The Tasks of the Proletariat in Our Revolution (Extract)¶
Core Argument¶
Lenin’s draft platform for the Bolsheviks, written in April 1917, sets out the proletarian party’s position on the national question as an integral part of the revolutionary programme. The core argument is that the party must demand the immediate and practical realisation of complete freedom of secession for all nations and peoples oppressed by tsarism, including those forcibly joined or kept within the Russian state—that is, annexed. Lenin insists that mere declarations renouncing annexations are worthless unless accompanied by the actual right to secede. Such empty statements, he contends, are either a bourgeois deception of the people or pious petty-bourgeois wishes.
The chapter draws on the historical context of Tsarist Russia as a “prison of nations,” where national oppression was a central feature of autocratic rule. Lenin’s position is rooted in the Marxist principle that the proletariat must champion the right of nations to self-determination, including the right to form independent states, as a democratic demand that exposes the hypocrisy of bourgeois nationalism and builds solidarity among the working class across national lines. He argues that the proletarian party strives to create as large a state as possible, because this benefits the working people, and aims to draw nations closer together and bring about their eventual fusion. However, this fusion must be achieved exclusively through free, fraternal union, not by violence.
Lenin’s polemic is directed against two main targets. First, he attacks the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois parties that pay lip service to anti-annexationism while opposing real secession, thereby perpetuating national oppression under a democratic facade. Second, he implicitly argues against those within the socialist movement who might advocate for a centralised state without recognising the right of secession, a position that would betray the revolutionary internationalism of the proletariat. The positive programme Lenin advances is threefold: complete freedom of secession, the broadest local and national autonomy, and elaborate guarantees for the rights of national minorities. He concludes by asserting that the more democratic the Russian Republic becomes—specifically, the more successfully it organises itself as a Republic of Soviets of Workers’ and Peasants’ Deputies—the more powerfully it will attract the working people of all nations to voluntary union. This formulation links the national question directly to the class struggle and the construction of a socialist state based on workers’ democracy.