Finland and Russia¶
Core Argument¶
In this polemical article from May 1917, Lenin excoriates the Russian Provisional Government and the Menshevik-led Organising Committee for their handling of Finland’s demands for autonomy, exposing what he sees as a continuation of tsarist annexationist policy under a republican guise. The core argument is that the Provisional Government’s proposal for an “agreement” between the Finnish Diet and the Russian Constituent Assembly is a fraudulent substitute for recognising Finland’s right to secede. Lenin insists that without the right of secession, any talk of agreement is mere deception, since genuine agreement can only exist between equals who each possess the power to disagree.
Lenin grounds his critique in the Social-Democratic Party’s own programme, specifically Section 9, adopted in 1903, which recognised the right of nations to political self-determination, including secession. He charges that the Mensheviks, through the Organising Committee, have thrown this programme overboard and aligned themselves with the bourgeoisie. The evidence he marshals is drawn from an article in Rabochaya Gazeta, the Menshevik organ, which recommended that Finnish social-democrats await a settlement by the Constituent Assembly and warned that separatist tendencies would strengthen centralist inclinations among the Russian bourgeoisie. Lenin seizes on this warning as a threat, indistinguishable from the line taken by the Cadets and figures like Rodichev. He notes with savage irony that the bourgeois paper Birzhevka approved the Organising Committee’s reply as a “lesson by Russian democracy” to the Finns, a kiss of approval that reveals the true class character of the Menshevik position.
The historical context Lenin invokes is the manner of Finland’s original annexation: a deal between the Russian tsars and Napoleon, the suppressor of the French Revolution, akin to the bartering of serfs by landowners or the partitions of Poland. Against this, he counterposes the example of Norway’s free secession from Sweden in 1905, which strengthened mutual trust and voluntary union between the two nations. The polemic is directed squarely at the Mensheviks and Socialist-Revolutionaries, whom he characterises as petty-bourgeois politicians frightened by the spectre of a frightened bourgeoisie. Lenin’s conclusion is that the freer Russia is and the more resolutely it recognises the right of secession, the more strongly other nations will be attracted toward voluntary alliance, and the rarer and shorter actual secession will be. The article is a sustained attack on the hypocrisy of those who profess to oppose annexations while denying the only effective guarantee against them.