Lenin on the national question: 'an eternal treasure of mankind'

Wellred Books is proud to announce the third installment of Lenin’s Selected Writings – On the National Question. Recent events, from the war in Ukraine to the slaughter in Palestine, have thrust unresolved national questions around the globe to the fore. It is vital for revolutionary communists to be able to navigate these often complex questions. We publish here Jorge Martín’s new introduction to the volume. Get your copy from Wellred Books today!

Lenin’s writings on the national question are an excellent example of how the Bolsheviks navigated the national question with the utmost flexibility. In so doing they succeeded in uniting the workers and peasants of the many nationalities and oppressed peoples of the Russian empire – the “prison house of nations” as Lenin referred to it – and carrying out the October Revolution of 1917.

This new book is a fantastic compilation of over 40 texts, including letters, timelines and maps, that trace the key stages in Lenin’s development of the Marxist position on the national question. They include the debates with Rosa Luxemburg in the famous text The Right of Nations to Self-Determination, through the struggle against the middle-class nationalist prejudices of the Jewish Bund, to the October Revolution and beyond, in dealing with the practical tasks of the newly-formed Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

This edition, produced by Wellred Books, contains material that has never before been produced in English, including the Resolutions Adopted at the International Socialist Workers and Trade Union Congress, London, 1896.

We are proud to publish the brand new introduction to this volume by Jorge Martín below.

"Whatever may be the further destiny of the Soviet Union, the national policy of Lenin will find its place amongst the eternal treasures of mankind."

– Leon Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution^[1]

The Russian Empire was described by Lenin as a prison house of nations. According to the last Russian census prior to the 1917 Revolution, just 43 per cent of the inhabitants of the Russian Empire were Great Russians, and they were concentrated in a few areas. In other words, the dominant national group in the bureaucracy of the tsarist empire was not a majority of the population.

Oppressed national groups were concentrated in the borderlands, at the farther reaches of the Russian empire. Some had clearly established national characteristics, while others, including nomadic tribes, still had their own identity, but could not be described as national groups.

The Russian Empire was described by Lenin as a prison house of nations / Image: Wellred Books

All these different national and tribal groups were at different levels of economic development. Some of the oppressed nationalities were actually on a higher level of cultural and economic development than their oppressors. This was certainly the case with the Finns and the Poles. Others had not yet emerged from the nomadic state, or had only recently become sedentary. As a result, they had different levels of development of their national consciousness.

The different aspects of the national question confronting the Russian Marxist movement were further complicated by the fact that some of these national groups which existed within the Russian Empire also had members of the same group living outside of the Empire. Not only this, but also, over a long period of time, some of these national groups had parts of their population emigrating to other parts of the Russian Empire, outside of their regions of origin. The Russian Empire had a deliberate policy of sending Great Russian colonists to go and settle in some of the Central Asian lands which were populated by other groups.

The development of industry in the Russian Empire also provoked the emigration of peasants into newly created industrial hotspots (in St. Petersburg, Baku, the Donbas coal mines, etc.) where they became proletarianised. In some cases this meant the migration of Russian workers into other nationalities, or the mixing up of workers from different national groups. Often, ‘foreign’ workers became dominant in the working class of oppressed nationalities.

So the national question in the Russian Empire was extremely complicated. It was a disintegrating factor. The revolutionary party had to get it right if it wanted to carry out a successful revolution in Russia. This problem affected mainly the peasant and petty-bourgeois masses, which were a majority of the population at that time. It was also closely linked to the agrarian question.

Leon Trotsky points out in his History of the Russian Revolution that it was the correct policy of the Bolshevik Party on this question “which in the long run guaranteed its victory”.^[2]

What was this policy and what did it mean in practice?

Most bourgeois historians of the Russian Revolution have shown their complete inability to understand this policy, and therefore they draw completely wrong conclusions from it. Historians such as Richard Pipes, for instance, claim that the Bolshevik policy towards the national question was cynical. He argues that during the struggle against the tsarist autocracy they promised the right of self-determination, as a ruse to get their support, but as soon as they came to power they implemented a policy of centralisation against the rights of different national groups. This is completely wrong, and it shows the inability of bourgeois historians to understand the dialectical approach Lenin had to this question.

Lenin’s approach to the national question can be summed up in six different features:

First of all, a defence of the democratic right of the nationalities to self-determination, meaning above all the right to set up an independent country.

Second, that this was in order to guarantee the unity of the working class and remove any national animosity amongst workers of different nationalities.

Third, the strictest unity within the party, which meant opposition to any attempt to organise it along federal, national lines.

Fourth, the recognition that there is a difference between the nationalism of the oppressor nation and the nationalism of the oppressed nation (which contains a democratic and revolutionary kernel).

Fifth, the need for the independence of the working class from the petty-bourgeois nationalists.

Sixth, that the national question, being a democratic question, must always be subordinated to the class question.

Thus enunciated, these principles seem quite straightforward, but Lenin insisted that the national question was a concrete question and he always approached it in a dialectical manner, taking into account all the different aspects of a given national problem, its historical development, its relationship with the general interests of the working class movement, etc.

The Second Congress of the RSDLP, 1903

The general position of Marxism in regard to the rights of nations had been established in the decades previously. But it was at the Second Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party in 1903 that many of the issues were first approached in a concrete form.

Clause 9 of the party programme clearly recognised the “right of self-determination for all nations included within the bounds of the state” / Image: public domain

In particular, the discussions about Clause 7 (which became Clause 9 after the congress) of the programme and also regarding the position of the Jewish Bund within the party.

Clause 9 of the party programme clearly recognised the “right of self-determination for all nations included within the bounds of the state”, and by this it meant the right of nations to form their own independent country if they so wished. The party programme also recognised:

"Extensive local self-government; regional self-government for all localities which are distinguished by special conditions in respect of mode of life and make-up of the population."^[3]

It also addressed the question of language rights:

"Right of the population to receive education in their native language, to be ensured by provision of the schools needed for this purpose, at the expense of the state and the organs of self-government; the right of every citizen to express himself at meetings in his own language; use of the native language on an equal basis with the state language in all local, public and state institutions."^[4]

In Lenin’s view, the defence of the democratic rights of the oppressed nationalities was the only way to ensure the unity of the working class. The workers in the oppressed nations had to be reassured that the social-democrats (as the Marxists were known at the time) had nothing to do with the policy of national oppression carried out by the tsarist autocracy on behalf of the dominant Great-Russian nationality.

Party unity versus federalism

In Lenin’s view this meant that there should be one single Social-Democratic party, not separate parties for each national group united in a federation. In other words, that the Jewish social-democrats (known as the Bund), the Latvian social-democrats, the Ukrainian social-democrats, and so on, should all be part of one single united party, in common struggle against the tsarist autocracy.

Otto Bauer regarded the national question from the point of view of culture and language, and devised a complex system in which every citizen of the country would be able to freely join a ‘national association’ as an individual / Image: public domain

This led to a polemic with the Jewish Bund, who demanded the sole right to speak to and on behalf of the Jewish workers. The position they had adopted was that of ‘cultural-national autonomy’ put forward by the Austro-Marxist^[5] Otto Bauer. He regarded the national question from the point of view of culture and language, and devised a complex system in which every citizen of the country would be able to freely join a ‘national association’ as an individual, regardless of where he or she lived. In practice, this was both a capitulation to petty-bourgeois nationalism and also a way to avoid a genuine revolutionary solution to the national question in the Austro-Hungarian empire.

Such an approach suited the Bund, as Jewish workers, while more concentrated in certain geographic areas, were spread across the Empire, without a national territory they could call their own. In fact, one of the fathers of the idea of ‘national cultural autonomy’ was the Bundist ideologist Vladimir Medem, in his 1904 essay ‘Social Democracy and the National Question’.

In arguing for the unity of the proletariat in one party Lenin explained that:

"[In] the struggle against the autocracy, the struggle against the bourgeoisie of Russia as a whole, we must act as a single and centralised militant organisation, have behind us the whole of the proletariat, without distinction of language or nationality, a proletariat whose unity is cemented by the continual joint solution of problems of theory and practice, of tactics and organisation; and we must not set up organisations that would march separately, each along its own track; we must not weaken the force of our offensive by breaking up into numerous independent political parties; we must not introduce estrangement and isolation and then have to heal an artificially implanted disease with the aid of these notorious ‘federation’ plasters."^[6]

The demand of the Bund for federal status within the RSDLP was rejected by all wings of the party. Lenin spoke against it, as did Martov and Trotsky. At Lenin’s insistence, this question was taken at the beginning of the proceedings but a final vote was not taken until the 27^th session. Only the five representatives from the Bund voted for their proposal and after losing the vote they walked out of the Congress.

In explaining the party programme on this question, Lenin insisted that the Bolsheviks were against nationalism. They were against all nationalism, both the nationalism of the oppressor nation and the nationalism of the oppressed nation. He explained that the Bolsheviks’ position was mainly a negative one: they were against any privileges for any nations and against all oppression.

This meant that they were against the privilege of the
oppressor nation, which at that point was the only one who had the right to form their own country, but they were also against any attempt of the bourgeois of the oppressed nation to acquire their own privileges.

The Bolsheviks did not adopt a preconceived position about the separation of any country. At one point, Lenin used the analogy with the right of divorce, which is a democratic right. If one of the two members of a couple wants to end the marriage, they have the right to do so, however this does not mean that in all instances we agitate for divorce.

Lenin explained that the right of self-determination is a democratic right, not a socialist right, and therefore the right of self-determination should always be subordinate to the labour question, that is, to the class question. Throughout the history of the Bolshevik Party, Lenin always explained that the defence of the right of self-determination was the best way to guarantee the unity of the working class. The unity of different nations within one single state will only be a voluntary union.

This position was approved at the party congress in 1903, but this article in the party programme, Clause 9, was to provoke lots of polemics over many years, even after the October Revolution.

The debate between Luxemburg and Lenin

First of all was the debate with the Polish Social Democrats, led by Rosa Luxemburg. The Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania (SDKPiL) sent two visitors to the 1903 Congress, with the aim of conducting discussions leading to unity between the parties. However, the Fourth Congress of the SDKPiL, earlier in the same year, had passed a resolution which put forward certain conditions for this unity to go ahead. One of those was to replace the clause of the party programme on the right of nations to self-determination “by a precise formula incapable of interpretation in a nationalist spirit” and “autonomy to be demanded for the Polish and Lithuanian provinces”.

While rejecting independence for Poland and Lithuania, Rosa Luxemburg nevertheless agreed with advocating their autonomy / Image: public domain

The programme commission discussed the question and kept the original formulation which read: “Right of self-determination for all nations included within the bounds of the state.” This was then adopted by the Congress. The two Polish delegates then left the congress making a statement to the effect that “unification will become possible only if” the congress adopted their wording of the clause, or if it left the question open for further discussion.

The position of the Polish social-democrats was then defended by Rosa Luxemburg in a series of articles in which she rejected the slogan of the right of nations to self-determination. She argued that in the epoch of imperialism this slogan could not be carried out, and that in any case it was the slogan of the bourgeois nationalists. Working-class socialists should instead stand for class unity, not separation. While rejecting independence for Poland and Lithuania, she nevertheless agreed with advocating their autonomy.

Lenin replied extensively to these arguments. To a certain extent it was understandable that Luxemburg, as a Polish social-democrat, would stress the need to not make any concession to the Polish bourgeois and petty-bourgeois nationalists, some of which attempted to give themselves a socialist colouring. Whether or not Polish social-democrats should argue for Polish independence or not was something which could be debated, according to concrete and specific circumstances.

However, Luxemburg and those who shared her views were demanding that the Russian Social-Democratic Party should not defend the right of nations to self-determination. That was wholly incorrect. Lenin said that the main task of the Great-Russian social-democrats was to fight against their own bourgeoisie and their own ruling class, which was guilty of oppressing the Poles and other nations, and therefore they had to guarantee and agitate for the right to self-determination. That was the only way to show the Polish workers and the Polish masses in general that the Russian social-democrats had nothing to do with the Great-Russian ruling class which was oppressing them.

The task of the Polish Social Democrats was slightly different. Their main task on the national question was to fight against the Polish bourgeois and petty bourgeois and against any attempt to put the national interests of Poland above the class interests of the Polish workers.

Imperialism and the ultra-left errors of Bukharin

Rosa Luxemburg’s polemic on this question was later taken up, in 1915, by a group around Nikolai Bukharin in the Russian party, who advocated a similar position. The Baugy Group, as it was known after the Swiss town where they were based in exile during the First World War, was composed of Bukharin, Georgy Pyatakov, Yevgenia Bosch and others. On this question they were also in agreement with Karl Radek, who had been involved in the Polish and German social-democratic movements.

In analysing imperialism and imperialist domination, Bukharin drew a series of ultra-left conclusions. From the general tendency towards state monopoly, militarism and the domination of the world by a few imperialist powers, he drew the conclusion that the party should abandon any agitation for the right of nations to self-determination and for democratic demands in general. He argued that these democratic demands could not be granted under capitalism and agitating for them would create false illusions amongst the workers. Under socialism, once the workers take power, these demands would be useless because they would have already been superseded. In 1915, in the ‘Theses on the National Question’ signed by Pyatakov, Bosch and Bukharin, they wrote:

"The slogan ‘self-determination of nations’ is first of all utopian, as it cannot be realised within the limits of capitalism. It is also harmful, as it is a slogan that sows illusions. In this respect it does not distinguish itself at all from the slogans of arbitration courts, disarmament, and so on which presuppose the possibility of so-called peaceful capitalism."

In opposing in general the slogan of the defence of the fatherland, which was correct, they abstracted themselves from the fact that there are oppressor nations and oppressed nations.

Lenin polemicised against them in a series of letters, describing them as “imperialist Economists”, in reference to the polemic against the Economists in 1902-03, who argued that the proletariat should not concern itself with political demands, just economic demands.

The Baugy Group, similarly, argued that the workers should not concern themselves with political activity, but should ‘simply’ concentrate on the taking of power. In reality their argument was against democratic demands in general. The ‘left-wing communists’, including Bukharin himself, made the same points in debates in the Russian party and in the Communist International after 1917.

In answering them, Lenin explained how the struggle for democratic demands and the use of democratic institutions, however limited they may be, is an indispensable part of the necessary agitation of the revolutionary party in winning over the working class masses and broader layers of the population to the perspective of taking power.

The Russian Revolution

The question of the democratic demands of the oppressed nationalities played an important role in the Russian Revolution, both in February and in October 1917. This was the case particularly in Ukraine and Finland, but also in Poland, Georgia and Central Asia. In 1916, for instance, there had been a mass uprising in Central Asia, mainly of the Kyrgyz and Kazakh Muslim peoples, against conscription into the war.

Less than ten days after the October Revolution, the Council of People’s Commissars, headed by Lenin, issued the ‘Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia’ / Image: public domain

In the period between February and October there was a lot of agitation again around this question, particularly in Ukraine, Poland and Finland. The Provisional Government was brought to power in February as a result of the abolition of tsarism and was meant to carry out the bourgeois-democratic revolution. But just as it was unable to carry out other democratic tasks, like land reform, a Constituent Assembly, etc., it did nothing to satisfy the national aspirations of the oppressed, even though the national democratic movement in most cases was also dominated by the bourgeois liberals.

Once the Bolsheviks took power, they immediately began rectifying this. Less than ten days after the October Revolution, the Council of People’s Commissars, headed by Lenin, issued the ‘Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia’ on 15 November 1917, which stated very clearly its defence of:

"The right of the peoples of Russia to free self-determination, even to the point of separation and the formation of an independent state."^[7]

This question, like all the others the Bolsheviks faced when coming to power, was not a simple, straightforward one. The national question and the national aspirations of the oppressed peoples became completely enmeshed in the question of foreign intervention and the civil war, with foreign imperialist powers cynically attempting to use the national aspirations of oppressed nationalities against the October Revolution and Soviet power.

Nevertheless, in the first few years of the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks fulfilled their promise to the oppressed nationalities and put into practise the principle of the right of nations to self-determination. Five independent republics were recognised, including Finland, Latvia, Ukraine and Georgia. In addition, seventeen different autonomous republics were created within the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR).

Finland

In Finland, the workers’ movement was very strong, even before 1917. The Social Democratic Party had won a majority in the regional parliament even before the February Revolution. The Provisional Government of Kerensky, however, made an alliance with the Finnish bourgeois against the workers’ parties and tried to suppress the movement. Within weeks of coming to power, on 18 December 1917, Lenin and the Bolsheviks recognised the independence of Finland, and by January 1918 there was a revolutionary uprising in Finland, in which the workers took power in the main cities.

Tragically, the leaders of the Social Democratic Party in Finland wanted to follow a parliamentary road to socialism, and instead of taking power, a lot of time was wasted in legalistic and democratic procedures. Meanwhile, the ruling class was organising to crush the workers’ organisations and destroy any semblance of democracy. They created the murderous White Guards, brought in Swedish volunteers and smashed the working class in a brutal civil war, in which by some estimates as many as 100,000 workers were killed.

By January 1918 there was a revolutionary uprising in Finland, in which the workers took power in the main cities / Image: public domain

In this situation, there was a discussion about the convenience of Soviet intervention to help the Finnish. Luxemburg was very critical of the Bolsheviks. She had opposed the right of nations to self-determination and now said that all its implementation had led to was the creation of counter-revolutionary bourgeois governments, which attempted to smash the working-class revolution:

"While Lenin and his comrades clearly expected that, as champions of national freedom even to the extent of ‘separation’, they would turn Finland, the Ukraine, Poland, Lithuania, the Baltic countries, the Caucasus, etc., into so many faithful allies of the Russian Revolution, we have instead witnessed the opposite spectacle. One after another, these ‘nations’ used the freshly granted freedom to ally themselves with German imperialism against the Russian Revolution as its mortal enemy, and, under German protection, to carry the banner of counter-revolution into Russia itself."^[8]

Lenin explained that this was not the case, that any attempt to deny national freedom to those oppressed nations by force would have been impossible. This would have been seen as a continuation of the oppression by Great Russian chauvinism under tsarism. By granting the oppressed nations their national democratic rights, the Bolsheviks were then in a better position to raise the common interests of workers and poor peasants against the petty bourgeois and bourgeois nationalists.

At the April conference in 1917, Lenin had said:

"Any Russian socialist who does not recognise Finland’s and Ukraine’s right to freedom will degenerate into a chauvinist."^[9]

He was replying to Pyatakov and Dzerzhinsky, who argued against the right of self-determination and put the “hopelessly muddled” slogan of “no borders” as an alternative.

In Lenin’s view, there was no contradiction between recognising the right of self-determination, which was necessary, and the workers’ state coming to the aid of workers in other countries, even militarily. The only reason the Bolsheviks did not intervene militarily in Finland to help the Finnish workers was because they did not have the means to do so. The old tsarist army had collapsed at the end of the First World War, millions of peasants had gone back to the land, the masses were exhausted and did not want to fight any more wars. The Bolsheviks were still at war with Germany and trying to hold that front. Had they had the military forces to do so they would not have hesitated in coming to the aid of the Finnish workers.

Ukraine

In the case of Ukraine, the situation was further complicated. While Lenin always insisted that Ukraine was one of the countries which could exercise its right to self-determination, there was strong opposition to that idea from within the party, including prominent Bolshevik leaders in Ukraine such as Pyatakov, who were ultra-left on this question, as we have seen.

In the Donbas, an industrial mining area in the southeast of Ukraine, the base of the local Bolsheviks was mainly amongst mineworkers, who were from Russian and other nationalities which had emigrated to this industrially rich area to work. Many of these industrial and mineworkers were fiercely opposed to Ukrainian nationalism and opposed the right of self-determination.

Ukraine had never really existed as an independent country. It was composed of different national groups, and its territory had also been divided between different countries over a period of time. Among the most important social classes in the cities, i.e. the workers, the merchants, the petty bourgeois and so on, Ukrainian speakers were a small minority. Most of the city dwellers were either Great Russian, Jewish or Polish.

Ukrainian speakers were mostly concentrated in the countryside among the peasants. The national movement had an influence mostly or exclusively amongst a layer of petty-bourgeois intellectuals. After the February Revolution, the Ukrainian Central Rada was established, a bourgeois Ukrainian regional government. However, at the same time there was a powerful workers’ movement in the industrial centres, in Kharkov, Odessa, Kiev and the Donbas.

On 20 November 1917, after the taking of power by the Soviets in Russia, a Ukrainian People’s Republic was declared, led by petty-bourgeois and bourgeois nationalists, but at this stage it did not yet declare independence.

In December, Lenin and the Soviets issued the ‘Manifesto to the Ukrainian People with an Ultimatum to the Ukrainian Rada’ in which they reaffirmed the principle of self-determination and said they recognised the Ukrainian People’s Republic and its right to secede or enter into a treaty with Russia, as they had done in the case of Finland. They also asked the Ukrainian People’s Republic for clarification on a series of questions: about the disorganisation of the front with Germany, the Rada’s collaboration with the reactionary rising of the Cadets and the recognition of the soviets in existence in Ukraine. They also asked the Ukrainian People’s Republic to clarify their position on the activities of the counter-revolutionary armies of Kornilov and Kaledin in Ukraine. The Rada rejected the ultimatum on 20 December 1917. On 22 January 1918, Ukraine declared independence.

Simultaneously, the All-Ukrainian Congress of the Soviets in Kharkov declared the Ukrainian People’s Republic of Soviets. Starting in Kharkov, which was an industrial centre, they marched all the way to Kiev and in the space of a few weeks established a Soviet government in Ukraine. The soviets gained a lot of support also from the peasantry, which was mainly Ukrainian-speaking, because of their agrarian policy.

However, this Soviet government only lasted a few weeks. The young Soviet Republic was still at war with Germany. During the peace negotiations in Brest-Litovsk, while the Bolsheviks were trying to buy time, the Germans advanced and took over Ukraine. They established a German puppet government called the Hetmanate. Later, when the Germans withdrew, the Rada was re-established, this time under the protection and as a puppet government of French imperialism.

During the peace negotiations in Brest-Litovsk, while the Bolsheviks were trying to buy time, the Germans advanced and took over Ukraine / Image: public domain

This period showed in practice that Ukraine could exist as an independent country only in the form of a workers state along the lines of Soviet Russia. All other so-called independent Ukrainian governments were in reality puppets of different imperialist powers.

In Ukraine, Soviet power faced additional difficulties. The imperialist war had specific features in Ukraine, as did the civil war, which to a certain extent was a continuation of the former. Between 1919 and 1920, Ukraine was one of the main theatres of the civil war. This was not just a civil war between the Red and White armies. In Ukraine there were also the Greens, Makhnovite^[10] troops which fought at different times on different sides of the civil war. There were also a number of Ukrainian-based communist groups. For a short period of time, there was also a Soviet Republic in the South East: the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic. For two years the situation was extremely confused, with the class struggle and the national struggle completely overlapping each other.

This was not the end of the problems in Ukraine. When the civil war finished in 1921, the first head of the Ukrainian Soviet government was Pyatakov, who was ultra-left on the national question. He not only had a completely careless attitude in relation to the national question in Ukraine, he also had a very ultra-left policy on the agrarian question as well, which alienated many from the middle layers of the peasantry.

After a year, Pyatakov was replaced by Rakovsky, the Balkan internationalist. Initially, he also had a wrong position on the national question. He was very strongly influenced by his background in the Balkans where he had correctly defended the slogan of a Balkan Socialist Federation. As a result, he did not pay much attention to the concrete features of the national question in Ukraine. In effect, he had a very abstract internationalist position, which in practice led to a campaign of Russification in Ukraine.

Lenin was horrified by this. If one reads the writings of Lenin between 1918 and 1922 in relation to Ukraine, you will see that he had an extremely careful approach to the Ukrainian national question. In order to reverse the damage that had been done, he went as far as making some concessions to those who were leaning towards Ukrainian nationalism.

For instance, in Ukraine the left wing of the Ukrainian Party of Socialist-Revolutionaries, known as the Borotbists after the name of their central organ, Borotba (Struggle), wanted to join the Communist Party. In the discussions about the fusion, there were three different positions. One section wanted the Ukrainian Communist Party to be part of the Russian Communist Party. Others said the Ukrainian Communist Party should be separate from the Russian party and affiliate directly to the Communist International. There were others who argued that not only the Communist Party should be independent but that Ukraine should be independent and should not be a part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.

In this debate, Lenin showed his very careful approach to the national question. He insisted on the unity of the working class, but at the same time said that questions of demarcation of borders and the relative degree of autonomy of the party were not questions of principle but should be decided amicably within the Ukrainian party. He said:

"If a Great-Russian communist insists upon the amalgamation of the Ukraine with Russia, Ukrainians might easily suspect him of advocating this policy not from the motive of uniting the proletarians in the fight against capital but because of the prejudices of the old Great-Russian nationalism of imperialism.

"Such mistrust is natural and to a certain degree inevitable and legitimate, because the Great Russians under the yoke of landowners and capitalists had for centuries imbibed the shameful and disgusting prejudices of Great-Russian chauvinism.

"If a Ukrainian communist insists upon the unconditional state independence of the Ukraine he lays himself open to the suspicion that he is supporting this policy not because of the temporary interest of the Ukrainian workers and peasants in the struggle against the yoke of capital, but on account of the petty-bourgeois national prejudices of the small owner."^[11]

In making these observations, Lenin’s main concern was the preservation of the unity of the working class:

"He who undermines the unity and closest alliance between the Great-Russian and Ukrainian workers and peasants is helping the Kolchaks, the Denikins,^[12] the capitalist bandits of all countries. Consequently, we Great-Russian communists must repress with the utmost severity the slightest manifestation in our midst of Great-Russian nationalism, for such manifestations, which are a betrayal of communism in general, cause the gravest harm by dividing us from our Ukrainian comrades and thus playing into the hands of Denikin and his regime."^[13]

His conclusion was that concessions were necessary on the part of Great-Russian communists:

"Consequently, we Great-Russian communists must make concessions when there are differences with the Ukrainian Bolshevik communists and Borotbists and these differences concern the state independence of the Ukraine, the forms of her alliance with Russia, and the national question in general."^[14]

This sums up clearly the whole of Lenin’s position in a practical, concrete example.

In November 1919, when the Red Army entered Ukraine, Trotsky issued an order to the troops which had exactly the same approach:

"The Ukraine is the land of the Ukrainian workers and working peasants. They alone have the right to rule in Ukraine, to govern it and to build a new life in it. Keep this firmly in mind: your task is not to conquer the Ukraine but to liberate it. When the reactionary bands of Denikin have been smashed the working people of the liberated Ukraine will themselves decide on what terms they are to live with Soviet Russia. Long live the free and independent Soviet Ukraine."^[15]

Here we see the dialectical character of the approach the Bolsheviks had to the national question when in power. At the same time that the Soviet troops were entering Ukraine to fight the counter-revolution, they were advocating a free Soviet Ukraine to decide for itself what relations it should have with Soviet Russia.

The debate at the Eighth Congress of the RCP(B), 1919

Contrary to what the ultra-lefts imagined, the national question, like any other democratic question, is not automatically resolved the day after the taking of power by the workers. On the contrary, it takes a very long time and requires the development of the material conditions for all the national prejudices and chauvinism to be eradicated, including the prejudices of an oppressor nation. This applies equally to the struggle for the liberation of women and to the struggle against the influence of religion.

This debate about the right of nations to self-determination did not finish with the October Revolution. The ‘left-wing’ communists continued to argue against self-determination at the Eighth Party Congress in 1919. Ironically, many of those arguing against the rights of oppressed nations came from oppressed nationalities themselves, including Georgians and Ukrainians.

Pyatakov, who at the time of the Congress was the secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine, argued along the same lines that Luxemburg had a year earlier:

"The slogan ‘the right of nations to self-determination’ which our party has held to from time immemorial, has shown itself in practise, when it comes to the question of the socialist revolution, to be a slogan which is the rallying point for all counter-revolutionary forces."^[16]

Bukharin argued that the slogan was anachronistic in the period of the transition to socialism, and proposed an amendment to the party programme which said that the right of self-determination should be recognised as the self-determination “of the toiling masses”, a formulation which he had borrowed from Joseph Stalin.

Lenin argued against this, and explained that the right of self-determination is a democratic right, not a socialist right and therefore affects the whole nation. You cannot simply decree the classes within a nation out of existence. He stressed that there should be absolutely no hint that the Bolsheviks intended to impose the soviet system by military force onto other peoples, or that they did not respect the right of each nation to decide their own future.

Military intervention?

In 1920, the issue of self-determination and military intervention was posed concretely in Poland. After the outbreak of the German Revolution in November 1918, the Bolsheviks repudiated the Brest-Litovsk agreement and were able to advance westward into the territories which had been abandoned by the German troops. Meanwhile, the Polish bourgeois nationalists, led by Józef Piłsudski, wanted to ensure the maximum territorial extension for Poland as well as domination over its neighbours in Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania, amongst others.

The Polish bourgeois nationalists, led by Józef Piłsudski, wanted to ensure the maximum territorial extension for Poland as well as domination over its neighbours / Image: public domain

In April 1920, the forces of the reactionary Polish nationalist Piłsudski allied with the Ukrainian People’s Republic of Simon Petliura and launched an offensive on Kyiv. The Polish invasion of Ukraine and occupation of Kyiv had the effect of pushing the Ukrainian masses towards the Soviets. Piłsudski’s forces were defeated and the Red Army started a rapid counter-offensive.

At this point there was a discussion among the Bolsheviks about whether to take advantage of this to continue chasing the reactionary Polish army all the way to Warsaw and help the Polish workers take power. The idea was that the Red Army advance would provoke or accelerate a rising of the Polish workers and peasants.

The advance of the Red Army was stopped, and the forces led by Tukhachevsky were defeated in the battle of Warsaw. For reasons of personal prestige, forces under the political command of Stalin refused direct orders to go to the aid of the Red Army advancing towards Warsaw and instead concentrated on a failed attempt at taking Lviv, which did not help matters.

More importantly, the rhythm and needs of the military offensive did not coincide with the rhythms of the class struggle and the advances in consciousness. The Polish masses were not ready. The question here was not that military intervention was ruled out as a matter of principle, but rather that one cannot impose Soviet power by the force of military intervention, when the conditions are not there. The impetus has to come from within, there has to be a genuine uprising of the workers and peasants. Only once that has happened, does the Soviet power in a neighbouring country have the right and the duty to help the workers in that country.

Central Asia

Central Asia was a completely different area. Most of the peoples and national groups in this region were extremely backward, some of them nomadic. Most of them did not have a written language, and the national movement in many of these places took place under the flag of Islam and even pan-Islamism or pan-Turkism.

Here, as well as in the Caucasus during the civil war, the Bolsheviks allied themselves as far as possible with the progressive modernising intelligentsia which existed in all these nationalities. In some cases these national movements were won over to the ideas of Bolshevism and became incorporated into the Communist Party. Enormous progress was made in these regions from the point of view of national development.

The Bolsheviks proceeded in a very cautious way. Part of the domination of the Russian Empire over these peoples was expressed in the question of religion, language and the script in which language was to be written. The tsarist empire imposed the Russian Orthodox Church, and oppressed other denominations and religions, like the Armenian Church and Islam. In several cases, the Cyrillic script was imposed where bourgeois nationalists and progressive reformers in these nationalities were fighting for the restoration of the Arabic script in the writing of their languages.

The Bolsheviks reversed this policy completely. They allowed freedom of religion. They returned land and buildings that had been expropriated from the mosques. Uthman’s Quran, a holy relic written possibly as far back as the seventh century, had been taken to the Imperial Library in St. Petersburg after the tsarist conquest of Samarkand. The Bolsheviks handed custodianship of it over to the All-Russian Muslim Council, located in Ufa (Bashkortostan, Russia), as an expression of this position.

On 24 November 1917 the Soviet government issued an ‘Appeal to the Muslims of Russia and the East’, which said:

"Moslems of Russia, Tatars of the Volga and the Crimea, Kyrghyz and Sarts of Siberia and Turkestan, Turks and Tatars of Transcaucasia, Chechens and mountain Cossacks! All you, whose mosques and shrines have been destroyed, whose faith and customs have been violated by the tsars and oppressors of Russia! Henceforward your beliefs and customs, your national and cultural institutions, are declared free and inviolable! Build your national life freely and without hindrance. It is your right. Know that your rights, like those of all the peoples of Russia, will be protected by the might of the revolution, by the Councils of Workers’, Soldiers’ and Peasants’ Deputies!"^[17]

The general progress of the development of the national culture and identity of these peoples was extraordinary.

The Bolsheviks proposed a school language policy, according to which in every school where there were twenty-five children in any age group who were speakers of one particular language, they should be taught in their own language, and this applied not only in the region of origin of this national group, but anywhere where they were settled. The actual implementation of this school language policy was curtailed by material and economic factors, but the intention was clear. By 1924, printing of books, textbooks and newspapers was being carried out in twenty-four different languages in the Soviet Union.

There was also a big debate about the question of the script in which the languages should be written. Lenin and Lunacharsky argued in favour of transforming all languages in Russia into a Latin script. Kemal Atatürk later on took the same position in Turkey, and for the same reasons: in order to modernise the country and bring it closer to the general current of world cultural development.

But in this question, like in many other questions pertaining to culture and education, Lenin did not impose his criteria on anyone. The decision should be taken by the people affected themselves. Many of the Central Asian peoples were Muslim and decided to adopt a simplified version of the Arabic script. This policy was later reversed under Stalin’s bureaucratic counter-revolution when the Cyrillic script was imposed on all of these nations, whom had previously chosen either the Latin or Arabic script.

These cultural and education policies were accompanied by something that from the point of view of the Bolsheviks was even more important: economic development. There was a conscious policy of investing in these nations to develop infrastructure and industry, which was the only real way to bring these peoples out of backwardness and at the same time develop the proletariat.

There was also a conscious policy towards the ‘nationalisation’ of the local communist parties, which in many cases were made up only or mainly of Great-Russian workers. There was a campaign of recruiting communists from the national group concerned. A very careful and cautious approach was required, particularly on the question of religion, in order not to alienate them from Soviet power. Most of the work needed to be carried out on the basis of patient explanation, highlighting the class questions and through the practical demonstration of the material advantages of Soviet power.

At the time of the Revolution, the level of literacy in these regions was maybe 5 per cent, or even less. Even with very remote nomadic peoples in the north and in the Far East, the policy of the Bolsheviks was extremely careful. For instance the Yakuts, a very small tribal nomadic group in the north, were for the first time given a written language in the Latin script, which had no punctuation marks and no capital letters.

Lenin regarded the question of the establishment of soviet power in Central Asia and other Muslim lands of extreme importance, not only for the USSR, but more generally from the point of view of the world revolution. In a letter to the communists of Turkestan he explained:

"The attitude of the Soviet Workers’ and Peasants’ Republic to the weak and hitherto oppressed nations is of very practical significance for the whole of Asia and for all the colonies of the world, for thousands and millions of people. I earnestly urge you […] to demonstrate to them by your actions that we are sincere in our desire to wipe out all traces of Great-Russian imperialism."^[18]

The national question and the struggle against bureaucracy

In 1922, Stalin was far from being a conscious representative of the developing bureaucracy. But from his very first days as General Secretary he demonstrated a bureaucratic heavy-handedness in regard to the national question within the Soviet Union. In this context, one of Lenin’s main struggles at the end of his life against the bureaucratisation of the Soviet Union and against Stalin was focussed on the issue of the national question.

There were two points in this struggle, the debate on the setting up of the USSR and the dispute over the ‘Georgian affair’.

The first of these took place in 1922, during the discussion on the legal form that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was going to take. Stalin, who at the time was the People’s Commissar for nationalities, proposed that the Constitution should be phrased in terms of the entry of Ukraine into the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. Lenin opposed this formulation and insisted that the USSR should be the result of the unification of the Russian socialist republic with the others:

"Stalin has already consented to make one concession: in Clause 1, instead of ‘entry’ into the RSFSR, to put: “Formal unification with the RSFSR in a Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia.”

"I hope the purport of this concession is clear: we consider ourselves, the Ukrainian SSR and others, equal, and enter with them, on an equal basis, into a new union, a new federation, the Union of the Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia."^[19]

In combating Stalin, Lenin described him as having a quasi-imperialist attitude towards oppressed nationalities. Despite his Georgian roots, Stalin was the very embodiment of the high-handed methods of the bureaucracy, which was saturated with Great-Russian chauvinism.

In this battle, Lenin counted on the support of people like Ukrainian Bolshevik leader Mykola Skrypnyk. He was a linguist and played a key role in developing the Ukrainian language, standardising its alphabet and orthography for the first time. Skrypnyk later became a Stalinist bureaucrat, but that did not save him from being purged by Stalin in 1933.

Lenin also had the support of Trotsky, Rakovsky and others in this debate. He was acutely aware of the oppressor-nation prejudices surviving amongst Bolshevik militants, including leading figures in the party. He said: “Scratch some communists and you will find Great-Russian chauvinists”.^[20]

The debate revealed two different approaches to the national question. On the one hand, that of Lenin, who was always extremely aware of the legacy of centuries of national oppression in the Tsarist Empire and went to great lengths to demonstrate to the oppressed nations that Soviet power had nothing to do with it. He did so with the aim of ensuring maximum unity of the working class. On the other hand, the high-handed approach of Stalin, Sergo Ordzhonikidze, Felix Dzerzhinsky and others, who were, in different degrees, opposed to the right of nations to self-determination, saw Lenin’s approach as a nuisance and, behind Lenin’s back, used their power to impose rather than convince. Despite the fact that many of them came from the oppressed nations themselves, they expressed the point of view of Great-Russian chauvinism.

The second issue in this struggle was the ‘Georgian affair’. Georgia was a nation dominated by petty-bourgeois classes in the city and the countryside. For this reason, the Mensheviks were always the dominant party in the Georgian labour movement and the Menshevik Party had its main base in Georgia.

In November 1922, it came to light that during a debate in Georgia, Ordzhonikidze had punched a Georgian communist, Akakii Kobakhidze, in the face / Image: public domain

The issue of Georgia was very complex, as it was mixed up with the course of the civil war, foreign intervention and also the establishment of Soviet power in the neighbouring republics. But the truth is that Ordzhonikidze, who was the head of the Caucasian Bureau (Kavbiuro), was very impatient and displayed a bureaucratic attitude towards imposing revolution in Georgia. He staged a series of provocations, sent misleading information to the Politburo and, with the support of Stalin behind the scenes, created a de facto situation in which the Red Army invaded Georgia and installed Soviet power in February 1921. This led to all sorts of complications. Trotsky had advocated “a certain preparatory period of work inside Georgia, in order to develop the uprising and later come to its aid” and was not told of the decision to invade.

Even after the Red Army intervention in Georgia, Lenin insisted that a cautious policy of concessions to the petty bourgeois was necessary, and even raised the possibility of reaching an agreement with Noe Zhordania, the leader of the Mensheviks. Stalin on his part took a heavy handed approach against any “nationalist deviations”, real or perceived, and opposed the formation of a Georgian Red Army (which Lenin specifically argued should be strengthened). At a meeting of Georgian communists in Tiflis in July 1921, he stated that the immediate task was “to eliminate nationalist survivals, to cauterise them with red-hot iron” and promised to “crush the hydra of nationalism”. In a typical bureaucratic fashion, Stalin removed the head of the Revolutionary Committee Filipp Makharadze and replaced him with Polikarp Mdivani, whom he thought would be more pliable. Already here, we can see a very clear difference of approach between Lenin on one side and Stalin and Ordzhonikidze on the other.

During the debate on the formation of the USSR, some Georgian communists, led by Mdivani and others, first opposed the idea of a Transcaucasian Federation, raised by Stalin, and defended an independent Soviet Georgia to join the USSR. They were accused by Stalin of national deviations. Lenin sent a letter to Stalin arguing that while a Transcaucasian Federation was “correct in principle”, its practical realisation should be delayed to allow for a proper discussion and a campaign of explanation in order to convince the workers and peasants of each of the republics.

In November 1922, it came to light that during a debate in Georgia, Ordzhonikidze had punched a Georgian communist, Akakii Kobakhidze, in the face. Lenin was furious. He demanded the expulsion of Ordzhonikidze from the party, but added that those really responsible for this incident were Stalin and Dzerzhinsky. He wrote a series of letters, his ‘The Question of Nationalities or ‘Autonomisation’’, which he starts by saying:

"I have been very remiss with respect to the workers of Russia for not having intervened energetically and decisively enough in the notorious question of autonomisation.

"In my writings on the national question I have already said that an abstract presentation of the question of nationalism in general is of no use at all. A distinction must necessarily be made between the nationalism of an oppressor nation and that of an oppressed nation, the nationalism of a big nation and that of a small nation. In respect of the second kind of nationalism we, nationals of a big nation, have nearly always been guilty, in historic practice, of an infinite number of cases of violence; furthermore, we commit violence and insult an infinite number of times without noticing it.

"That is why internationalism on the part of oppressor or ‘great’ nations, as they are called (though they are great only in their violence, only great as bullies), must consist not only in the observance of the formal equality of nations but even in an inequality of the oppressor nation, the great nation, that must make up for the inequality which obtains in actual practice… In one way or another, by one’s attitude or by concessions, it is necessary to compensate the non-Russian for the lack of trust, for the suspicion and the insults to which the government of the ‘dominant’ nation subjected them in the past."^[21]

Lenin insisted that he was saying this not because he was in favour of the nationalism of the oppressed nation, but because this was the only way to achieve the maximum degree of unity and trust between the workers of both nations.

Throughout this period Lenin was ill, and this was used by the bureaucracy to attempt to hide information from him (for instance the full report on the Georgian incident), or to try to restrict his participation in party affairs. He considered this a crucial question. He asked Trotsky to defend his point of view at the forthcoming twelfth party conference and he wrote to the Georgian communists promising them support. He fought this vigorously and managed to leave his views in writing. It is not by chance that one of the crucial issues on which Lenin’s struggle against bureaucratisation started was the national question.

Stalin’s reversal of Lenin’s policy

Lenin unfortunately died in 1924 before he could conclude this struggle. The reversal of Lenin’s policy on the national question was not immediate. In 1923, the policy of korenizatsiia was formulated, meaning the indigenisation or nationalisation of the communist parties in the republics. Many of these were positive measures, which were a continuation of Lenin’s policy, but there was also a certain element which was never present in Lenin, an element of nation-building or developing nationalism. This was at the time of the right-wing turn of the nascent bureaucracy, when Stalin formulated the anti-Marxist, anti-Leninist policy of ‘socialism on one country’ and Bukharin talked of building socialism at a “tortoise pace”, encouraging the kulaks to “enrich themselves”.

However, not long after, the whole of Lenin’s careful policy was reversed. The bureaucracy, having defeated the Left Opposition and afraid of the threat of capitalist elements which had grown out of the NEP, effected a sharp shift to the left. This was the period of forced collectivisation and the beginning of the process which led to the Great Purges.

The Stalinist purges throughout the late 1920s and 1930s had a particularly harsh impact on all the oppressed nationalities. For instance, all members of the Tajik Communist Party Central Committee were eliminated. In Ukraine, nine-tenths of all officials, heads of departments, ministers and all high officials were either arrested, deported or killed in the purges. It was also in these nationalities that the opposition against Stalinism was stronger, and this was the case particularly in Ukraine: in the industrial centre of Kharkov, amongst the Communist Youth, in the big factories, etc. as is described in detail in Pierre Broué’s 2003 book Communistes contre Staline (Communists Against Stalin).

There was a wholesale return to Great-Russian nationalism, which was in effect a continuation of the policy of the Tsarist Empire. Stalin’s policy of national oppression created enormous accumulated grievances which remained for decades. Later on, during the Second World War, the Stalinist bureaucracy carried out mass deportation of whole peoples, who were branded as collaborators.

Nevertheless, for a whole period of time, on the basis of economic development, the national question subsided, and even what seemed to be deeply entrenched national conflicts (like that of Nagorno-Karabakh) were temporarily resolved or frozen.

Economic stagnation, particularly in the 1980s, which was the result of bureaucratic mismanagement, led to a new flare up of national sentiment, which had been suppressed for decades. The policy of the Soviet bureaucracy of Great-Russian national oppression was to play a big role in the breakup of the Soviet Union. This laid the basis for the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which from a formal point of view started with a referendum on independence in Ukraine.

As Marx and Engels explained, “no nation can be free if it oppresses other nations”.^[22] But equally important is the principle: “Workers of the world, unite!”.^[23] The two are inextricably linked, because the unity of workers from different nations, different religious and ethnic backgrounds, can only be achieved by guaranteeing democratic rights and eliminating any vestige of oppression. This was the basis of Lenin’s approach to this question.

The policy of Lenin and of the October Revolution on the national question has left us an extremely rich and proud heritage, which we shall reclaim, explain and defend fully, because it is not commonly known, other than through distortions or generalities. It contains many lessons on how to deal with the question of national oppression, which remains strikingly relevant for communists today.

The national question was a fundamental part of the bourgeois revolutions. In those cases where the bourgeoisie was too weak and arrived late in the scene of history, some of the tasks of the bourgeois-democratic revolution were left unsolved. In some instances, the national question subsided for a whole period of time, but with the worsening of the organic crisis of capitalism it has come back to the fore with a vengeance.

The struggle against national oppression contains a democratic kernel which is progressive and can have revolutionary implications, but at the same time, there is the danger of reactionary chauvinism and division of the working class along national lines, with potentially bloody consequences. Studying Lenin’s policy and practice on this question is therefore not merely a historical curiosity, but a current issue in revolutionary politics.

The study of Lenin’s approach to the twin questions of the struggle against national oppression and the need for the unity of the working class also contains a valuable lesson on the method of Marxism, which is firm on its principles but flexible with its tactics. A careful study, both of Lenin’s method and the Bolshevik attitude to the national question, will be a vital tool to arm revolutionary communists today.

Jorge Martín,

London,

December 2024

^[1] Trotsky, Leon, History of the Russian Revolution, Vol. 3, Wellred Books, 2022, p. 913.

^[2] Ibid, p. 904.

^[3] ‘Programme of the Social-Democratic Workers’ Party’, reproduced in 1903: Second Congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party, New Park, 1978, p. 6.

^[4] Ibid.

^[5] Austro-Marxism was the leading tendency within the Social-Democratic Party of Austria, which attempted to reconcile reformism with revolutionary Marxism. It defended the position of ‘cultural-national autonomy’ in relation to the national question.

^[6] Lenin, ‘Does the Jewish Proletariat Need an ‘Independent Political Party’?’, 15 February 1903, in this volume, p. 189.

^[7] Lenin, ‘Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia’, 2 November 1917, in this volume, p. 332.

^[8] Luxemburg, Rosa, ‘The Russian Revolution’, Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, Pathfinder Press, 1970.

^[9] Lenin, ‘The Seventh (April) All-Russia Conference of the RSDLP(B)’, 24-29 April 1917, in this volume, p. 290.

^[10] Nestor Makhno was a Ukrainian anarchist who led a peasant army during the civil war that followed the Russian Revolution. His forces took an alternating position between allying with the Red Army and opposing it.

^[11] Lenin, ‘Letter to the Workers and Peasants of the Ukraine: Apropos of the Victories over Denikin’, 28 December 1919, in this volume, p. 315.

^[12] Alexander Kolchak and Anton Denikin were generals in the White Army.

^[13] Ibid, p. 317.

^[14] Ibid.

^[15] Trotsky, Leon, How the Revolution Armed, Vol. 2, New Park, 1979, p. 439.

^[16] Quoted in Smith, Jeremy, ‘The Bolsheviks and the National Question, 1917-1923’, PhD thesis, University of London, 1996.

^[17] Lenin, ‘Appeal of the Council of People’s Commissars to the Moslems of Russia and the East’, 3 December 1917, in this volume, p. 336.

^[18] Lenin, ‘To the Communists of Turkestan’, 7 November 1919, in this volume, p. 355.

^[19] Lenin, ‘On the Establishment of the USSR’, 26 September 1922, in this volume, p. 368, emphasis added.

^[20] See Lenin, ‘Eighth Congress of the RCP(B)’, 19 March 1919, in this volume, p. 328.

^[21] Lenin, ‘The Question of Nationalities or ‘Autonomisation’’, 30-31 December 1922, in this volume, p. 373.

^[22] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, ‘On Poland’, Marx and Engels Collected Works, Lawrence and Wishart, 1977, Vol. 6, p. 389.

^[23] Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, ibid, p. 519.