the contrary, it is Russia which would be completely paralysed without the moral support of France. If these French bourgeois had a bit of sense, they could force their Russian ally to anything which involved no money and no war. Instead they lie prostrate before it in the dust, allowing themselves to be exploited for Russian state ends as not even Prussia was in its deepest abasement. And they imagine that they are being cunning and have no idea, the stupid devils, how they are being laughed at in Petersburg.

Paris vaut bien une messe—Paris is worth a mass, as Henri IV said when he obtained the surrender of Paris by converting to Catholicism. La France vaut bien une Marseillaise—France is worth a Marseillaise—said Alexander II I when, at the moment of his greatest political helplessness and perplexity, Admiral Gervais handed him France on a plate. ?