Clause 9 of the Russian Marxists’ Programme, which deals with the right of nations to self-determination, has (as we have already pointed out in Prosveshcheniye)[1] given rise lately to a crusade on the part of the opportunists. The Russian liquidator Semkovsky, in the St. Petersburg liquidationist newspaper, and the Bundist Liebman and the Ukrainian nationalist-socialist Yurkevich in their respective periodicals have violently attacked this clause and treated it with supreme contempt. There is no doubt that this campaign of a motley array of opportunists against our Marxist Programme is closely connected with present-day nationalist vacillations in general. Hence we consider a detailed examination of this question timely. We would mention, in passing, that none of the opportunists named above has offered a single argument of his own; they all merely repeat what Rosa Luxemburg said in her lengthy Polish article of 1908-09, “The National Question and Autonomy”. In our exposition we shall deal mainly with the “original” arguments of this last-named author.
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See “Critical Remarks on the National Question”. – Ed.