Draft Resolution of the CC, RCP(B) on Soviet Rule in the Ukraine¶
Core Argument¶
This chapter presents two documents from late 1919—a Central Committee resolution and a public letter by Lenin—that together define Bolshevik policy toward Ukraine in the immediate aftermath of the defeat of Denikin’s White army. The core argument is that the Soviet state must simultaneously recognise Ukrainian national independence and pursue the closest possible military and economic alliance between the Ukrainian and Russian Soviet republics, subordinating national questions to the overriding imperative of proletarian class unity against international capital.
The resolution, adopted 29 November 1919, affirms the principle of national self-determination by explicitly recognising the independence of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. It mandates federal relations based on earlier decrees from June and May 1919. The document’s key claims concern the practical handling of national oppression: centuries of tsarist Russification have suppressed Ukrainian language and culture, generating nationalist tendencies among backward sections of the population. Party members must therefore remove barriers to Ukrainian cultural development while countering nationalist sentiment through comradely explanation of shared class interests. The resolution insists on Ukrainian-language provision in all Soviet institutions and warns against Russification. It also addresses class composition in the Ukrainian countryside, demanding that labouring peasants—especially the poor—hold decisive influence in revolutionary committees and soviets, and that the middle peasantry be won over through careful food-procurement policies that distinguish them from kulaks. Weapons must be confiscated from the rural population to prevent kulak banditry. Land policy requires complete abolition of landed estates, strictly limited state farms, and voluntary collectivisation only. The resolution concludes that the form of alliance between republics must be decided by Ukrainian workers and peasants themselves.
Lenin’s letter of 28 December 1919, written to explain the victories over Denikin, expands these themes polemically. He draws a direct parallel between Denikin’s rule in Ukraine and Kolchak’s in Siberia, arguing that the ordeal will clarify for Ukrainian workers the necessity of Soviet power. The national question is treated as a special task requiring caution: centuries of Great-Russian oppression have generated legitimate distrust among Ukrainians, and this can only be overcome through patient, voluntary union, not coercion. Lenin explicitly polemicises against Great-Russian chauvinism within the Bolshevik Party itself, demanding that Russian communists repress any manifestation of nationalist prejudice and make concessions on questions of state independence and frontiers. He simultaneously warns Ukrainian communists against petty-bourgeois nationalism that would prioritise independence over class unity. The presence of Borotbist communists in the All-Ukraine Revolutionary Committee is cited as evidence that differences over independence need not prevent joint struggle. The overriding polemical target is the bourgeoisie of all countries, who seek to disunite workers along national lines; the concrete enemy is Denikin, supplied by the Entente powers. Lenin insists that the fundamental question is not boundaries but the dictatorship of the proletariat, and that separate republics would be crushed individually by international capital. The letter thus combines a firm defence of Ukrainian national rights with an uncompromising demand for the closest military and economic alliance against the common class enemy.