The Balkan Wars¶
Core Argument¶
The chapter argues that the national question is a treacherous minefield for Marxists because the demand for self-determination is not absolute but must be subordinated to the interests of the proletariat and world revolution. It insists that Lenin, following Marx, consistently warned against nationalist intoxication and insisted on examining each case within definite historical limits, not mechanically supporting every independence demand. The chapter uses the Balkan Wars of 1912-13 as its central case study to demonstrate this principle in action.
The key claim is that the Balkan Wars, though formally wars of national liberation against Ottoman rule, were in fact reactionary on all sides. The First Balkan War (1912) saw Montenegro, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece unite against Turkey, but behind slogans of freedom lurked the predatory ambitions of national bourgeoisies, each acting as proxies for the great powers—Russia, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Britain, and France—who were waging war by proxy over who would inherit the Ottoman Empire. The Second Balkan War (1913) was openly imperialist, as Bulgaria attacked Greece and Serbia, with Romania and Turkey joining in, revealing the vicious expansionism of “Greater Bulgaria,” “Greater Serbia,” and “Greater Greece.” The chapter cites Lenin’s denunciation: “Never and in no place has ‘freedom’ been won by the oppressed peoples by means of war of one people against another.”
The historical context draws on the slow decline of the Ottoman Empire, the Austrian annexation of Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1908, and the machinations of tsarist Russia, which cynically used Pan-Slavism to dominate the Balkans and seize Constantinople. The chapter quotes Russian bourgeois liberals like Guchkov, Struve, and Rodzianko demanding war to control the straits, exposing the imperialist ambitions behind nationalist rhetoric.
The polemic is directed against two targets. First, against those who mechanically apply Lenin’s phrase “right to self-determination” to every nationalist cause, turning it into a “nervous tic.” Second, against contemporary figures like Zyuganov, who have abandoned Lenin for Slavophile chauvinism. The chapter also implicitly argues against the notion that colonial oppression is a fixed category, showing that previously oppressed nations can become oppressors.
The solution, drawn from Lenin and Trotsky, is not national fragmentation but a democratic Balkan federation—or, updated, a Democratic Socialist Federation of Balkan Peoples—achieved through working-class revolution, not bourgeois wars. Trotsky is quoted: “The only way out… is a union of all the peoples of the peninsula in a single economic and political entity, on the basis of national autonomy.”