RUSSIA AS EUROPE'S OTHER Iver B. Neumann European ...

century. 11 By 1838, however, Lord Palmerston thought he could see the longawaited
progressive element of the middle class emerging:
But the extention of education and the increase of intellectual activity of
the people of commerce and of wealth would necessarily be fatal to the
blind obedience of such multitudes of men of various habits and religions
to the will of an individual which now constitutes so important an element
of Russian power and greatness. No person can suppose that if the
different provinces were to become rich, educated and civilised, the
present system of Gov’t would long continue - conflicting interests would
arise, then when they required would cease to be disposed to act as mere
machines of his [the tsar’s] bidding. 12
If conservative constructions of Russia stressed how, as a shard of a broken
Europe, it could be held up as a mirror in which Europe could find back to
itself, and liberal constructions stressed how Russia was on its way to becoming
more of the European Same, then radicals were perhaps even more insistent on
using Russia as a foil to further their own identity politics.
In his study of how European socialists saw Russia, Bruno Naarden notes that
in 1864, Marx referred to Russia in the first declaration of principles for the
First International as ’that barbarous power, whose head is at St Petersburg and
whose hands are in every cabinet in Europe’ (quoted in Naarden 1992: 49).
Crucially, he then goes on to demonstrate the working of what he in no
uncertain terms refers to as ’Marx’s scheme of giving greater unity to the
extremely heterogeneous and varied company of the First International by
making use of the anti-Russian feelings which dominated public opinion in
England’ (Naarden 1992: 50).
This attempt, which was part of the central clash between Marxian and
Proudhonian groups, failed, not least because Proudhon and his followers were
much more positive towards Russia than was Marx. And yet, Proudhon’s
constructions of Russia were not very different from the authorised liberal
version. Instructively, he reacted to Russia’s intervention to suppress the
Hungarian revolution in 1849 by congratulating the Hungarians for their attempt
to ’save the Slavs and all of Europe from the conquest of the Cossacks’ (quoted
in Cadot 1967: 511). A lengthy Engels quote from 1890 which assessed Russia’s
11 Brennan (1992) ascribes the same view to Guillaume Reynal(?Reynal’), and mentions
that Chevalier de Corberon saw the existence of two peoples in Russia.
12 Broadlands Manuscripts, Southhampton University, GC/RU/929-943, Palmerston to
Russell, 8 October 1938. I thank Lee Roeckell fordirecting me to this source.
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