The national question has always been a treacherous minefield, because the demand for national liberation and ‘self-determination’ is not simple. Behind what appears at first sight to be a progressive demand can lurk the most reactionary forces and interests. That is why Lenin insisted that the demand for self-determination did not possess an absolute validity, but had to be subordinate to the interests of the proletariat and world revolution. Marxists are not at all obliged to support it in every case, as is frequently supposed. Marx had long ago pointed out the reactionary role played by ‘small nations’ which become the cat’s-paws of imperialist ‘big brothers’. He was particularly scathing about Pan-Slavism, the doctrine whereby Russian tsarism put itself forward as the ‘Liberator’ of the Slavs, and used this position to gain a foothold in the Balkans. Following in Marx’s footsteps, Lenin’s position on the national question was characterised by his constant insistence on the class question. He consistently warned against the danger of nationalist intoxication and wrote ironically about the slogans of ‘freedom’, behind which the bourgeoisie sought to conceal its reactionary intrigues and deceive the people.
In his writings on the national question before 1914, Lenin frequently uses the example of the way in which Norway separated from Sweden in 1905. This was a very simple example, and probably for that reason Lenin chose it. Unfortunately, the national question is not always so simple. Whether or not Marxists will defend the right of self-determination depends on the concrete circumstances of each case.
The categorical requirement of Marxist theory in investigating any social question is that it be examined within definite historical limits, and, if it refers to a particular country (e.g., the national programme for a given country), that account be taken of the specific features distinguishing that country from others in the same historical epoch.
And again:
There can be no question of the Marxists of any country drawing up their national programme without taking into account all these general historical and concrete state conditions. (LCW, The Right of Nations to Self-Determination, vol. 20, pp. 400-401.)
One would have thought that this was sufficiently clear. But unfortunately, ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing’. Having glanced at Lenin’s writings and caught sight of the phrase ‘right to self-determination’, some people who evidently consider themselves to be followers of Lenin conclude that, come rain, hail, or shine, it is always necessary to support each and every demand for independence. What Lenin carefully explained and qualified becomes transmuted into a kind of nervous tic, compelling those who suffer from it to jump to attention every time some nationalist group sounds the trumpet. One really wonders why Lenin bothered to write all those volumes, when it seems that those who speak and act in his name have clearly not understood a single line!
In the light of the most recent history of the Balkans after the break-up of the former Yugoslavia, it is instructive to recall the position that Lenin took on the Balkan Wars. Did he immediately fall into line behind one or other of the belligerent countries? Far from it. He denounced the Balkan Wars as reactionary on all sides. There is no way that the working class could have supported any of the belligerents, although each one of them (of course!) loudly protested that they were the victims of aggression and that their ‘right to self-determination’ was being violated. “Never and in no place,” wrote Lenin of the Balkan conflict, “has ‘freedom’ been won by the oppressed peoples by means of war of one people against another… Real freedom of the Slav peasants on the Balkans, and also of the Turkish peasant can be won only by complete freedom within each country…” (VI Lenin, Collected Works, in Russian, vol. 22, pp. 151-52.) This is the real Lenin. This is the voice of his uncompromising revolutionary class internationalism. What a contrast with the disgraceful chauvinist demagogy of the leaders of the former Communist parties like Zyuganov today, who have thrown Lenin overboard and are echoing the old Slavophile rubbish which Marx and Lenin so despised.
In the period following the first Russian Revolution, storm clouds were gathering over Europe, which was soon to receive a harsh lesson in the importance of the national question. Even while events in Russia were moving towards a final split between the forces of revolutionary Marxism and reformism, on an international scale, other forces were being unleashed. The contradictions between the rival groups of imperialist powers – Germany, Austria-Hungary, Britain, France, and Russia – were raising the spectre of war on an incomparably vaster and more terrifying scale than in the past. At the Copenhagen Congress of the Second International, which took place from 15 to 25 August, 1910, the Russian party was represented by Lenin and Plekhanov. A central place in the debates at the International Congress was occupied by the struggle against militarism and the war question. Already at the Stuttgart Congress (August 1907) Lenin had included a number of amendments on the resolution on war, i.e., in the event of war, to take advantage of economic and political crisis to overthrow capitalism.
The explosive contradictions between the great powers reached the critical point in the Balkans in August 1914. But even before that, the fault lines were exposed by the Balkan Wars. The slow, ignominious decline of the Ottoman Empire was brought to a head by the successive wars of the Balkan peoples to free themselves from Turkish rule. In a series of wars, Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria won their freedom, but instantly became transformed into the puppets of different European powers (Britain, Russia, Austria, Prussia) and the small change of imperialist diplomacy. France was pressuring Russia to take a tougher line in the Balkans against Austria-Hungary which in the autumn of 1908 suddenly added to its colonial possessions in the Balkans by annexing Bosnia-Herzegovina, a clear provocation to the government of St. Petersburg. But in this vicious game of power politics, tsarist Russia was playing an equally predatory role. Its main aim had not varied for decades – to give cynical support to Bulgaria and Serbia against Turkey under the hypocritical banner of Pan-Slavism in order to dominate not only the Balkans, but Turkey itself. The seizure of Constantinople, and thus the gaining of access to a warm water port with an outlet to the Mediterranean, remained the central goal. This was the real purpose behind the setting up of the ‘Union of four monarchies’ against Turkey.
The uproar that ensued after the Austrian annexation of Bosnia also exposed the imperialist ambitions of the Russian bourgeois liberals, who demanded that Russia act on the Balkans. The right-wing Cadet leader Guchkov condemned the government’s decision not to go to war over Bosnia as a betrayal of the Slavs. The Russian government, he said, was displaying a “flabby indolence”, while the Russian people were prepared for the “inevitable war with the German races”. Behind this belligerence was the cold, calculating policy of the Russian bourgeoisie which looked forward to rich commercial profits from the seizure of Constantinople and control of the Black Sea and the shipping routes through the straits. Struve denounced the Bosnian affair as “a national disgrace”, and asserted that Russia’s destiny was to extend its civilisation “to the whole of the Black Sea basin”. “The straits must become ours,” Mikhail Rodzianko, President of the Duma, told the Tsar in March 1913. “A war will be joyfully welcomed and it will raise the government’s prestige.” (O. Figes, A People’s Tragedy: The Russian Revolution 1891-1921, p. 247 and p. 248.) There was also still unfinished business in the Balkans, since a significant part of Balkan territory (Macedonia) had remained under Turkish rule. On 26 September, 1912 the first Balkan War broke out. Montenegro, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece (the Union of four monarchies) lined up against Turkey. Formally, this was a war of national liberation of Balkan peoples against the Turkish oppressors, but behind the slogans which demagogically proclaimed freedom and self-determination lurked the predatory ambitions of the different national bourgeoisies, behind each of which stood one or another of the great powers, intent on waging war by proxy against its rivals. France, Germany, Britain, and Austria-Hungary were all watching the position in the Balkans with a mixture of greed, fear, and suspicion.
The decrepit Ottoman Empire was defeated in the First Balkan War. The Turkish yoke was removed, but immediately replaced by the yoke of the ‘national’ Serb, Greek, and Bulgarian landlords and capitalists. Moreover, the latter immediately began to vie with each other over the spoils of victory, like rabid dogs fighting over a bone. The London Conference in the spring of 1913 finally established ‘Peace’ in the Balkans after the First Balkan War, but did so in such a way as to guarantee the outbreak of a new and even more nightmarish war – one that would eventually sweep up not only the Balkans but the whole world in its train. The London Conference set the seal on the involvement of the Great Powers in the Balkans. This was a self-evident fact anyway. Behind the ruling clique of each of the ‘independent’ Balkan regimes stood one or another of the European powers. And each of the latter was grouped in one of the two great blocs – the Triple Alliance led by Germany, and the ‘Entente’ led by Britain. Like Russia, Austria-Hungary and Germany also had ambitions in the Balkans which may be summed up in the question: Who was destined to inherit the Ottoman Empire? Then, as now, the different national regimes on the Balkans were really just the agents of the main imperialist states.
The reactionary role of the national bourgeoisies in the Balkans was immediately revealed by their vicious expansionism, as expressed in the policy of ‘Greater Bulgaria’, ‘Greater Serbia’, ‘Greater Greece’ and reflecting nothing more than the greed of ruling landlord-capitalist circles, conspiring with great powers for the ruination of all the peoples of the Balkans. The new war broke out on 6 June, 1913, when Bulgaria attacked Greece and Serbia. Sensing the possibility of easy spoils, Romania joined in. Turkey also weighed in against Bulgaria, which suffered a shattering defeat and the loss of a considerable amount of territory. This shows how empty the concept of ‘colonial’ oppression is when seen from a formal and anti-dialectical position. Nations which were previously oppressed colonies can be transformed into their opposite. The war against Turkey might be said to have had a relatively progressive aspect, in that (theoretically at least) it was fought to free the Macedonians from the Turkish yoke, although, in practice, the different Balkan states were already seeking aggrandisement at the expense of their neighbours. But the Second Balkan War had an openly reactionary and imperialist character, as the Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian, and Romanian ruling cliques fought among each other for the division of the spoils.
There was not an atom of progressive content in any of this. Nor could the rights of self-determination be invoked in any meaningful way to solve the bloody impasse that afflicted the Balkans then and has continued to do so ever since. The only way out of the bloody impasse in the Balkans consisted in a revolution led by the working class with the aim of a democratic Balkan federation. That was Lenin’s position and also that of all genuine Balkan socialists and democrats, especially the greatest of them, Christian Rakovsky. These ‘national’ wars, led by the national bourgeoisie, as Lenin explained, were infinitely more costly in human lives than a revolution would have been. Without a revolution led by the working class in alliance with the poor peasantry, no solution was possible for the Balkans. The real programme defended by the Marxists as the only solution to the Balkan problem was explained by Trotsky in his article The Balkan Question and Social Democracy, which appeared in Pravda on 1 August, 1910:
The only way out of the national and state chaos and the bloody confusion of Balkan life is a union of all the peoples of the peninsula in a single economic and political entity, on the basis of national autonomy of the constituent parts. Only within the framework of a single Balkan state can the Serbs of Macedonia, the sanjak, Serbia, and Montenegro be united in a single national-cultural community, enjoying at the same time the advantages of a Balkan common market. Only the united Balkan peoples can give a real rebuff to the shameless pretensions of tsarism and European imperialism. (L. Trotsky, The Balkan Wars 1912-13, pp. 39-40.)
Lenin himself made the same point in his article The Balkan War and Bourgeois Chauvinism:
The Balkan peoples could have carried out this task ten times more easily than they are doing now and with a hundred times fewer sacrifices by forming a Federated Balkan Republic. National oppression, national bickering and incitement on the ground of religious differences would have been impossible under complete and consistent democracy. The Balkan peoples would have been assured of truly rapid, extensive and free development. (LCW, The Balkan War and Bourgeois Chauvinism, vol. 19, p. 39.)
Like Lenin, Trotsky saw the solution to the Balkan problem not in national but in class terms:
The historical guarantee of the independence of the Balkans and of the freedom of Russia lies in revolutionary collaboration between the workers of Petersburg and Warsaw and the workers of Belgrade and Sofia. (L. Trotsky, The Balkan Wars 1912-13, pp. 41-42.)
These lines remain equally true today, except that the slogan of a Democratic Federation must now be replaced by that of a Democratic Socialist Federation of Balkan Peoples, as the only way to overcome the ghastly legacy of Balkanisation to which neither capitalism nor Stalinism has the answer.