To the Communists of Turkestan¶
Core Argument¶
Lenin’s letter “To the Communists of Turkestan,” written in November 1919, is a brief but dense intervention that elevates the question of Soviet nationalities policy to the level of world-historical strategy. Writing not as Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars but as a party member, Lenin insists that establishing “proper relations with the peoples of Turkestan” is of “immense, epochal importance” for the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. The core argument is that the Bolsheviks’ conduct toward the formerly oppressed nations of the Tsarist empire is not a secondary or merely administrative matter, but a decisive test case with ramifications across Asia and the colonial world. Lenin frames the issue in explicitly internationalist terms: the attitude of the Soviet republic to “weak and hitherto oppressed nations” has “very practical significance” for “thousands and millions of people” in the colonies.
The key claim is that the Bolsheviks must demonstrate through concrete actions—not merely declarations—their sincerity in eradicating all traces of Great-Russian imperialism. Lenin draws a direct line between the struggle against internal chauvinism and the fight against world imperialism, which he identifies as being headed by British imperialism. The letter thus situates the Turkestan question within the broader revolutionary strategy of linking the Soviet state’s survival to the anti-colonial awakening of the East. Lenin calls for “comradely relations” with the peoples of Turkestan and demands that party workers show “the greatest confidence” in the Turkestan Commission, a body dispatched by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Council of People’s Commissars precisely to implement this policy.
The polemical thrust is twofold. First, Lenin is arguing against the persistence of Great-Russian chauvinism within the Soviet apparatus itself—the unspoken assumption that Russian dominance should continue under new political forms. Second, he is countering any tendency to treat the national question as subordinate to immediate military or economic expediency. The letter’s urgency reflects the context of the ongoing Civil War and the need to secure the loyalty of non-Russian peoples against White forces and foreign intervention. By addressing the communists of Turkestan directly, Lenin seeks to enforce a line that subordinates local bureaucratic or nationalist resistance to the strategic imperative of building a multi-national Soviet state capable of inspiring anti-imperialist revolution worldwide.