Marks, Engels i sprawa polska .......... 73

MARKS, ENGELS AND THE POLISH QUESTION

Although today communism carries solely negative connotations in Poland due to 20th-century history, the attitude of its key ideologues toward Polish statehood was complex and— officially—pro-Polish. The author reconstructs Marx’s and Engels’s positions based on their public speeches, articles, and private letters from 1847-1882. Publicly, Marx and Engels supported Polish liberation, viewing Poles as “cosmopolitan soldiers of the revolution” fighting in European uprisings. They saw Tsarist Russia as the main source of European reaction. The partitions of Poland trapped Prussia and Austria in an alliance with Russia, blocking democratic reforms in Germany. Thus, restoring an independent Poland within its 1772 borders was deemed a historical necessity for a free Europe. However, in their speeches on the November (1847) and Kraków (1848) uprisings, they reduced the national cause to class struggle. Engels criticized the November Uprising as “conservative,” while praising the revolutionary, anti-gentry character of the May 3rd Constitution, as well as the Kraków and January uprisings. In an 1882 letter to Karl Kautsky, Engels argued that Poles must be nationalists before becoming internationalists, as a healthy proletarian movement requires a sovereign state. The text also highlights a rift in this narrative—Engels’s private letter to Marx from 1851. Engels adopted an anti-Polish stance, denying Poles historical achievements, praising Russia’s civilizational role, and advocating for taking as much Polish land as possible. Although this casts doubt on their sincerity, the author concludes that their overall public activity genuinely supported Polish independence as a strategic weapon against the Holy Alliance.