Adopted 29 November 1919

1. The CC, RCP(B), having discussed the question of relations with the working people of the Ukraine now being liberated from the temporary conquest of Denikin’s bands, is pursuing persistently the principle of the self-determination of nations and deems it essential to again affirm that the RCP holds consistently to the view that the independence of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic be recognised.
2. The RCP will work to establish federal relations between the RSFSR, and the Ukrainian SSR, basing itself on the decisions of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee of 1 June 1919, and the Ukrainian Central Executive Committee of 18 May 1919 (resolution attached).
3. In view of the fact that Ukrainian culture (language, school, etc.) has been suppressed for centuries by Russian tsarism and the exploiting classes, the CC, RCP makes it incumbent upon all party members to use every means to help remove all barriers in the way of the free development of the Ukrainian language and culture. Since the many centuries of oppression have given rise to nationalist tendencies among the backward sections of the population, RCP members must exercise the greatest caution in respect of those tendencies and must oppose them with words of comradely explanation concerning the identity of interests of the working people of the Ukraine and Russia. RCP members on Ukrainian territory must put into practice the right of the working people to study in the Ukrainian language and to speak their native language in all Soviet institutions; they must in every way counteract attempts at Russification that push the Ukrainian language into the background and must convert that language into an instrument for the communist education of the working people. Steps must be taken immediately to ensure that in all Soviet institutions there are sufficient Ukrainian-speaking employees and that in future all employees are able to speak Ukrainian.
4. It is essential to ensure the closest contact between Soviet institutions and the native peasant population of the country, for which purpose it must be made the rule, even at the earliest stages, that when revolutionary committees and Soviets are being established the labouring peasants must have a majority in them with the poor peasants exercising a decisive influence.
5. Since the population of the Ukraine is predominantly peasant to an even greater extent than that of Russia, it is the task of the Soviet government in the Ukraine to win the confidence, not only of the poor peasants, but also of the broad sections of the middle peasantry whose real interests link them very closely with Soviet power. In particular, while retaining the food policy in principle (the state procurement of grain at fixed prices) the methods of its application must be changed.

The immediate purpose of the food policy in the Ukraine must be the requisitioning of grain surpluses to the strictly limited extent necessary to supply the Ukrainian rural poor, the workers and the Red Army. When requisitioning surpluses, special attention must be paid to the interests of the middle peasants, who must be carefully distinguished from kulak elements. It is essential to expose to the Ukrainian peasantry the counter-revolutionary demagogy that tries to impress on them that the purpose of Soviet Russia is to channel grain and other food products from the Ukraine into Russia.

It must be made incumbent on all agents of the central authorities, all party officials, party instructors, etc., to draw the poor and middle peasantry extensively into the work of government.

For the same purpose (the establishment of the real power of the working people) measures must be immediately taken to prevent Soviet institutions from being flooded with Ukrainian urban petty bourgeoisie, who have no conception of the living conditions of the peasant masses and who frequently masquerade as communists.

A condition for the admission of such elements into the ranks of the party and into Soviet institutions must be a preliminary practical verification of their competence and their loyalty to the interests of the working people, primarily at the front, in the ranks of the army. Everywhere and under all circumstances such elements must be placed under the strict class control of the proletariat.

We know from experience that due to the unorganised state of the poor the large number of weapons in the hands of the Ukrainian rural population is inevitably being concentrated in the hands of the kulaks and counter-revolutionaries which actually leads to the domination of kulak bandits instead of the dictatorship of the working people; in view of this a primary task in organising Soviet Ukraine is to withdraw all weapons and concentrate them in the hands of the workers’ and peasants’ Red Army.

6. In the same way, the land policy must be effected with special attention paid to the farming of the poor and middle peasantry.

The tasks of the land policy in the Ukraine are:

1. The complete abolition of the landed proprietorship re-established by Denikin and the transfer of the landed estates to peasants possessing little or no land.
2. State farms to be organised in strictly limited numbers and of limited size and in each case in conformity with the interests of the surrounding peasantry.
3. In organising peasants in communes, cartels, etc., the party policy must be strictly adhered to, which in this respect does not permit any coercion, leaving it to the peasants to decide freely for themselves and penalising all attempts to introduce the principle of coercion.

Regarding it as beyond dispute for every communist and for every politically-conscious worker that the closest alliance of all Soviet republics in their struggle against the menacing forces of world imperialism is essential, the RCP maintains that the form of that alliance must be finally determined by the Ukrainian workers and labouring peasants themselves.

Letter to the Workers and Peasants of the Ukraine:
Apropos of the Victories over Denikin

Written 28 December 1919

Editor’s note: Between July and December 1919, the counter-revolutionary White armies, led by Anton Denikin, who had been a general in the Imperial Army, carried out an offensive against Moscow with the aim of taking over the capital. The defeat of the offensive in November-December was the prelude to the final defeat of the Whites. The defeat of Denikin in Ukraine played an important role in the overall collapse of his offensive. Lenin took advantage of the situation to explain the real policy of the Bolsheviks regarding the national rights of Ukraine, combining the recognition of her national rights with the need for the unity of Ukrainian and Great-Russian workers and peasants in the common struggle against the forces of counter-revolution. Alexander Kolchak, another general leading the counter-revolutionary armies in the east, had already been defeated in July 1919.

* * *

Comrades, four months ago, towards the end of August 1919, I had occasion to address a letter to the workers and peasants in connection with the victory over Kolchak.

I am now having this letter reprinted in full for the workers and peasants of the Ukraine in connection with the victories over Denikin.

Red troops have taken Kiev, Poltava and Kharkov and are advancing victoriously on Rostov. The Ukraine is seething with revolt against Denikin. All forces must be rallied for the final rout of Denikin’s army, which has been trying to restore the power of the landowners and capitalists. We must destroy Denikin to safeguard ourselves against even the slightest possibility of a new incursion.

The workers and peasants of the Ukraine should familiarise themselves with the lessons which all Russian workers and peasants have drawn from the conquest of Siberia by Kolchak and her liberation by Red troops after many months of landowner and capitalist tyranny.

Denikin’s rule in the Ukraine has been as severe an ordeal as Kolchak’s rule was in Siberia. There can be no doubt that the lessons of this severe ordeal will give the Ukrainian workers and peasants – as they did the workers and peasants of the Urals and Siberia – a clearer understanding of the tasks of Soviet power and induce them to defend it more staunchly.

In Great Russia the system of landed estates has been completely abolished. The same must be done in the Ukraine, and the Soviet power of the Ukrainian workers and peasants must effect the complete abolition of the landed estates and the complete liberation of the Ukrainian workers and peasants from all oppression by the landowners, and from the landowners themselves.

But apart from this task, and a number of others which confronted and still confront both the Great-Russian and the Ukrainian working masses, Soviet power in the Ukraine has its own special tasks. One of these special tasks deserves the greatest attention at the present moment. It is the national question, or, in other words, the question of whether the Ukraine is to be a separate and independent Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic bound in alliance (federation) with the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, or whether the Ukraine is to amalgamate with Russia to form a single Soviet republic. All Bolsheviks and all politically-conscious workers and peasants must give careful thought to this question.

The independence of the Ukraine has been recognised both by the All-Russia Central Executive Committee of the RSFSR (Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic) and by the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). It is therefore self-evident and generally recognised that only the Ukrainian workers and peasants themselves can and will decide at their All-Ukraine Congress of Soviets whether the Ukraine shall amalgamate with Russia, or whether she shall remain a separate and independent republic, and, in the latter case, what federal ties shall be established between that republic and Russia.

How should this question be decided insofar as concerns the interests of the working people and the promotion of their fight for the complete emancipation of labour from the yoke of capital?

In the first place, the interests of labour demand the fullest confidence and the closest alliance among the working people of different countries and nations. The supporters of the landowners and capitalists, of the bourgeoisie, strive to disunite the workers, to intensify national discord and enmity, in order to weaken the workers and strengthen the power of capital.

Capital is an international force. To vanquish it, an international workers’ alliance, an international workers’ brotherhood, is needed.

We are opposed to national enmity and discord, to national exclusiveness. We are internationalists. We stand for the close union and the complete amalgamation of the workers and peasants of all nations in a single world Soviet republic.

Secondly, the working people must not forget that capitalism has divided nations into a small number of oppressor, Great-Power (imperialist), sovereign and privileged nations and an overwhelming majority of oppressed, dependent and semi-dependent, non-sovereign nations. The arch-criminal and arch-reactionary war of 1914-18 still further accentuated this division and as a result aggravated rancour and hatred. For centuries the indignation and distrust of the non-sovereign and dependent nations towards the dominant and oppressor nations have been accumulating, of nations such as the Ukrainian towards nations such as the Great-Russian.

We want a voluntary union of nations – a union which precludes any coercion of one nation by another – a union founded on complete confidence, on a clear recognition of brotherly unity, on absolutely voluntary consent. Such a union cannot be effected at one stroke; we have to work towards it with the greatest patience and circumspection, so as not to spoil matters and not to arouse distrust, and so that the distrust inherited from centuries of landowner and capitalist oppression, centuries of private property and the enmity caused by its divisions and redivisions may have a chance to wear off.

We must, therefore, strive persistently for the unity of nations and ruthlessly suppress everything that tends to divide them, and in doing so we must be very cautious and patient, and make concessions to the survivals of national distrust. We must be adamant and uncompromising towards everything that affects the fundamental interests of labour in its fight for emancipation from the yoke of capital. The question of the demarcation of frontiers now, for the time being – for we are striving towards the complete abolition of frontiers – is a minor one, it is not fundamental or important. In this matter we can afford to wait, and must wait, because the national distrust among the broad mass of peasants and small owners is often extremely tenacious, and haste might only intensify it, in other words, jeopardise the cause of complete and ultimate unity.

The experience of the workers’ and peasants’ revolution in Russia, the revolution of October-November 1917, and of the two years of victorious struggle against the onslaught of international and Russian capitalists, has made it crystal clear that the capitalists have succeeded for a time in playing upon the national distrust of the Great Russians felt by Polish, Latvian, Estonian and Finnish peasants and small owners, that they have succeeded for a time in sowing dissension between them and us on the basis of this distrust. Experience has shown that this distrust wears off and disappears only very slowly, and that the more caution and patience displayed by the Great Russians, who have for so long been an oppressor nation, the more certainly this distrust will pass. It is by recognising the independence of the Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian and Finnish states that we are slowly but steadily winning the confidence of the labouring masses of the neighbouring small states, who were more backward and more deceived and downtrodden by the capitalists. It is the surest way of wresting them from the influence of ‘their’ national capitalists, and leading them to full confidence, to the future united international Soviet republic.

As long as the Ukraine is not completely liberated from Denikin, her government, until the All-Ukraine Congress of Soviets meets, is the All-Ukraine Revolutionary Committee. Besides the Ukrainian Bolshevik communists, there are Ukrainian Borotba communists^[1] working on this Revolutionary Committee as members of the government. One of the things distinguishing the Borotbists from the Bolsheviks is that they insist upon the unconditional independence of the Ukraine. The Bolsheviks will not make this a subject of difference and disunity, they do not regard this as an obstacle to concerted proletarian effort. There must be unity in the struggle against the yoke of capital and for the dictatorship of the proletariat, and there should be no parting of the ways among communists on the question of national frontiers, or whether there should be a federal or some other tie between the states. Among the Bolsheviks there are advocates of complete independence for the Ukraine, advocates of a more or less close federal tie, and advocates of the complete amalgamation of the Ukraine with Russia.

There must be no differences over these questions. They will be decided by the All-Ukraine Congress of Soviets.

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 the 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 interests of the Ukrainian workers and peasants in their struggle against the yoke of capital, but on account of the petty-bourgeois national prejudices of the small owner. Experience has provided hundreds of instances of the petty-bourgeois ‘socialists’ of various countries – all the various Polish, Latvian and Lithuanian pseudo-socialists, Georgian Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries and the like – assuming the guise of supporters of the proletariat for the sole purpose of deceitfully promoting a policy of compromise with ‘their’ national bourgeoisie against the revolutionary workers. We saw this in the case of Kerensky’s rule in Russia in the February-October period of 1917, and we have seen it and are seeing it in all other countries.

Mutual distrust between Great-Russian and Ukrainian communists can, therefore, arise very easily. How is this distrust to be combated? How is it to be overcome and mutual confidence established?

The best way to achieve this is by working together to uphold the dictatorship of the proletariat and Soviet power in the fight against the landowners and capitalists of all countries and against their attempts to restore their domination. This common fight will clearly show in practice that whatever the decision in regard to state independence or frontiers may be, there must be a close military and economic alliance between the Great-Russian and Ukrainian workers, for otherwise the capitalists of the ‘Entente’, in other words, the alliance of the richest capitalist countries – Britain, France, America, Japan and Italy – will crush and strangle us separately. Our fight against Kolchak and Denikin, whom these capitalists supplied with money and arms, is a clear illustration of this danger.

He who undermines the unity and closest alliance between the Great-Russian and Ukrainian workers and peasants is helping the Kolchaks, the Denikins, 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.

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. But all of us, Great-Russian communists, Ukrainian communists, and communists of any other nation, must be unyielding and irreconcilable in the underlying and fundamental questions which are the same for all nations, in questions of the proletarian struggle, of the proletarian dictatorship; we must not tolerate compromise with the bourgeoisie or any division of the forces which are protecting us against Denikin.

Denikin must be vanquished and destroyed, and such incursions as his not allowed to recur. That is to the fundamental interest of both the Great-Russian and the Ukrainian workers and peasants. The fight will be a long and hard one, for the capitalists of the whole world are helping Denikin and will help all other Denikins.

In this long and hard fight we Great-Russian and Ukrainian workers must maintain the closest alliance, for separately we shall most definitely be unable to cope with the task. Whatever the boundaries of the Ukraine and Russia may be, whatever may be the forms of their mutual state relationships, that is not so important; that is a matter in which concessions can and should be made, in which one thing, or another, or a third may be tried – the cause of the workers and peasants, of the victory over capitalism, will not perish because of that.

But if we fail to maintain the closest alliance, an alliance against Denikin, an alliance against the capitalists and kulaks of our countries and of all countries, the cause of labour will most certainly perish for many years to come in the sense that the capitalists will be able to crush and strangle both the Soviet Ukraine and Soviet Russia.

And what the bourgeoisie of all countries, and all manner of petty-bourgeois parties, i.e. ‘compromising’ parties which permit alliance with the bourgeoisie against the workers – try most of all to accomplish is to disunite the workers of different nationalities, to evoke distrust, and to disrupt a close international alliance and international brotherhood of the workers. Whenever the bourgeoisie succeeds in this the cause of the workers is lost. The communists of Russia and the Ukraine must therefore by patient, persistent, stubborn and concerted effort foil the nationalist machinations of the bourgeoisie and vanquish nationalist prejudices of every kind, and set the working people of the world an example of a really solid alliance of the workers and peasants of different nations in the fight for Soviet power, for the overthrow of the yoke of the landowners and capitalists, and for a world federal Soviet republic.

N Lenin

Endnotes

[1] The Ukrainian Communist Party of Borotbists arose in May 1918 after the split in the Ukrainian Socialist-Revolutionary Party on the basis of supporting Soviet power in Ukraine. It was named for its paper, Borotba (Struggle). The Borotbists applied to join the Communist International. At their conference in the middle of March 1920, a majority agreed to merge with the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine