Speech at the Meeting Held to Commemorate the Anniversary of the Polish Uprising of 1863

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Engels made this speech in German at the international meeting held on January 22, 1876 to mark the anniversary of the Polish uprising of 1863 and sponsored by die Polish People society (see Note 4). Afterwards, between January 22 and February 1, at the request of Walery Wroblewski, the Polish socialist who had chaired the meeting, Engels wrote the speech in French. This manuscript was used for the translation in this volume. The French text was probably used as the original for the first publication of the speech in Vperyod!, since the Russian text printed there (in the report on the meeting in the section "A Chronicle of the Labour Movement") is identical to the French text.

Citizens! The role of Poland in the history of Europe’s revolutions is a role that stands apart. Any revolution in the West which does not succeed in involving Poland and ensuring its independence and liberty is doomed to defeat. Let us take the revolution of 1848 as an example. It covered an area more extensive than any previous revolution; it swept along in its current Austria, Hungary, Prussia. But it came to a halt at the borders of Poland occupied by the armies of Russia. When Tsar Nicholas received the news of the February Revolution, he said to his entourage: Gentlemen, we shall mount our horses. At this he promptly mobilised his troops and concentrated them in Poland, in order to let them overrun rebellious Europe at the opportune moment. For their part, the revolutionaries knew perfectly well that the ground where the decisive battle would be fought was Poland. On May 15 the people of Paris, to cries of “Long Live Poland!”, invaded the National Assembly to force it to go to war for Polish independence. At the same time, in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, Marx and I demanded that Prussia should immediately declare war on Russia in order to set Poland free, and we were supported by all advanced democrats in Germany. Thus in France and Germany they knew perfectly well where the decisive point was: with Poland, revolution was assured; without Poland, it was bound to fail. But in France M. Lamartine, in Prussia Frederick William IV, the Tsar’s brother-in-law, and his bourgeois minister Mr. Camphausen, had no intention whatever of themselves breaking the power of Russia, in which they saw quite rightly their last safeguard against the revolutionary tide. Nicholas was able to do without getting on his horse; his troops, for the time being, could confine themselves to containing Poland and threatening Prussia, Austria and Hungary until the moment when the progress of the Hungarian insurgents threatened Austrian reaction, victorious in Vienna. This was when the Russian armies overran Hungary, and by crushing the Hungarian revolution ensured the victory of reaction throughout the West. Europe was at the Tsar’s feet because Europe had abandoned Poland. In truth, Poland is not like any other country. As far as revolution is concerned, it is the keystone of the European edifice; whichever is able to hold its ground in Poland, revolution or reaction, will end up by dominating the whole of Europe. And it is this quite special character which gives to Poland the importance which it has for all revolutionaries and which elicits from us, to this day, the cry: “Long Live Poland!”