Introduction by Rob Sewell

Following on from Marx, Lenin took up the national question as a means of arming the revolutionary social democracy in Russia and uniting the oppressed nationalities under the banner of the working class. In answer to national oppression, the Russian Marxists (in the famous Clause 9 of the Russian Social Democratic Party) called for the right of nations to self-determination – that is, to complete separation as states.

This was particularly relevant to tsarist Russia, whose empire constituted a “prison house of nationalities”. Such was the make-up of the empire that the Great Russians, the ruling nationality, only constituted 48% of the whole.

Those under Russian domination (Poles, Lithuanians, Estonians, Finns, Letts, Ukrainians, and so on), deprived of their rights, were systematically oppressed by tsarism. It was this that gave the national question in Russia such an explosive force.

To win over the oppressed nationalities, Lenin came out against the forcible incorporation of a nationality within the boundaries of a general state. In this, the Bolsheviks were not “evangels of separation”. On the contrary, all this meant was that they were obliged to fight implacably against every form of national oppression.

“To accuse those who support freedom of self-determination, i.e., freedom to secede, of encouraging separation, is as foolish and hypocritical as accusing those who advocate freedom of divorce of encouraging the destruction of family ties”, stated Lenin. (The Right of Nations… p.83)

The demand of the right to self-determination was however to give rise to a heated controversy within the Russian Party, with opposition from Rosa Luxemburg, Bukharin, Pyatakov, and others. The essence of their opposition was that under capitalism, self-determination was utopian, while under socialism it was reactionary. However, the argument is completely false as it ignores the epoch of the socialist revolution and its tasks.

Clearly, under the domination of imperialism, the existence of stable independent small states is impossible. Also under socialism, with the progressive withering away of the state, the question of national boundaries will fall away. However, in the intervening period, the forces have to be educated and mobilised to overthrow capitalism and a correct dialectical approach to the national question would facilitate this task.

Above all, the slogan of the right to self-determination was a powerful weapon in undermining bourgeois nationalism and winning the confidence of the workers of the oppressed nation. The possibility of separation facilitated a free unification of peoples.

In order to convince the more politically backward workers, who had nationalist prejudices, it was necessary to stress that the working class had no interest in coercing any national minority. At the same time, we must argue for the unity of the working class under one banner, with implacable hostility to the poison of the small nation mentality and the poison of chauvinism.

“The sectarian simply ignores the fact that the national struggle”, stated Trotsky, “one of the most labyrinthine and complex but at the same time extremely important forms of class struggle, cannot be suspended by bare references to the future world revolution.” (Independence of the Ukraine… 1939)

Of course, the demand of the right of nations to self-determination cannot be used willy-nilly, but must proceed from the facts and not ideal norms. It could only apply to nationalities and not simply to groups, religious castes or other such minorities.

The right of self-determination

Above all, Lenin regarded the right of self-determination as subordinate to the interests of the working class. “The bourgeoisie always places its national demands in the forefront, and does so in categorical fashion. With the proletariat, however, these demands are subordinated to the interests of the class struggle.” (Ibid, p.21)

And again, “While recognising equality and equal rights to a national state, it values above all and places foremost the alliance of the proletarians of all nations, and assesses any national demand, any national separation, from the angle of the workers’ class struggle.” After all, the right to national self-determination is a bourgeois-democratic demand, not a socialist one.

Lenin also repeatedly explained that the Marxist programme on the national question is essentially a negative one: against national oppression, against the suppression of national culture, etc.

Rob Sewell
From ‘Lenin and the National Question’, communist.red, 7 July 2014