From Hatred to Annihilation

Consistent devaluing of non-European humanity is a recurring theme in the writings of Marx and Engels. With respect to those events in Europe where smaller European nationalities were struggling for survival, the sympathies of Marx and Engels were clearly with the dominant definers of European supremacy. They saw the smaller nations in Europe as irritants to the progress of Europe towards the coming Marxist utopia. The irritants needed to be removed. They needed to be completely wiped out – not just defeat of the smaller nation but destruction of entire people. Engels wrote:

But at the first victorious uprising of the French proletariat, which Louis Napoleon is striving with all his might to conjure up, the Austrian Germans and Magyars will be set free and wreak a bloody revenge on the Slav barbarians. The general war which will then break out will smash this Slav Sonderbund and wipe out all these petty hidebound nations, down to their very names. The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too, is a step forward.[18]

Here we also see a justification for anti-Slavism – another xenophobic prejudice endemic in the common psyche of the West. Again Engels justifies the prejudice and hatred. He provides an action plan – not just subjugation of Slavic nations but complete ‘disappearance from the face of the earth …of entire reactionary people’.  Marx too had expressed with derision, the same desire for ‘annihilation’ towards ‘Croats, Pandurs, Czechs and similar scum.’[19]

The very next month Engels further elaborated on the topic:

We repeat: apart from the Poles, the Russians, and at most the Turkish Slavs, no Slav people has a future, for the simple reason that all the other Slavs lack the primary historical, geographical, political and industrial conditions for independence and viability. Peoples which have never had a history of their own, which from the time when they achieved the first, most elementary stage of civilization already came under foreign sway, or which were forced to attain the first stage of civilization only by means of a foreign yoke, are not viable and will never be able to achieve any kind of independence. And that has been the fate of the Austrian Slavs….The same thing holds for the Southern Slavs proper….[20]

Engels also vehemently denounced the appeal of Mikhail Bakunin, a socialist-anarchist from Russia who called for Slav emancipation. Here Engels replies to Bakunin:

…hatred of Russians was and still is the primary revolutionary passion among Germans; that since the revolution hatred of Czechs and Croats has been added, and that only by the most determined use of terror against these Slav peoples can we, jointly with the Poles and Magyars, safeguard the revolution…. there will be a struggle, an “inexorable life-and-death struggle”, against those Slavs who betray the revolution; an annihilating fight and ruthless terror — not in the interests of Germany, but in the interests of the revolution![21]

The irrational xeno-phobic hatred Europe in general and Germany in particular has for Slavic people, becomes transformed into an expression of “primary revolutionary passion” and the use of “annihilation and terror” against Slavic people – not just their political defeat- becomes necessary to safeguard the interests of revolution. In other words, Marxist founding fathers had provided how to justify hatred with theory and execute crimes against humanity all the while professing to advance the cause of humanity.

A Marxist blueprint for Hitler and Stalin

In 1849 Engels grudgingly accepted Poland as one of the three Slav nations that might have a future. But by 1851 he was convinced that Poland should disappear as a nation. He proceeded to provide a blueprint for the dissipation of Polish nation:

Conclusion: To take as much as possible away from the Poles in the West, to man their fortresses, especially Posen, with Germans on the pretext of defence, to let them stew in their own juice, send them into battle, gobble bare their land, fob them off with promises of Riga and Odessa and, should it be possible to get the Russians moving, to ally oneself with the latter and compel the Poles to give way…. A nation which can muster 20,000 to 30,000 men at most, is not entitled to a voice. And Poland certainly could not muster very much more.[22]

History shows that the blueprint Engels expressed in his letter to Marx in 1851 was given a shape within the next hundred years. Stalin signed the notorious Munich agreement with Nazi Germany in 1939. The party line apologist argument in defense of this act of Stalin is that Stalin was being strategic and he prevented the Western powers trying to pit Nazi Germany against a newly developing Soviet Union. However a study of Soviet literature then, suggests a deeper cooperation between Nazis and Soviets particularly with respect to Poland despite Hitler’s visceral hatred for Communists.

The treaty between Nazis and USSR was signed on August 23 1939. On September 1 1939 Germany invaded Poland. On September 17 1939 Govt. of USSR sent a ‘note’ to Poland ambassador in Moscow. The content of the ‘note’ was published the very next day in Soviet propaganda magazine Izvestia:

Mr., Ambassador, The Polish-German war has highlighted the internal bankruptcy of the Polish state….In view of this situation, the Soviet Government has instructed the Supreme Commander of the Red Army to order its troops to cross the border and to protect the lives and property of the Western Ukrain and Western Byelorussia.  Simultaneously, the Soviet Government intends to take all the measures to save the Polish people from the ill-starred war into which they have been plunged by their unwise leaders and to enable them to live a peaceful life. [23]

There are striking similarities between the logic used by both USSR and Nazi Germany to justify their entering of Poland. If USSR was using the logic of ethnic minorities of Ukrainian and Byelorussian origin within Poland to justify its aggression, Nazi Germany to justified its invasion of Poland. Nazi propaganda magazine ‘Die Wehrmacht’ wrote of ‘the brutal suppression of ethnic Germans in Poland’. If Soviets blamed the ‘unwise leaders’ of Poland and not Hitler for the war, Nazis were more Marxist in their justification. ‘Die Wehrmacht’ reminding the Poles that they ‘were the only remaining Slavic vassal in Eastern Europe’ accused Poland of ‘desire to play the role of the big man’.[24] Engels would have definitely empathized with the logic of ‘Die Wehrmacht.’

On September 28 1939 Soviet-Nazi treaty of friendship was concluded in Moscow. Izvestia reported the next day:

The Government of the USSR and the German Government following the disintegration of the Polish state … have come to an agreement with regard to the following: they establish as their boundary between their mutual state interests on the territory of the formal Polish state a line traced on the map…The necessary state restructuring on the territory west of the said line shall be carried out by the German Government, on the east of this line by the Government of the USSR.[25]

In other words, it was the same plan Engels wrote to Marx in 1853 regarding the deconstruction of Poland, which was now getting executed by Hitler and Stalin.  However it did not stop with simply the dismembering of Poland and its occupation by Soviet Union and Nazi Reich. Both Hitler and Stalin used their occupied territories to execute their enemies – the annihilation of ‘scum’ and ‘reactionary people’ as a whole as envisioned by Marx and Engels.

Katyn – the Soviet Auschwitz 

With Soviet-Nazi pact, Nazi Gestapo and its dreaded Soviet counterpart NKVD started an era of close cooperation. Again this was initiated by Stalin himself. Historian George Stanford explains:

It emerged after [the Soviet-Nazi pact] as part of their growing cooperation to destroy Poland. Stalin had already provided Hitler with a sweetener by returning some hundred German communists who had sought refuge in the USSR to the tender mercies of Nazi concentration camps. Their handing over at Brest-Litovsk provided early practice for the NKVD and Gestapo to work out the technique of prisoner exchanges.[26]

As soon as Soviet occupation of Poland with Nazi cooperation began in September 1939   14,500 Polish officers and policemen were taken prisoners by the Red Army and they continued to languish in three special NKVD run prisoner-of-war camps at three separate places. By mid-March 1940 all their contacts with outside world ceased and they disappeared without a trace. Another 7,300 Polish prisoners held in NKVD jails in the western regions of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic also similarly disappeared without a trace.[27] Soon the notorious Beria – Stalin’s killer hand, sent a detailed report to Stalin to segregate the Polish PoWs according to occupation zone and 33000 Polish prisoners were subject to exchange with the Germans.[28]

On 5-March-1940 Beria sent a top secret memorandum to Stalin. There had been a problem. In prisoner-of-war camps there were a great number of Polish prisoners who were “accursed enemies of Soviet power, filled with hate for the Soviet order.” So he suggested a solution in the memorandum:

The cases of the  14,700 former  Polish officers, civil servants,  landlords, policemen,  intelligence  officers,  gendarmes  and  prison  officers  held  in prisoner-of-war camps,….And  also  the  cases  of  those  arrested  and  held  in  camps  in  the  western regions  of  the  Ukraine  and  Belorussia  numbering  11,000  people,… to examine  them  as  a  matter  of  urgency,  with  the  application  of  the  highest measure of punishment—shooting. To examine the cases without summoning those arrested and without presenting charges, stating the ending of the investigation and summing up…[29]

It was not a private note that passed between Stalin and Beria. But from the declassified documents now, it is clear that within the next two days, by 5th March, Politburo of CPSU agreed to all proposals submitted by Beria. 25,700 prisoners of war would be tried in the absence of the accused themselves and would be executed by shooting as agreed before the trials.  Author Prof. Richard Sakwa notes:

From  notes  on  the first  page  of  the  report  we know  that  Stalin, Molotov, Voroshilov and  Mikoyan were directly involved in the decision, and from marginal notes that Kalinin and Kaganovich  agreed  to  the  action.[30]

It was an execution that would have pleased Engels.

Fortunately for Stalin, the massacre and mass graves were first discovered by Nazis. So it was conveniently dismissed as propaganda by Soviets and Communists for decades. Other allied powers also did not want to take up issues with Stalin as they were fighting the common enemy Hitler. But despite propaganda and denial, it was a well known secret among the Marxist power circles in Moscow. Yet they consistently denied Soviet authorship of this genocidal crime. It was only on April 13 1990, that Gorbachev admitted that Soviet NKVD was responsible for this mass murder which today goes by the name Katyn massacre. Even then he wanted to protect Communist Party of Soviet Union that he did not take the responsibility of Soviet government having ordered the murders of thousands of unarmed prisoners of war in cold blood. And the killing was a calculated genocidal step. Author Wesley Adamczyk points out, “…the Polish people “had lost about half of their homeland’s intellectual and military leadership”[31]

It was only on 14 October 1992, half a century after the Marxist crime against humanity was perpetrated, that the original Russian documents about Katyn massacre were handed over to Walesa by Rudolf Pikhoya as the senior archivist of Russia under orders from Yelstein.

It was a Marxist crime against humanity – a direct line connects the massacre of unarmed Polish prisoners of war by Soviets with the ideas put forth by Marx and Engels just as how the racism of Nazis connect with the victims of Auschwitz.

Theology of Hatred continues

Even today the embedded racism of Marxist theology continues to haunt humanity. In the third world countries, Marxism creates in its adherents, self-negation and derisional depreciation of their native cultural traditons. Then they develop a chauvnism of westernized modernity around the rootless native identity usually in confrontation with other neighbouring cultural identities which they label as inferior. Thus Communist Party of China as early as in 1927 passed an official resolution that China was not an Asiatic society.[32] This emotional uprootment from the spiritual and cultural matrix of China with decades of indoctrination in Marxism, paved way for ruthless destruction of all Buddhist monuments and treatises by Mao and his forces during the so-called cultural revolution.

Of course CPC does not officially and explicitly uphold Han nationalism. However the official policy is achieving a ‘final stage of integration’ where the nationalities should overcome their mutual alienation. Tim Oakes points out how this process effectively promotes Han superiority:

What would bring about this crystallization of the ‘collective body of the Chinese people’, the zhonghua minzu, was socialist modernization and cultural development, and in these the Han were the clear leaders.[33]

In a totalitarian state where such racio-cultural supremacy gets a theoretical justification, devaluing of the humanity of others is blatant. In 1957, Zhou Enlai proclaimed:

Without mutual assistance, especially assistance from the Han people, the minority peoples will find it difficult to make significant progress on their own.[34]

Educationists MacPherson and Beckett point out that such perceptions actively propagated by Marxist state, make ordinary Han Chinese think of Tibetians as a burden. This reflects exactly the sentiments expressed by Marx towards ‘Croats, Pandurs, Czechs and similar scum’, who he found deserving ‘annihilation’ for being thankless against the ‘civilizing mission’ of Germany. MacPherson & Beckett point out Han racism and Marxism reinforce each other:

This ethnic arrogance (Han chauvinism) is reinforced in the Marxist theory of progress by legitimating the subjugation of minorities to Han dominance in the name of “progress”.[35]

The destruction of monasteries in Tibet, devaluing of Tibetian culture and religion, ethnic cleansing of Tibetians and creation of Han settlements by Chinese State as alleged by Tibetians – all these are accepted methodologies in Marxist creed.  In conclusion, Marxism is as dangerous and evil as Nazism if not more, for Nazism is visibly evil, Marxism camouflages its evil with the promise of an Utopia but sledom does one know that the Utopia Marxism promises necessitates countless humans massacred on its way up and in the end when the doors of Utopia shut behind the pilgrim-revolutionary he finds himself not in a socialist heaven but deep inside the womb of a totalitarian hell.     [36]

 (References in the next page)

Aravindan Neelakandan

Co-author of acclaimed book "Breaking India", Aravindan Neelakandan has worked for the past decade with an NGO in Tamil Nadu serving marginalized rural communities in sustainable agriculture. He is also a popular science writer in Tamil and is part of the editorial team of highly popular Tamil web portal www.tamilhindu.com.

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  • Sandeep S

    “Though he criticizes Christians for becoming like Jews, he considers Christianity to be ‘too noble-minded, too spiritualistic’ to deal with the problem which it had transferred to the heavens”

    Marx was a christian apologist.

    Read what he wrote for NY times in 1857. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/04/10.htm

    “Meanwhile, in China, the smothered fires of hatred kindled against the English during the opium war have burst into a flame of animosity which no tenders of peace and friendship will be very likely to quench. For the sake of Christian and commercial intercourse with China, it is in the highest degree desirable that we should keep out of this quarrel, and that the Chinese should not be led to regard all the nations of the Western World as united in a conspiracy against them.”

  • http://centreright.in/category/commentators/ibn-al-dunya/ Ibn al-Dunya

    I can’t say this strongly enough, but – NO! This is a great example of an article that is well-researched and largely accurate but whose conclusions I vehemently disagree with. How can one disagree with an accurate article, you ask? Well, here is how:

    1. There is a difference between Marx and Marxism. Marxism IS indeed that cesspit of internationalism and egalitarianism (the vanguard concept was Leninist, mind) that we all know and love. Marx, however, was a 19th century European with all the foibles that have been pointed out by this article. He was not the only one with such beliefs – Neitzsche is a well-known anti-semite, but prejudice existed in most people in that era, be it against blacks, Jews, Christians, or non-Europeans. Very few people, mostly the Frühromantiker (because national chauvinism started creeping in by the Hochromantiker) were somewhat open-minded as we see it today. A person is a product of the times and judging them by later mores is simply the condescension of posterity.

    2. Marxism was – is – bloody. But what’s new about that? What part of workers throwing off chains and revolution sounded peaceful? Marx viewed History as a struggle, and if the perfect system that took care of all men, not just rich ones, needed to be fought for, it was worth the blood. better than dying for meaningless ideas like the Pope or country.

    3.  Marx saw everything in an economic lens, meaning, what we now call the Third World was seen as backward only because it had not achieved the economic stages of development that would make it ripe for socialism. The same was true of the Slavs, though the antisemitism and long history between the Germans and the Slavs may have played a role too. This does not change Marxism in any way. The so-called civilisational bias that has been pointed to is his reaction to a society that was still trapped in feudalistic practices. Europe was better because it was at least capitalist. Marx praises capitalism as it was essential in destroying feudalism…but now capitalism must make way for socialism. That was his hierarchy, not black-brown-white.

    All this said, I am glad to see CRI posting some well-researched and well-written articles. It is good to get the juices flowing, cause intelligent debate, and even some thinking…the heresy!

  • http://twitter.com/ganpat73 munusamy ganapathy

     quoting ambedkar from annhilation of caste

    http://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/mmt/ambedkar/web/index.html1: The recent [constitutional]
    discussion about the excluded and partially included areas has served
    to draw attention to the position of what are called the aboriginal tribes
    in India. They number about 13 millions, if not more. Apart from the
    question of whether their exclusion from the new Constitution is proper
    or improper, the fact still remains that these aborigines have remained
    in their primitive uncivilized state in a land which boasts of a
    civilization thousands of years old. Not only are they not civilized,
    but some of them follow pursuits which have led to their being classified as criminals.

    [2:] Thirteen millions of people living in
    the midst of civilization are still in a savage state, and are leading
    the life of hereditary criminals!! But the Hindus
    have never felt ashamed of it. This is a phenomenon which in my view is
    quite unparalleled. What is the cause of this shameful state of
    affairs? Why has no attempt been made to civilize these aborigines and
    to lead them to take to a more honourable way of making a living?

    [3:] The Hindus
    will probably seek to account for this savage state of the aborigines
    by attributing to them congenital stupidity. They will probably not
    admit that the aborigines have remained savages because they had made no
    effort to civilize them, to give them medical aid, to reform them, to
    make them good citizens. But supposing a Hindu wished to do what the Christian missionary
    is doing for these aborigines, could he have done it? I submit not.
    Civilizing the aborigines means adopting them as your own, living in
    their midst, and cultivating fellow-feeling—in short, loving them. How
    is it possible for a Hindu to do this? His whole life is one anxious
    effort to preserve his caste. Caste is his precious possession which he
    must save at any cost. He cannot consent to lose it by establishing
    contact with the aborigines, the remnants of the hateful Anaryas of the Vedic days.   quoting this we can say argue how prejudiced ambedkar was against the tribals.he considers them as uncivilized.and he doesnt live faroff as marx to form a opinion based on hearsay.  the idea of accepting and respecting all cultures/diets/habits  is fairly new and the superiority of british was a fact courtesy its victories.   beleivers of allopathy have to trash the native practises of ayurveda or unani to get people follow allopathy which is superior in saving lives.there is no hatred but welfare of the people when one trashes native beleifs in preventing polio or family planning as a better alternative is available.its neither racist or xenophobic but preference for a effective method to help the downtrodden

                         

  • StPTBarnum

    Enter Marx.

    What Marx suggested is that instead of private ownership of slaves, the State will become owner of labour. That is communism. Cut out the hundreds of pages of verbiage.

    Finally this what it means.

    The concentration of capital remains. A 1% control the economy in capitalism, Socialism, Communism and in Feudalism also.

    The thing that will change is which faction will control. The Capitalist 1% or the Communist 1%.

    Now look at the historical context.

    By 1805, it was clear to Spain, Britain and France that they will not be
    able to take back Haiti from rebel slaves. Haiti, the richest slave colony in the world at that
    time.

    Reverberations of Haiti’s War of Independence started getting felt across Europe,
    USA and South America. In the next 25 years, Spain and Portugal lost
    most of their colonies in South America.

    Haiti helped Simon Bolivar in achieving this.

    In 1830s Caribbean islands of West Indies, Cuba, started seeing renewed slave rebellions.

    USA saw more than 200 violent incidents of slave revolts.

    Like Marx says, without slavery Western economies were doomed.

    With loot from India, South America, Europe started on life without
    slaves – with the age of machines, now known as the Industrial Revolution.

    Capitalism, which was based on wide usage of slave labour was in its death
    throes. In such a scenario, the West needed a new political system.

    Marx provided that.

  • StPTBarnum

    Christ didn’t ask Christians to kill millions to spread Christianity. Islam: Religion of peace. Marx:Not a Marxist!

    When will we stop this silly glorification?

  • http://centreright.in/category/commentators/ibn-al-dunya/ Ibn al-Dunya

    Of course. The US became the world’s largest economy based on slave labour. Thank G-d for slave labour during the two world wars, or they would never have won!

  • http://centreright.in/category/commentators/ibn-al-dunya/ Ibn al-Dunya

    Not sure where Christ and Islam got into the discussion (if this is one even), but Marx was quite anti-religion…all religions. BTW, who are you glorifying? You speak in riddles!

  • http://twitter.com/pulki_bushu Pulakesh Upadhyaya

    Marx saw everything from an economic lens is probably wrong. He tried to fit in his pre-existent individual biases, and gave them some  sort of an economic and ideological framework.

  • http://centreright.in/category/commentators/ibn-al-dunya/ Ibn al-Dunya

    I could just as easily say that you want to see Marx as racist and are fitting him into your “pre-existing individual biases” :-)

    You are right that intent is very hard to prove (but not impossible) in history. But no biography, and certainly not in his writings is there a sense of racism beyond a disdain for those who have not made themselves ready for socialism. In fact, he says the impotence of the English system is rooted in its racism towards the Irish…were they genuinely socialist, they would not have such stupid notions and unite with their Irish brethren to challenge their capitalist overlords.

    I would be very surprised if Marx was not at least slightly smug about his European-ness…such were the times. Even those who welcomed non-European ideas felt that those civilisations had declined (which has some merit). But there is a difference between a sense of smugness deriving from political superiority and racial theory.

  • http://centreright.in/category/commentators/ibn-al-dunya/ Ibn al-Dunya

    I could just as easily say that you want to see Marx as racist and are fitting him into your “pre-existing individual biases” :-)

    You are right that intent is very hard to prove (but not impossible) in history. But no biography, and certainly not in his writings is there a sense of racism beyond a disdain for those who have not made themselves ready for socialism. In fact, he says the impotence of the English system is rooted in its racism towards the Irish…were they genuinely socialist, they would not have such stupid notions and unite with their Irish brethren to challenge their capitalist overlords.

    I would be very surprised if Marx was not at least slightly smug about his European-ness…such were the times. Even those who welcomed non-European ideas felt that those civilisations had declined (which has some merit). But there is a difference between a sense of smugness deriving from political superiority and racial theory.

  • Sandeep S

     @Duniya
    “but Marx was quite anti-religion…all religions”

    Yet he writes in 1857 like this – “For the sake of Christian and commercial intercourse with China”

    The gOD of the Marxist religion himself speaks for ONLY one GOD as well as Comm. intercourse. See how simple it is!! ( note the common word ‘COMM’ )

  • http://centreright.in/category/commentators/ibn-al-dunya/ Ibn al-Dunya

    I don’t know the context of the quote, so I cannot say for sure. From the whole piece, however, it does not sound like a defence of Christianity but more like exposing the hypocrisy of England’s Christianity in her dealings with China. 

    It smells fishy also for the simple reason that there are FAR more quotes against Christianity from Marx than for. The context for writing is quite important – Das Kapital was his critique of European society, but he was paid to write the Communist Manifesto by some British communists calling themselves “The League of the Just.”

  • sb_1

    Thanks to Ibn al-Dunya and Munusamy Ganapathy for providing textbook examples of the mindset described in this very essay by Neelakandan when he writes:

    “There is a considerable section of critics of Marxism who would say thus:what Marxism conceptualized was worthy of dreaming and striving for… it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all…a grand failed experiment but it nevertheless it is a goal aimed at common goodness unlike the evil Nazi idea of future…is it not?”

    and

    “But a third-world Marxist scholar would tell you, nevertheless despite their conditioning by the time and clime they lived in, Marx and Engels gave us tools to understand history and society with which we can understand humanity and its development scientifically. Individual pathos of scientists like Darwin or Einstein seldom come in our way of accepting their scientific discoveries and the same rule applies to Marxism – the science of human society”

    You (Ibn al-Duniya) claim to disagree with the essay’s conclusions, yet your comments are the very embodiment of the false dichotomy the author sets out to discredit as his stated premise!

    You attempt to draw the readers’ attention away from the essay, and distract them with circular reasoning. However, it’s apologists and spin doctors like you that the essay successfully exposes. Instead of expressing your frustration in the guise of “creating intelligent debate”, why not just post ‘no you’re wrong coz I said so’ or even better ‘waaaaaaaaah’ (baby crying)?

  • http://centreright.in/category/commentators/ibn-al-dunya/ Ibn al-Dunya

    Perhaps if you say something comprehensible, I might consider responding…might. I don’t do boors.

  • sb_1

    why not just post “waaaah” (baby crying)?

  • http://twitter.com/pulki_bushu Pulakesh Upadhyaya

    I do not mean racist biases, I mean he pursued only one line of thought, created a framework and tried very hard to fit things into the already created framework .

  • http://centreright.in/category/commentators/ibn-al-dunya/ Ibn al-Dunya

    Ah. With that, I agree completely. In fact, his followers have tried to do what you say even more than Marx himself did, reducing the entire dialectic to a comedy at best and a farce at worst.

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