On the National Question. Selected Writings: 3

Tsarist Russia was a prison house of nations. A majority of the population belonged to national groups oppressed by the tsarist regime, which suppressed their languages, their religions and their cultures. The national question was therefore crucial from the point of view of the workers’ movement. It could only be solved with a revolutionary programme. This was a complex question which required firmness in principle and extraordinary flexibility in tactics in combining two different aspects: the unity of the working class in one party cutting across national barriers in the common struggle against autocracy, and the defence of right of nations of to self-determination, including their right to form an independent country if they so wished. Lenin’s ideas and method shine as a remarkable example of this approach. The struggle with the Jewish Workers’ Union, the Bund, and the polemic with the Polish Social-Democrats clarified the revolutionary perspective on the national question. Once in power, Lenin and the Bolsheviks carried out their programme in practice in the extremely difficult conditions of the civil war and foreign military intervention. It was precisely the national question which formed the battleground for Lenin’s last struggle against the rising bureaucracy and its heavy-handed, Great-Russian chauvinist approach. The national question once again is coming to the fore in this epoch of crisis and instability. Lenin’s patience and his method of putting forward a class perspective on this question is a rich tradition for communists to learn from today.

Contents

51 chapters

• Note on Dates
• Introduction
• Part 1: Lenin, Luxemburg and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination
• On the Manifesto of the Armenian Social-Democrats
• The National Question in Our Programme
• Theses on the National Question
• The Right of Nations to Self-Determination
• Is a Compulsory Official Language Needed?
• Bill on the Equality of Nations and the Safeguarding of the Rights of National Minorities
• The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination
• The Nascent Trend of Imperialist Economism
• The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up
• Part 2: Lenin, the Bund and ‘Cultural-National’ Autonomy
• Does the Jewish Proletariat Need an ‘Independent Political Party’?
• Second Congress of the RSDLP
• The Position of the Bund in the Party
• To the Jewish Workers
• ‘Cultural-National’ Autonomy
• Resolutions of the Summer 1913 Joint Conference of the Central Committee of the RSDLP and Party Officials
• The Nationality of Pupils in Russian Schools
• The National Programme of the RSDLP
• Critical Remarks on the National Question
• Part 3: During the Revolution and in Power
• Reply to P Kievsky (G Pyatakov)
• The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution (Extract)
• The Seventh (April) All-Russia Conference of the RSDLP(B)
• Finland and Russia
• The Ukraine
• Speech at the First All-Russia Congress of the Navy (Extract From Minutes)
• Manifesto to the Ukrainian People with an Ultimatum to the Ukrainian Rada
• Draft Resolution of the CC, RCP(B) on Soviet Rule in the Ukraine
• Eighth Congress of the RCP(B)
• Declaration of the Rights of the People of Russia
• Appeal of the Council of People’s Commissars to the Moslems of Russia and the East
• Draft Theses on National and Colonial Questions for the Second Congress of The Communist International
• To the Comrades Communists of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, Dagestan, and the Mountaineer Republic
• On the Formation of a Federation of Transcaucasian Republics
• To the Communists of Turkestan
• Letter to AA Joffe
• Letter To GK Ordzhonikidze
• Letter to GK Ordzhonikidze on the Strengthening of the Georgian Red Army
• On the Establishment of the USSR
• Memo Combatting Dominant Nation Chauvinism
• The Question of Nationalities or ‘Autonomisation’
• Lenin’s Last Letters
• Appendices
• Resolutions Adopted at the International Socialist Workers and Trade Union Congress, London, 1896
• The Nationalities Programme of the Social Democratic Workers’ Party of Austria (Extract)
• Maps and Tables
• Timeline of the Georgian Affair
• Glossary