Revelations of the Diplomatic History of the 18th Century - читать бесплатно онлайн полную версию книги автора Karl Marx (ч. 4)

The Greek religion generally proved one of his most powerful means of action. But to lay claim to the inheritance of Byzantium, to hide the stigma of Mongolian serfdom under the mantle of the Porphyrogeniti, to link the upstart throne of Muscovy to the glorious empire of St. Vladimir to give in his own person a new temporal head to the Greek Church, whom of all the world should Ivan single out? The Roman Pope. At the Pope’s court there dwelt the last princess of Byzantium. From the Pope Ivan embezzled her by taking an oath to apostatise — an oath which he ordered his own primate to release him from. ^[121]

A simple substitution of names and dates will prove to evidence that between the policy of Ivan Ill, and that of modern Russia, there exists not similarity but sameness. Ivan III, on his part, did but perfect the traditionary policy of Muscovy, bequeathed by Ivan I Kalita. Ivan Kalita, the Mongolian slave, acquired greatness by wielding the power of his greatest foe, the Tartar, against his minor foes, the Russian princes. He could not wield the power of the Tartar but under false pretences. Forced to dissemble before his masters the strength he really gathered, he had to dazzle his fellow-serfs with a power he did not own. To solve his problem he had to elaborate all the ruses of the most abject slavery into a system, and to execute that system with the patient labour of the slave. Open force itself could enter as an intrigue only into a system of intrigues, corruption and underground usurpation. He could not strike before he had poisoned. Singleness of purpose became with him duplicity of action. To encroach by the fraudulent use of a hostile power, to weaken that power by the very act of using it, and to overthrow it at last by the effects produced through its own instrumentality — this policy was inspired to Ivan Kalita by the peculiar character both of the ruling and the serving race. His policy remained still the policy of Ivan III. It is yet the policy of Peter the Great, and of modern Russia, whatever changes of name, seat, and character the hostile power used may have undergone. Peter the Great is indeed the inventor of modern Russian policy, but he became so only by divesting the old Muscovite method of encroachment of its merely local character and its accidental admixtures, by distilling it into an abstract formula, by generalising its purpose, and exalting its object from the overthrow of certain given limits of power to the aspiration of unlimited power. He metamorphosed Muscovy into modern Russia by the generalisation of its system, not by the mere addition of some provinces.

To resume. It is in the terrible and abject school of Mongolian slavery that Muscovy was nursed and grew up. It gathered strength only by becoming a virtuoso in the craft of serfdom. Even when emancipated, Muscovy continued to perform its traditional part of the slave as master. At length Peter the Great coupled the political craft of the Mongol slave with the proud aspiration of the Mongol master, to whom Genghis Khan had, by will, bequeathed his conquest of the earth.

Chapter V

MECW Editorial Note: In this chapter, Marx drew on one of Engels’ articles about Pan-Slavism, written for the New-York Daily Tribune in 1856, but never published. The manuscripts of these articles, which the editors of the newspaper returned to Marx, have not been traced. Soon after the Revelations of the Diplomatic History of the 18th Century had been published, Marx wrote to Engels on April 9, 1857: “In the last one I used the text of one of your articles, in which you speak of Peter I” .

One feature characteristic of the Slavonic race must strike every observer. Almost everywhere it confined itself to an inland country, leaving the sea-borders to non-Slavonic tribes. Finno-Tartaric tribes held the shores of the Black Sea, Lithuanians and Fins those of the Baltic and White Sea. Wherever they touched the sea-board, as in the Adriatic and part of the Baltic, the Slavonians had soon to submit to foreign rule. The Russian people shared this common fate of the Slavonian race. Their home, at the time they first appear in history, was the country about the sources and upper course of the Volga and its tributaries, the Dnieper, Don and Northern Dvina. Nowhere did their territory touch the sea except at the extremity of the Gulf of Finland. Nor had they, before Peter the Great, proved able to conquer any maritime outlet beside that of the White Sea, which, during three-fourths of the year, is itself enchained and immovable. The spot where Petersburg now stands had been for a thousand years past contested ground between Fins, Swedes, and Russians. All the remaining extent of coast from Polangen, near Memel, to Tornea, the whole coast of the Black Sea, from Akerman to Redout Kaleh, has been conquered later on. And, as if to witness the anti-maritime peculiarity of the Slavonic race, of all this line of coast, no portion of the Baltic coast has really adopted Russian nationality. Nor has the Circassian and Mingrelian east coast of the Black Sea. It is only the coast of the White Sea, as far as it was worth cultivating, some portion of the northern coast of the Black Sea ‘ and part of the coast of the Sea of Azof, that have really been peopled with Russian inhabitants, who, however, despite the new circumstances in which they are placed, still refrain from taking to the sea, and obstinately stick to the land-lopers’ traditions of their ancestors.

From the very outset, Peter the Great broke through all the traditions of the Slavonic race. “It is water that Russia wants.” These words he addressed as a rebuke to Prince Cantemir are inscribed on the title-page of his life. The conquest of the Sea of Azof was aimed at in his first war with Turkey, the conquest of the Baltic in his war against Sweden, the conquest of the Black Sea in his second war against the Porte, and the conquest of the Caspian Sea in his fraudulent intervention in Persia."’ For a system of local encroachment, land was sufficient, for a system of universal aggression, water had become indispensable. It was but by the conversion of Muscovy from a country wholly of land into a sea-bordering empire, that the traditional limits of the Muscovite policy could be superseded and merged into that bold synthesis which, blending the encroaching method of the Mongol slave with the world-conquering tendencies of the Mongol master, forms the life-spring of modern Russian diplomacy.

It has been said that no great nation has ever existed, or been able to exist, in such an inland position as that of the original empire of Peter the Great; that none has ever submitted thus to see its coasts and the mouths of its rivers torn away from it; that Russia could no more leave the mouth of the Neva, the natural outlet for the produce of Northern Russia, in the hands of the Swedes, than the mouths of the Don, Dnieper, and Bug, and the Straits of Kertch, in the hands of nomadic and plundering Tartars; that the Baltic provinces, from their very geographical configuration, are naturally a corollary to whichever nation holds the country behind them; that, in one word, Peter, in this quarter, at least, but took hold of what was absolutely necessary for the natural development of his country. From this point of view, Peter the Great intended, by his war against Sweden, only rearing a Russian Liverpool, and endowing it with its indispensable strip of coast.

But then, one great fact is slighted over, the tour de force by which he transferred the capital of the Empire from the inland centre to the maritime extremity, the characteristic boldness with which he erected the new capital on the first strip of Baltic coast he conquered, almost within gunshot of the frontier, thus deliberately giving his dominions an eccentric centre. To transfer the throne of the Czars from Moscow to Petersburg was to place it in a position where it could not be safe, even from insult, until the whole coast from Libau to Tornea was subdued — a work not completed till 1809, by the conquest of Finland.

“St. Petersburg is the window from which Russia can overlook Europe,” said Algarotti.

It was from the first a defiance to the Europeans, an incentive to further conquest to the Russians. The fortifications in our own days of Russian Poland are only a further step in the execution of the same idea. Modlin, Warsaw, Ivangorod, are more than citadels to keep a rebellious country in check. They are the same menace to the west which Petersburg, in its immediate bearing, was a hundred years ago to the north. They are to transform Russia into Panslavonia, as the Baltic provinces were to transform Muscovy into Russia.

Petersburg, the eccentric centre of the empire, pointed at once at a periphery still to be drawn.

It is, then, not the mere conquest of the Baltic provinces which separates the policy of Peter the Great from that of his ancestors, but it is the transfer of the capital which reveals the true meaning of his Baltic conquests. Petersburg was not like Muscovy, the centre of a race, but the seat of a government; not the slow work of a people, but the instantaneous creation of a man; not the medium from which the peculiarities of an inland people radiate, but the maritime extremity where they are lost; not the traditionary nucleus of a national development, but the deliberately chosen abode of a cosmopolitan intrigue. By the transfer of the capital, Peter cut off the natural ligaments which bound up the encroaching system of the old Muscovite Czars with the natural abilities and aspirations of the great Russian race. By planting his capital on the margin of a sea, he put to open defiance the anti-maritime instincts of that race, and degraded it to a mere weight in his political mechanism. Since the 16th century, Muscovy had made no important acquisitions but on the side of Siberia, and to the 16th century the dubious conquests made towards the West and the South were only brought about by direct agency of the East. By the transfer of the capital, Peter proclaimed that he, on the contrary, intended working on the East and the immediately neighbouring countries through the agency of the West. If the agency through the East was narrowly circumscribed by the stationary character and the limited relations of Asiatic peoples, the agency through the West became at once illimited and universal from the movable character and the all-sided relations of Western Europe. The transfer of the capital denoted this intended change of agency, which the conquest of the Baltic provinces afforded the means of achieving, by securing at once to Russia the supremacy among the neighbouring Northern States; by putting it into immediate and constant contact with all points of Europe; by laying the basis of a material bond with the Maritime Powers, which by this conquest became dependent on Russia for their naval stores; a dependence not existing as long as Muscovy, the country that produced the great bulk of the naval stores, had got no outlets of its own, while Sweden, the power that held these outlets, had not got the country lying behind them.

If the Muscovite Czars, who worked their encroachments by the agency principally of the Tartar Khans, were obliged to tartarise Muscovy, Peter the Great, who resolved upon working through the agency of the West, was obliged to civilise Russia. In grasping upon the Baltic provinces, he seized at once the tools necessary for this process. They afforded him not only the diplomatists and the generals, the brains with which to execute his system of political and military action on the West. They yielded him, at the same time, a crop of bureaucrats, schoolmasters, and drill-sergeants, who were to drill Russians into that varnish of civilisation that adapts them to the technical appliances of the Western peoples, without imbuing them with their ideas. .

Neither the Sea of Azof, nor the Black Sea, nor the Caspian Sea, could open to Peter this direct passage to Europe. Besides, during his lifetime still Taganrog, Azof, the Black Sea, with its new-formed Russian fleets, ports, and dockyards, were again abandoned or given up to the Turk. The Persian conquest, too, proved a premature enterprise. Of the four wars which fill the military life of Peter the Great, his first war, that against Turkey, the fruits of which were lost in a second Turkish war, continued in one respect the traditionary struggle with the Tartars. In another respect, it was but the prelude to the war against Sweden, of which the second Turkish war forms an episode and the Persian war an .epilogue. Thus the war against Sweden lasting during 21 years, almost absorbs the military life of Peter the Great. Whether we consider its purpose, its results, or its endurance, we may justly call it the war of Peter the Great. His whole creation hinges upon the conquest of the Baltic Coast.

Now, suppose we were altogether ignorant of ‘ the details of his operations, military and diplomatic. The mere fact that the conversion of Muscovy into Russia was brought about by its transformation from a half-Asiatic inland country into the paramount maritime power of the Baltic, would it not enforce upon us the conclusion that England, the greatest maritime power of that epoch, a maritime power lying, too, at the very gates of the Baltic, where, since the middle of the 17th century, she had maintained the attitude of supreme arbiter; that England must have had her hand in this great change, that she must have proved the main prop, or the main impediment of the plans of Peter the Great, that during the long protracted and deadly struggle between Sweden and Russia, she must have turned the balance, that if we do not find her straining every nerve in order to save the Swede, we may be sure of her having employed all the means at her disposal for furthering the Muscovite? And yet, in what is commonly called history, England does hardly appear on the plan of this grand drama, and is represented as a spectator rather than as an actor. Real history will show that the Khans of the Golden Horde were no more instrumental in realising the plans of Ivan III. and his predecessors than the rulers of England were in realising the plans of Peter I and his successors.

The pamphlets which we have reprinted, written as they were by English contemporaries of Peter the Great, are far from concurring in the common delusions of later historians. They emphatically denounce England as the mightiest tool of Russia. The same position is taken up by the pamphlet, of which we shall now give a short analysis, and with which we shall conclude the introduction to the diplomatic revelations. It is entitled, “Truth is but Truth as it is timed, or our Ministry’s present measures against the Muscovite vindicated, etc., etc. Humbly dedicated to the House of C., London, 1719.”

The former pamphlets we have reprinted, were written at, or shortly after, the time when, to use the words of a modern admirer of Russia,

“Peter traversed the Baltic Sea as master at the head of the combined squadrons of all the northern Powers,” England included, “which gloried in sailing under his orders.”

In 1719, however, when Truth is but Truth was published, the face of affairs seemed altogether changed. Charles XII was dead, and the English Government now pretended to side with Sweden, and to wage war against Russia. There are other circumstances connected with this anonymous pamphlet, which claim particular notice. It purports to be an extract from a relation, which, on his return from Muscovy, in August 1715, its author, by order of George I., drew up and handed over to Viscount Townshend, then Secretary of State.

“It happens,” says he, “to be an advantage that at present 1 may own to have been the first so happy to foresee, or honest to forewarn our Court here, of the absolute necessity of our then breaking with the Czar, and shutting him out again of the Baltic.” “My relation discovered his aim as to other states, and even to the German empire, to which, although an inland power, he had offered to annex Livonia as an Electorate, so that he could but be admitted as an elector. It drew attention to the Czar’s then contemplated assumption of the title of Autocrator.^[124] Being head of the Greek Church he would be owned by the other potentates as head of the Greek Empire. 1 am not to say how reluctant we would be to acknowledge that title, since we have already made an ambassadors treat him with the title of Imperial Majesty, which the Swede has never yet condescended to.”

For some time attached to the British Embassy in Muscovy, our author, as he states, was later on

“dismissed the service, because the Czar desired it,” having made sure that “I had given our Court such light into his affairs as is contained in this paper; for which I beg leave to appeal to the King, and to vouch the Viscount Townshend, who heard His Majesty give that vindication.” And yet, notwithstanding all this, “I have been for these five years past kept soliciting for a very long arrear still due, and whereof 1 contracted the greatest part in executing a commission from Her late Majesty.”

The anti-Muscovite attitude, suddenly assumed by the Stanhope Cabinet, our author looks to in rather a sceptic mood.

“I do not pretend to foreclose, by this paper, the Ministry of that applause due to them from the public, when they shall satisfy us as to what the motives were, which made them, till but yesterday, straiten the Swede in everything, although then our ally as much as now. Or strengthen by all the ways they could, the Czar, although under no tie, but barely that of amity with Great Britain.... At the minute I write this 1 learn that the gentleman, who brought the Muscovites, not yet three years ago, as a royal navy, not under our protection, on their first appearance in the Baltic, is again authorised by the persons now in power, to give the Czar a second meeting in these seas. For what reason, or to what good end?”

The gentleman hinted at is Admiral Norris, whose Baltic campaign against Peter I seems, indeed, to be the original pattern upon which the recent naval campaigns of Admirals Napier and Dundas were cut out.^[125]

The restoration to Sweden of the Baltic provinces is required by the commercial as well as the political interest of Great Britain. Such is the pith of our author’s argument:

“Trade is become the very life of our State; and what food is to life naval stores are to a fleet. The whole trade we drive with all the other nations of the earth, at best, is but lucrative; this, of the north, is indispensably needful, and may not be improperly termed the sacra embole of Great Britain, as being its chiefest foreign vent, for the support of all our trade, and our safety at home. As woollen manufactures and minerals are the staple commodities of Great Britain, so are likewise naval stores those of Muscovy, as also of all those very provinces in the Baltic, which the Czar has so lately wrested from the crown of Sweden. Since those provinces have been in the Czar’s possession, Pernau is entirely waste. At Revel we have not one British merchant left, and all the trade which was formerly at Narva, is now brought to Petersburg.... The Swede could never possibly engross the trade of our subjects, because those seaports in his hands were but so many thoroughfares from whence these commodities were uttered, the places of their produce or manufacture lying behind those ports, in the dominions of the Czar. But, if left to the Czar, these Baltic ports are no more thoroughfares, but peculiar magazines from the inland countries of the Czar’s own dominions. Having already Archangel in the White Sea, to leave him but any seaport in the Baltic were to put no less in his hands than the two keys of the general magazines of all the naval stores of Europe: it being known, that Danes, Swedes, Poles and Prussians have but single and distinct branches of those commodities in their several dominions If the Czar should thus engross “the supply of what we cannot do without, where then is our fleet? Or, indeed, where is the security for all our trade to any part of the earth besides?”

If then, the interest of British commerce requires to exclude the Czar from the Baltic, “the interest of our State ought to be no less a spur to quicken us to that attempt. By the interest of our State 1 would he understood to mean neither the party measures of a Ministry, nor any foreign motives of a court, but precisely what is, and ever must be, the immediate concern, either for the safety, ease, dignity, or emolument of the Crown, as well as the common weal of Great Britain.” With respect to the Baltic, it has “from the earliest period of our naval power” always been considered a fundamental interest of our State; first, to prevent the rise there of any new maritime Power; and, secondly, to maintain the balance of power between Denmark and Sweden.

“One instance of the wisdom and foresight of our then truly British statesmen is the peace at Stolbowa, in the year 1617.^[126] James the First was the mediator of that treaty, by which the Muscovite was obliged to give up all the provinces which he then was possessed of in the Baltic, and to be barely an inland power on this side of Europe.”

The same policy of preventing a new maritime power from starting in the Baltic was acted upon by Sweden and Denmark.

“Who knows not that the Emperor’s attempt to get a seaport in Pomerania weighed no less with the great Gustavus, than any other motive for carrying his arms even into the bowels of the house of Austria? What befell, at the times of Charles Gustavus, the crown of Poland itself, who, besides it being in those days by far the mightiest of any of the Northern powers, had then a long stretch of coast on, and some ports in the Baltic? The Danes, though then in alliance with Poland, would never allow them, even for their assistance against the Swedes, to have a fleet in the Baltic, but destroyed the Polish ships wherever they could meet them.”

As to the maintenance of the balance of power between the established Maritime States of the Baltic, the tradition of British policy is no less clear.

When the Swedish power gave us some uneasiness there by threatening to crush Denmark, the honour of our country was kept up by retrieving the then inequality of the balance of power.

“The Commonwealth of England sent in a squadron to the Baltic, which brought on the treaty of Roskild (1658), afterwards confirmed at Copenhagen (1660).^[127] The fire of straw kindled by the Danes in the times of King William III. was as speedily quenched by George Rooke in the treaty of Travendahl.” ^[128]

Such was the hereditary British policy.

“It never entered into the mind of the politicians of those times, in order to bring the scale again to rights, to find out the happy expedient of raising a third naval Power for framing a juster balance in the Baltic.... Who has taken this counsel against Tyre, the crowning city, whose merchants are princes, whose traffickers are the honourables of the earth? Ego autem neminem nomino, quare irasci mihi nemo poterit, nisi qui ante de se voluerit confiteri. ["But I name no one, so that no one will be angry with me, other than he who might refuse to express himself openly before the event.” Cicero] Posterity will be under some difficulty to believe that this could be the work of any of the persons now in power ... that we have opened St. Petersburg to the Czar solely at our own expense, and without any risk to him....”

The safest line of policy would be to return to the treaty of Stolbowa, and to suffer the Muscovite no longer “to nestle in the Baltic.” Yet, it may be said, that in “the present state of affairs” it would be “difficult to retrieve the advantage we have lost by not curbing, when it was more easy, the growth of the Muscovite power.

A middle course may be thought more convenient.

“If we should find it consistent with the welfare of our State, that the Muscovite have an inlet into the Baltic, as having, of all the princes of Europe, a country that can be made most beneficial to its prince, by uttering its produce to foreign markets. In this case, it were but reasonable to expect on the other hand, that in return for our complying so far with his interest, for the improvement of his country, His Czarish Majesty, on his part, should demand nothing that may tend to the disturbance of another; and, therefore, contenting himself with ships of trade, should demand none of war.”

“We should thus preclude his hopes of being ever more than an inland power,” but “obviate every objection of using the Czar worse than any Sovereign Prince may expect. 1 shall not for this give an instance of a Republic of Genoa, or another in the Baltic itself, of the Duke of Courland; but will assign Poland and Prussia, who, though both now crowned heads, have ever contented themselves with the freedom of an open traffic, without insisting on a fleet. Or the treaty of Falczin, between the Turk, and Muscovite, by which Peter was forced not only to restore Asof, and to part with all his men-of-war in those parts, but also to content himself with the bare freedom of traffic in the Black Sea.^[129] Even an inlet in the Baltic for trade is much beyond what he could morally have promised himself not yet so long ago on the issue of his war with Sweden.”

If the Czar refuse to agree to such “a healing temperament,” we shall have “nothing to regret, but the time we lost to exert all the means that Heaven has made us master of, to reduce him to a peace advantageous to Great Britain.”

War would become inevitable. In that case, “it ought no less to animate our Ministry to pursue their present measures, than fire with indignation the breast of every honest Briton, that a Czar of Muscovy, who owes his naval skill to our instructions, and his grandeur to our forbearance, should so soon deny to Great Britain the terms which so few years ago he was fain to take up with from the Sublime Porte.”

“’tis every way our interest to have the Swede restored to those provinces which the Muscovite has wrested from that crown in the Baltic. Great Britain can no longer hold the balance in that sea,” since she “has raised the Muscovite to be a maritime Power there... Had we performed the articles of our alliance made by King William with the crown of Sweden, that gallant nation would ever have been a bar strong enough against the Czar coming into the Baltic.... Time must confirm us, that the Muscovite’s expulsion from the Baltic is now the principal end of our Ministry.”

Footnotes from MECW

24 This letter, as well as other reports from British diplomats in Russia in 1736-39, was published, with the permission of the British Government, in full in Sbornik imperatorskogo rasshogo istoricheskogo obshchestvti (Records of the imperial Russian Historical Society), St. Petersburg, 1892, Vol. 80, pp. 13-19, from the original in the Public Record Office of Great Britain.

25 Marx is referring to the mediation offered by Britain and Holland in the Russo-Turkish war of 1735-39; it was rejected by Russia.

26 An allusion to the Union of Kalmar (1397-1523) — it personal union of Denmark, Norway (with Iceland) and Sweden (with Finland) tinder Danish kings. In the fifteenth century Sweden virtually withdrew from the union. Christian II of Denmark made an attempt to restore his rule over Sweden by staging a massacre in Stockholm in November 1520 (this came to be called “the blood-bath of Stockholm”). This caused a popular uprising led by Gustavus Eriksson (Gustavus Vasa) and as a result Sweden was restored as a state.

27 Marx is referring to a plan, drawn up by Russian diplomats in the 1760s, to unite the North-European states of Russia, Prussia, England, Denmark, Sweden and Poland. It came to be known as “the grand scheme uniting the Powers of the North” or the Northern Alliance, and was to be directed against France and Austria. Despite a number of treaties concluded by Russia (a defensive treaty with Prussia, 1764; a defensive treaty with Denmark, 1765; and a trade agreement with Great Britain, 1766), the project was not implemented because Prussia and England opposed it and Russia’s foreign policy underwent some changes after the Russo-Turkish war of 1768-74.

28 Presumably a reference to the preparation of the Russo-Prussian Treaty of Alliance which Peter III and Frederick II concluded on April 24 (May 5), 1762 during the Seven Years’ War (1756-63). Frederick II received back all of his lands which had been conquered by Russian troops. Sir George Macartney’s information was inaccurate: at that time Count Alexei Bestuzhev-Ryumin was relieved of his diplomatic duties.

29 Marx is quoting the words of Horace Walpole and the statements by the Earl of Sandwich and William Pitt the Younger mentioned below according to T. S. Hughes’ The History of England, from the Accession of George III, 1760, to the Accession of Queen Victoria, 1837 Third edition. London, 1846, Vol. 1, p. 183; Vol. If, pp. 146, 261; Vol. III, p. 124.

30 This letter was published in Diaries and Correspondence of James Harris, First Earl of Malmesbury; containing an account of his missions to the courts of Madrid, Frederick the Great, Catherine the Second, and the Hague, and his special missions to Berlin, Brunswick, and the French Republic. Edited by his grandson, the Third Earl. Vol. I, London, 1844, pp. 528-35.

31 Sir James Harris writes about the moods prevailing at the Russian Court, in which the British Government was much interested since it intended to win Russia’s support in the war against the North-American colonies (1775-83).

32 The Peace of Teshen concluded between Austria and Prussia on May 13, 1779 ended the war of the Bavarian succession. The war had been caused by the claims of the German states to various parts of Bavaria after the death of the childless Bavarian Elector Maximilian Joseph, and also by the struggle between Austria and Prussia for domination over Germany. Under this treaty and the adjoining conventions, Prussia and Austria obtained some territories of Bavaria, while Saxony received money compensation. The Elector of the Palatinate became Elector of Bavaria. The Peace of Teshen confirmed a series of peace treaties which had previously been concluded by the Germ-,in states. At first Russia and France acted as mediators between the warring countries, and in a special article of the treaty they were declared guarantor-powers.

33 Harris presumably means the document on Spain’s declaration of war on Britain in June 1779.

34 The declaration of armed neutrality announced by Catherine II on February 28 (March 11), 1780, was directed against Britain during her war against the insurgent North-American colonies (1775-83). It proclaimed the right of neutral powers to trade freely with the belligerent countries and a series of other principles guaranteeing security to merchant shipping. The Declaration was joined in 1780-83 by Denmark, Sweden, Holland, Prussia, Austria, Portugal and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

35 In March 1781 the British Government offered Russia the Island of Minorca, an important strategic base in the Mediterranean, on the condition that Russia gave up her armed neutrality (see Note 34) and supported Britain in her war against the North-American colonies. This offer was rejected.

36 This refers to the negotiations which ended with the signing of the Versailles Peace Treaty on September 3, 1783 between Britain and the USA with its allies-France, Spain and the Netherlands. According to this treaty, Britain recognised the USA’s independence.

37 On the initiative of Prussia, a convention on preliminary terms of partition of Poland was signed in St. Petersburg on 6 (17) February, 1772. Soon Austria also joined it. The partition undermined the national independence of Poland, which was undergoing a profound social and political crisis.

38 This refers to the aggravation of Russo-Swedish relations after the l772 coup d'état of Gustavus III. Having abolished the 1719 Constitution and the power of the aristocratic oligarchy, who had enjoyed the support of Britain and Russia, Gustavus virtually restored absolutism in Sweden. Russia as a guarantor of Sweden’s statehood under the Peace of Nystad (1721), feared the growing influence of France which was financing Gustavus III.

39 The Kwhuk-Kainarji peace treaty ended the Russo-Turkish war of 1768-74. Russia obtained part of the Black Sea shore between the South Bug and the Dnieper with the fortress of Kinburn; she also gained Azoi,, Kerch and Yenikale and compelled Turkey to recognise the independence of the Crimea. Russian merchant ships won free passage through the Bosphorus and Dardanelles. In conformity with the treaty the Sultan also undertook to grant certain privileges to the Greek Orthodox Church.

40 The reference is to George III, King of Great Britain and Ireland (1760-1820), and a group of Tories supporting hint. George III belonged to the Hanover royal family which held the British throne under the provisions of the Act of Settlement (1701); up to 1815 the British kings of the Hanover dynasty were also the Electors of Hanover, and up to 1837 Kings of Hanover.

41 Marx draws a parallel here between the 18th-century events and the actions of the British Admiralty in 1854 when an attempt was made to raise a blockade of the Russian harbours t)ii the Black Sea at the beginning of the Crimean war (1853-56). James Graham’s statement, report about his dispatch of April 3, 1854 and Admiral James Dundas’ replies are cited by Marx according to the material of the John Arthur Roebuck commission appointed to investigate the state of the British Army in the Crimea (“State of the Army before Sebastopol”, The No. 22054, May 15, 1855).

42 Marx quotes George III’s speech on October 26, 1775, the words of Lord Cavendish and North’s statement mentioned below from T. S. Hughes’ The History of England, Vol. If, pp. 191, 113.

43 Marx is referring to the Versailles Peace Treaty (see Note 36).

44 A reference to the retirement of Rockingham’s ministry after. his death on July 1, 1782.

45 Marx quotes Burke front T. S. Hughes’ The History of England..., Vol. III, pp. 148-49.

46 The Shelburne ministry (1782-83) succeeded Rockingham’s ministry (see Note 44).

47 [Ph. H.] Mahon, History of England from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, Vol. I, London, 1839, p. 341.

48 The reference is to the French Revolution.

49 A reference to Russia’s secession from the second anti-French coalition in 1800.

50 Marx is referring to the diplomatic correspondence between Pozzo di Borgo, the Russian ambassador to France, and the Russian Chancellor Count Nesselrode; Marx got acquainted with it from a collection of diplomatic documents and material entitled The Portfolio; or a Collection of State Papers edited by David Urquhart and published in London from 1835 to 1837, and also from Recueil des documents relatifs à la Russie pour la plupart secrets et inédits utiles à consulter dons la crise actuelle, Paris, 1854.

51 A reference to the treaties on the partition of the Spanish possessions in Europe and elsewhere concluded by France with Britain, the Netherlands and Austria in 1698 and 1700 in anticipation of the death of the childless King of Spain, Charles II of Habsburg.

On October 2, 1700, Charles If made a will by which the Spanish crown was to go to Philip of Anjou, the grandson of Louis XIV of France, provided Philip renounced his right to the French crown. Despite this, in February 1701 Louis XIV made Philip of Anjou, who in 1700 became King of Spain under the name of Philip V, his heir, which led to the War of the-Spanish Succession (1701-1 4). In, this war, Britain, Austria, the Netherlands and some other countries fought against France and Spain. France’s failures in the war resulted in the realignment of forces in Europe.

52 Presumably Marx means here the annexation of Cracow by Austria after the 1846 insurrection.

53 After the rout of the Swedish army at Poltava, Charles XII fled to Turkey and settled in Bendery where he stayed till 1713. Marx used the Latin text of the manifesto (Carolus, Espèce de Manifeste du Roi de Suède conire le Roi Auguste) published in Lamberty, Mémoires pour servir à 1'histoire du XVIII siécle, contenant les négociations, traitez, resolutions et autres documents authentiques concernant lea affaires d'état, Tome sixième, La Haye, 1728, pp. 434-36.

54 The Glorious revolution-the name given in English historiography to the coup d'état of 1688 which overthrew the Stuarts and established a constitutional monarchy, with William III of Orange at its h cad (from 1689), which was based on a compromise between the landed aristocracy and the big bourgeoisie.

55 The Peace Treaty of Travendahl signed on August 18, 1700, ended the war between Denmark and the duchy of Holstein. It was concluded under military pressure from England, Holland and Sweden. Denmark was forced to recognise the independence of Holstein and withdraw from the anti-Swedish coalition.

56 Marx is presumably referring to the fact that during the Northern War (1700-21) an abortive attempt was made in 1716 to unite the Danish and Russian naval forces.

57 An inaccuracy in the text: Count Gyllenborg calls himself the author of the pamphlet not in the letter to Baron Görtz of January 12 (23), 1717 but in a letter to his brother of October 16 (27), 1716. Marx quotes Gyllenborg’s letter from Letters which passed between Count Gyllenborg, the barons Görtz, Sparre, and others; relating to the Design of Raising a Rebellion in His Majesty’s Dominions, to be supported by a Force from Sweden. London, 1717.

The Court of St. James’s called so after St. James’s Palace in London, the residence of British kings until the beginning of the nineteenth century.

58 The reference is to the decisions reached at a conference held by Peter 1 and Danish and Saxon ministers on October 22, 1711 in the town of Crossen (Krossen), Brandenburg. The conference drew up plans for immediate military-diplomatic action by the Allies against Sweden.

59 Rix dollar — continental silver coin in the sixteenth-nineteenth centuries.

60 This passage in The Free Press of September 20, 1856 was preceded by the following editorial note: “Our readers may, perhaps, require to be reminded that the following is a quotation from a pamphlet published in London, in 1716, and entitled the ‘Northern Crisis’. Our last number contained the recital (copied from “The Northern Crisis”) of the Danish Minister’s reasons for delaying the descent upon Schonen.”

61 That is, the War of the Spanish Succession (see Note 51).

62 This refers to an episode in the first stage of the Northern War (1700-21) — the defeat of the Russian troops at Narva on November 30, 1700.

63 A reference to the Peace Treaty of Altranstadt concluded on September 24, 1706 between Augustus If, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, and Charles XII of Sweden. Under the provisions of the treaty, Augustus If was to abdicate from the Polish throne in favour of Stanislaus Leszczynsk and annul the union with Russia.

64 See Note 55.

65 This sentence opens the next instalment in The Free Press on October 4, 1856.

The editors of the newspaper preceded it with the following comment: “We beg to remind our readers that the following is part of a pamphlet written in-, and entitled the ‘Northern Crisis’, and that it is a continuation of ‘Important Reflections’ on the Danish Minister’s ‘Reasons for delaying the descent upon Schonen'”.

66 This refers to a 9,000-strong Russian detachment summoned by the Grand Duke Karl Leopold to Mecklenburg in 1716. The Duke was married to Peter I’s niece Yekaterina Ivanovna. The same year the detachment was withdrawn from the duchy.

67 A reference to what is known as the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation founded in 9(52 when Otto I, the German King, was crowned Holy Roman Emperor. By the eighteenth century the Empire, ruled by sovereigns from the Habsburg dynasty, lost its political influence: it ceased to exist on August 6, 1806.

68 A reference to the war waged by Austria and her ally, the Venetian Republic, against Turkey in 1716-18.

69 Augustus II, the Elector of Saxony (1694-1733) and King of Poland (1697-1706 and 1709-33), adopted the Catholic faith to facilitate his election to the Polish throne.

70 Marx means the pamphlet: [G. Mackenzie,] Truth is but Truth, as it is Timed! Or, our Ministry’s present Measures against the Moscovite vindicated by Plain and Obvious Reasons, Trying to Prove, etc., London, 1719.

71 On August 2, 1718 Britain, Austria and France concluded an alliance against Spain with a view to retaining the provisions of the Peace Treaty of Utrecht, which confirmed the results of the War of the Spanish Succession (see notes 51 and 236). On August 22 of that year the British fleet attacked and destroyed the Spanish fleet near the Cape of Passaro (Sicily).

72 Marx took the data for his calculations from A. Anderson, An Historical and Chronological Deduction of the Origin of Commerce, from the earliest accounts. Containing an history of great commercial interests of the British Empire, Vols. I, III, IV, London, 1787, 1789.

73 The Balance of Trade doctrine — one of the tenets of mercantilism. According to it a country’s prosperity depends totally on the constant inflow of bullion from abroad, and to secure. this it is necessary to attain a favourable balance of foreign trade.

74 Marx has in mind the book: S. Puffendorf, De Rebus gestis Friderici Wilhelmi Magni, Electoris Brandenburgici, commentariorum Libri novendecim. Berolini, 1695.

75 The Russian or Muscovy Company (its real name: Merchant Adventurers for the Discovery of Lands, Countries, Isles, not before known or frequented by any English) — an English trade company founded in the mid-sixteenth century which enjoyed some privileges from the Russian Government. However, the Company’s intentions to get hold of the Russian market and also its plans to seize the North of Russia and the Volga route in 1612 during the period of the Polish and Swedish intervention caused dissatisfaction on the part of the Russian Government and merchants. The result of it was that in 1649 the Company virtually ceased to exist. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, during the War of the Spanish Succession (see Note 51), the Company was re-established as England was in great need of shipbuilding materials.

76 The publication date of these petitions is not known.

77 This refers to the fact Marx wrote about as early as June 1854 in his article “The Formation of a Special Ministry of War in Britain. — The War on the Danube. — The Economic Situation": “For the measure announced by Sir J. Graham in last Monday’s House of Commons, viz.: The non-blockade of the port of Archangel, The Morning Herald accounts in the following laconic paragraph: ‘There is a house at Archangel which bears the name of the Chancellor of the Exchequer'”.

78 See Note 54.

79 Marx has in mind the Polish emigrant to the USA and contributor to the New-York Daily Tribune Adam Gurowski, the French historian and writer Elias Regnault and the German philosopher and journalist Bruno Bauer, who wrote a great deal on the Eastern question and European foreign policy during the Crimean war.

80 The fortress of Kars was captured by Russian troops during the Crimean war in November 1855. See K. Marx’s series of articles “The Fall of Kars”.

81 The Suez Canal was built from 1859 to 1869. Ferdinand de Lesseps, a French diplomat and engineer, obtained a concession for the building and exploitation of it on November 30, 1854. The British Government was against the project at first, fearing the expansion of French influence in Egypt and the Middle East.

82 The town of Narva was captured by the Russian troops in 1558 during the Livonian War (1558-83) fought by Russia against the Livonian Confederation, the Polish-Lithuanian state and Sweden.

83 The Treaty of Ryswick of 1697 ended the war between France and the Augsburg League (the Netherlands, England, Spain, the German Emperor and several German princes) which lasted from 1688. It confirmed the slightly changed pre-war state boundaries. France was obliged to recognise the 1688 coup d'état in England (see Note 54).

84 Marx has drawn on the anonymous pamphlet Reasons for the present conduct of Sweden in relation to the trade in the Baltic set forth in a letter from a gentleman at Dantzick, to his friend at Amsterdam. Translated from the French original published in Holland; and now submitted to the consideration of all just and impartial Britons, London, 1715.

85 This is the nickname of the British statesman Robert Walpole, who habitually employed bribery to have his supporters elected to Parliament.

86 This pamphlet, which contains the text of the treaty and comments to it (“queries”), was published, as Marx supposed, in 1720. The author of the queries is unknown.

The Publishers express their gratitude to the British Museum Library for kindly granting them photocopies of this document and Truth is but Truth, the pamphlet Marx used in writing Chapter V.

87 A reference to the war of the Spanish Succession (see Note 51).

88 The Treaty of Westphalia signed in 1648, ended the Thirty Years’ War. Sweden gained a considerable part of East Pomerania and also the Isle of Rügen, the port of Wismar and the bishoprics of Bremen and Verden, and became a member of the Holy Roman Empire (see Note 67).

The Peace Treaty of Roskilde ended the 1657-58 war between Denmark and Sweden. Denmark ceded her possessions in the South of the Scandinavian peninsular, the fief of Trondheim in Norway and several islands in the Baltic Sea. Be-sides, Denmark pledged to open negotiations with the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp on relieving him of her suzerainty, to annul the alliances and treaties directed against Sweden and to free Sweden from payment of the Sound duties.

The Copenhagen Peace Treaty ended the 1658-60 war between Denmark and Sweden. The war, provoked by differences connected with the implementation of the Treaty of Roskilde, was launched by Sweden with a view to completely abolishing Denmark’s independence. Under the Copenhagen Treaty, the Isle of Bornholm and the fief of Trondheim were returned to Denmark.

The Peace Treaty of Lunden ended the 1675-79 war between Denmark and Sweden. Denmark gave up her possessions in Skane which went to Sweden.

89 See Note 55.

90 The great Battle of Poltava (the Ukraine) was fought between Russian and Swedish troops on July 8, 1709, in the course of the Northern War (1700-21).

The Russian troops commanded by Peter I won a decisive victory over Charles XII.

91 This refers to the Act of Settlement of June 12, 1701 which fixed the succession to the throne on the Hanover royal family (see Note 40) and deprived the Stuarts of the right of succeeding to the English throne.

92 The reference is to the “glorious revolution” (see Note 54).

93 In this chapter Marx tried to outline Russia’s historical development from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries from the perspective of her role in international affairs, and attempted to reveal the historical roots of the foreign policy of Russian Tsarism in the nineteenth century. Marx did not intend to give a comprehensive analysis of Russian history and restricted himself to making “some preliminary remarks on the general history of Russian politics” (see p. 74). Marx’s main source was History of Russia and of Peter the Great (London, 1829), an English translation of a very unreliable book by the French aristocrat Philippe Paul Ségur. For comments on Marx’s other sources see pp. XXI and XXII.

94 Oleg, Prince of Kiev, raided Constantinople in 911. His successor Igor made war on Byzantium on two occasions, in 941 and 944, which resulted in the conclusion of a trade agreement in 944.

95 Anna, the daughter of the Byzantine Emperor Romanus II, was married to Prince Vladimir Svyatoslavich of Kiev (who after baptism adopted the name of Vasily) in 987, after her father’s death, by her brother, the Byzantine Emperor Basil II (976-1025). The name of Prince Vladimir Svyatoslavich is connected with the adoption of Christianity in Kiev Russia (988-989) and the latter’s growing might.

96 Presumably Marx is hinting at the so-called “Will of Peter the Great"-a spurious document, different versions of which were repeatedly published in Western Europe in the nineteenth century. Historians have since proved irrefutably that the “Will” was a complete forgery.

97 An inaccuracy in Marx’s text. The third prince of the Vladimir-Suzdal principality was Andrei Bogolyubsky’s brother, Vsevolod Bolshoye Gnezdo (1176-1212), during whose reign the territory of the principality was extended and its political ,and cultural significance grew considerably.

98 The Tartar-Mongol yoke in Russia ended in 1480 as a result of the long and heroic struggle by the Russian people.

99 Marx presumably means the rise of the Moscow Principality in the fourteenth century and the victories of the Russian troops under Dmitry Donskoi over the Golden Horde (battles on the Vozha River in 1378 and on Kulikovo Field in 1380). Later, in his Chronological Notes (1882), Marx wrote in particular: “September 8, 1380 — Battle on the broad field of Kulikovo; Dmitry’s complete victory; 200,000 said to he killed on both sides.”

100 An inaccuracy in Marx’s text: Yury Danilovich, the elder brother of Ivan I Danilovich Kalita, bore the title of Grand Prince of Vladimir from 1317; his brother inherited it in 1328.

101 The reference is to a branch of the Rurik dynasty, the princes of the Principality of Tver which existed in Russia in the thirteenth-fifteenth centuries. In the struggle for power with Prince Yury Danilovich of Moscow (see Note 100), Prince Mikhail Yaroslavich of Tver (1271-1318) was defeated and killed in the camp of Uzbek Khan.

102 The episcopal scat of the primate was finally transferred to Moscow in 1328.

103 In 1492 Ivan III sent a deed to Sultan Bajazet If containing a protest against the harassment of Russian merchants in the Turkish possessions.. Having received no answer from the Sultan (his envoy was detained in Lithuania), Ivan III sent his own man, ambassador Mikhail Pleshcheyev, to Turkey with instructions to confirm the claims contained in the 1492 deed and to “stand on his feet not knees” during the audience. Pleshcheyev’s mission was successful. Sultan Bajazet II promised not to put obstacles in the way of Russian merchants within the Ottoman Empire.

104 The Golden Horde practically ceased to exist in the second quarter o t e fifteenth century due to internecine strife and the liberation movement of the subject peoples, especially the Russian people (see notes 99 and 109). It was succeeded by a Tartar state; the Big Horde, which sprang up on the lower reaches of the Volga; the Nogai (Nogay) Horde, which occupied the territory from the Volga to the li-tysh River, virtually separated front the Golden Horde, at the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth century; the final separation took place in 1426-40.

105 Tiniour (Tamerlane) dealt crushing blows to the Golden Horde in his three big campaigns (1389, 1391, 1394-95).

106 Marx means the free Cossack communities formed on the southern and south-eastern outskirts of the Moscow state in the second half of the fifteenth century by the peasants who had fled from the landowners, an(] the townsmen. They were used for defence purposes.

107 The Crimean Khanate separated from the Golden Horde in 1443 as a result of a prolonged struggle; in 1475 it became a vassal of the Ottoman Empire.

108 Ivan III ceased paying tribute to the Big Horde (see Note 104) in 1476.

109 The disintegration of the Golden Horde (see Note 104) and especially the heroic struggle of the Russian people were the principal factors which led to the liberation of the Grand Principality of Moscow from the Tartar-Mongol yoke. The events which culminated this struggle are presented by Marx inaccurately. Khan Akhmat launched two campaigns against Moscow: in 1472 and in 1480. In 1472 he captured the town of Aleksin but was forced to retreat before the Russians. In 1480 Khan Akhmat’s troops were confronted by strong Russian detachments on the River Ugra (known as “Standing on the Ugra”). Khan Akhmat was forced to retreat in October and November and on January 6, 1481 he was killed by the Nogay Khan Ivak. The “Standing on the Ugra” put an end to the 240-year Tartar-Mongol yoke over Russia.

The Crimean Khan Mengli-Ghirai defeated the Big Horde, but much later, in 1502.

110 In 1459. the Vyatka territory was subordinated to Moscow though it had enjoyed certain autonomy. The reign of Ivan III in the second half of the fifteenth century was marked by the growing separatist movement of the Vyatka boyars and merchants. However, in 1485-86 the movement was suppressed and in 1489 the Vyatka territory was incorporated into the Grand Principality of Moscow.

111 The feudal republic of Pskov existed as an independent state from 1348 to 1510.

112 A reference to the victory of the Moscow army over the Novgorodians on the bank,, of the River Shelon in 1471. This victory predetermined the abolition of political independence for the Novgorod feudal republic, which existed ever since the twelfth century.

113 After 1475 despite the old statutes legal proceedings on the complaints of the Novgorodians were not taken in their native city but in Moscow.

114 The final incorporation of Novgorod in the Grand Principality of Moscow took place in 1478.

115 The reference is to a kind of a republic formed by the Ukrainian Cossacks (Zaporozhye Sech) in the mid-sixteenth century. It was defeated by Peter I in 1709 and finally abolished by Catherine II in 1775.

116 The last independent Prince of Tver, Mikhail Borisovich, was married to the granddaughter of the Lithuanian Prince Casimir. Trying to throw off the growing dependence on Moscow, he entered into an alliance with Lithuania. However, Ivan III succeeded in breaking Tver’s resistance and in 1485 Tver was finally annexed to Moscow. So ended the struggle of the Tver and Moscow princes for supremacy in Russia (see Note 101).

117 An inaccuracy in the text. Ivan III had four brothers, whose appanages were annexed to the possessions of the Grand Prince at different times. One of his brothers, Andrei Bolshoi, died in confinement.

118 After Casimir’s death in 1492, his son Jan Albrecht succeeded to the Polish throne, and another son, Alexander, to the Lithuanian throne.

119 Elena Ivanovna. the daughter of Ivan III and Sophia Palaeologus, was married to the Lithuanian Grand Prince Alexander on the initiative of and pressure from the Lithuanian nobles who hoped by this means to win concessions from Ivan III.

120 As a result of the wars waged by Ivan III against the Grand Principality of Lithuania (1487-94 and 1500-03) western Russian towns (Chernigov, Novgorod-Seversky, Gomel, Bryansk) and the lands adjoining them were appended to Moscow. Smolensk was incorporated into Russia in 1514, after Ivan III’s death.

121 The facts are inaccurate here. In an attempt to save the Byzantine Empire from the Turkish invasion the representatives of the Eastern Orthodox Church entered into union with the Catholic Church at the Council of Florence in 1439. Under the terms of the Union of Florence the Eastern Orthodox Church acknowledged the supremacy of the Pope and accepted the Catholic dogmas, while retaining its own rites. After the capture of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453, Thomas, the brother of the last Byzantine Emperor Constantine XI Palacologus, and his family, fled to Rome.

Pope Paul If, by planning to marry ‘l'homas’s daughter Sophia (Zoë) Palaeologus to Ivan Ill, and basing himself on the decisions of the Union of Florence, hoped to consolidate his power over the Russian Orthodox Church.

Ivan III married Sophia Palacologus on November 12, 1472, under Pope Sixtus IV. Ivan III used this marriage to enhance Russia’s prestige in international affairs and his own authority as a Grand Prince in Russia.

122 In this chapter, Marx drew on one of Engels’ articles about Pan-Slavism, written for the New-York Daily Tribune in 1856, but never published. The manuscripts of these articles, which the editors of the newspaper returned to Marx, have not been traced. Soon after the Revelations of the Diplomatic History of the 18th Century had been published, Marx wrote to Engels on April 9, 1857: “In the last one I used the text of one of your articles, in which you speak of Peter I” .

123 This refers to the Russo-Turkish Wars of 1686-99 and 1710-13 and Peter I’s campaign to the Persian possessions near the Caspian Sea in 1722-23.

124 Peter I assumed the title of Emperor in 1721.

125 An ironic allusion to the actions of the English fleet commanded by Charles. Napier (1854) and Richard Dundas (1855) during the Crimean war (1853-56).