Theses for a Lecture on the National Question{15}
National Question
(Theses from Memory)
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A) Importance of the national question at the present time. - B) Place of national movements in history (resp. historical approach to the national question).
- C) Two theories on the national question.
- D) Self-determination of nations.
- E) Equality and guarantee of minority rights. Autonomy.
- F) Cultural-national autonomy.
- G) National principle in Party organisation.
| A. | Introduction. | |||||||||||||||||||
| Importance of the National Question at the Current Historical Moment |
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| B. |
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| C. | Two theories of Marxism on the national question. | |||||||||||||||||||
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| D. | § 9 of the programme=political self-determination. | |||||||||||||||||||
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| (α). | (α)is indissolublybound up with the historico-economicconditions of national movements. | |||||||||||||||||||
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| (β) |
(β) Russia==national state at bottom, at base. the centre [BOX:] Pskov— Rostov-on-Don Outlying areas—non-Russian. Extreme oppression. Incompleteness of bourgeois-democratic revolution, which is impossiblewithout a national movement and the urge to set up nationalstates in general.
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| (γ) | (γ) (with an unfinished bourgeois revolution in respect of the national question) and an awakened Asia (republican China). Tsarism is the most reactionary state system. Hence the particular inevitability of the national movement, and the demand that the Great Russians recognise the right to self-determination. |
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| E. | Equality of nations and minority rights.... | |||||||||||||||||||
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| F. |
Cultural-national autonomy. Terms: {{ extraterritorial personal national}} |
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| G. | National principle in the organisation of socialist parties.
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| Language{14} : | ||||||||||||||||||||
| 1) Cf. spread of languages. | ||||||||||||||||||||
Liége: February 2, 1914
Rabinovich: National question=“invention”.
{1} Reference to p. 18 of the first notebook on the national question. —Ed.
{2} Cultural community.—Ed.
{3} Here and below the reference is to pages 5, 6 and 17 of the first notebook on the national question.—Ed.
{4} Peculiarity and weak spot.—Ed.
{5} “Never before has a purely national culture been less possible” (ibidem, 15, Internationality).—Ed.
{6} “Emphasis on national culture.”—Ed.
{7} Not a community of culture, of destiny, but a community of language.—Ed.
{8} Enormous exaggeration of the national ...aspect (35, Internationality). Complete neglect of the international aspect.—Ed.
{9} Language and territory.—Ed.
{10} Materialism one-sided.—Ed.
{11} See present edition, Vol. 20, pp. 20-21.—Ed.
{12} Reference to p. 2 of the first notebook on the national question.—Ed.
{13} Reference to pp. 7 and 8 of the first notebook on the national question.—Ed.
{14} From here on the entry is in pencil on the back cover of the notebook. There is also this address: “Parvis St.-Grilles. Maison du Peuple.
[BOX:]
No. 15
[BOX:]
10.00 ”.—Ed.
{15} The theses were apparently written by Lenin after his lecture in Paris on January 10 (23), 1914 (see Lenin Miscellany XXX, pp. 51-57). The inscription on the cover of the “National Question III” notebook is an indication that Lenin repeated his Paris lecture at Liége on February 2, 1914. p. 313
{16} Lenin analyses Kautsky’s pamphlet Nationalität und Internationalität (Nationality and Internationality) in his work The Right of Nations to Self-Determination (see present edition, Vol. 20, pp. 397-99). p. 314
{17} See Lenin’s extract from the book Der Briefwechsel zwischen Fr. Engels u. K. Marx, Bd. IV, Stuttgart, 1913, S. 292, in Lenin Miscellany XVII, p. 291 (cf. Marx’s letter to Engels, written on July 5, 1870). p. 319
{18} At the third sitting of the Programme Committee of the Second Congress of the R.S.D.L.P., the delegate of the Social-Democracy of Poland and Lithuania motioned the adoption of the item on guarantees for “freedom of cultural development of all nations making up the state” (see Lenin’s note of it in Lenin Miscellany VI, p. 105). p. 319
{19} Diaspora (Gk. for dispersal)—the Jews living outside Judea. In the early 6th century B.C., there were Jewish communities in Egypt, Babylon and other countries of the Mediterranean. From the 3rd century B.C., the Diaspora grew rapidly, so that in the 1st century B.C., their number came to 4.5 million. In the Roman Empire, the Jews lived in communities, sometimes forming public-law corporations (as in Alexandria), or private religious societies (as in Rome). On the one hand, the Jews of the Diaspora successfully conducted the propaganda of Judaism, and on the other, they wore gradually losing their national traits and language. p. 322
{20} “Federation of the worst type” was the term used in the decisions of the Prague Party Conference of 1912 to characterise the relations with non-Russian national Social-Democratic organisations in the R.S.D,L.P. after the Fourth (Unity) Congress, when the “non-Russians” worked “in total isolation from Russian organisations”, which had an extremely negative effect on the whole work of the R.S.D.L.P. While the Social-Democratic organisations of Poland and Lithuania, the Latvian Territory and the Bund were formally part of the R.S.D.L.P., they actually held themselves aloof. Their representatives did not take part in the direction of Party work throughout Russia, and promoted, directly or indirectly, the anti-Party activity of the liquidators (see present edition, Vol. 17, pp. 464-65, and Vol. 18, pp. 411-12). p. 323