This study provides an overview of debates and policies concerning the “national question” from the late nineteenth century until the 1960s. The reason for undertaking this study is not for the purpose of returning to the past, and especially not for taking models of a century or so ago and applying them today in different conditions. Instead, the reason is that by understanding past developments and debates in the world communist movement can learn valuable ell as avoid mistakes. Above all, we need an in-depth understanding of past experiences in the communist movement so as to prepare and plan better for the future.
The following has six sections: 1) debates at the turn of the twentieth century; 2) developments in the Bolshevik Position (Lenin and Stalin); 3) resolutions and constitutions; 4) structures of governance; 5) preferential policies for minority nationalities; 6) anti-colonial struggles for national independence.
1. Debates at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
To begin with the important question of terminology. The terms “nation” or “nationality” – natsiia and natsional’nost’ in Russian,民族 mínzú in Chinese – designate not what has come to be called in a Western context a “nation-state,”2 but a particular group with common characteristics within a state. At times, one will find the term “ethnic group” used in English, but this is misleading since a nationality is not determined by its ethnic identity. For this reason, we will use the term “nation” or “nationality,” which is the common term in all the material from the debates at the turn of the twentieth century to the realities in China today.
At the turn of the twentieth century, the national question was a topic of considerable debate among a number of socialist organisations, especially between Austrian Marxists, Caucasian Mensheviks, and the General Jewish Workers’ Union of Lithuania, Poland, and Russia (known as the Bund), and the Bolsheviks. Their debate turned on how socialism in power would deal with the many nationalities within a state. Notably, the debate took place not in the smaller countries and city-states of western Europe, but especially in Austria-Hungary and Russia—both with significant landmass and multiple nationalities. In this section, I deal with the most prominent of the
The key questions in these debates were:
1. The understanding of a “nation.”
2. The form of socialist governance to come.
3. Whether the approach to nationalities would take a “cultural-national” approach or a class approach? In other words, what came first: a) nations as defined by their cultures and then class, b) or class as the basis for dealing with nations?
1.1. Austrian Marxists
Otto Bauer (1881-1938) was the leading theorist among the Austrian Marxists. For Bauer (2000, 117), “a nation is the totality of human beings bound together by a community of fate [Schicksalsgemeinschaft] into a community of character [Charaktergemeinschaft].” By “community of character” Bauer attempts to indicate what distinguishes one nationality from another, and he tries to identify distinct differences in ways of thinking, behaviour, and assumptions. However, this character is neither a given nor a cause of the assumptions and behaviours of individuals within a nationality.
Instead, we may understand a nationality’s community of character by considering the community of “fate” or “destiny.” This term means the long and complex historical process that produces a community of character. Bauer emphasises that such a community is always relative, to other communities and between individuals within them, and that it is subject to change in light of historical developments. Much of Bauer’s investigation is devoted to identifying how a nationality’s community of character has developed over time, how it changes, and how it entails a constant interaction with historical and contemporary forces. There is no such thing as an unchanging national spirit, since each generation inherits a distinct cultural framework which is modified in light of experience and events. Thus, the “character of a nationality” is not an explanation of distinct characteristics, but a reality that needs to be analysed in historical terms.
1.2. The Bund
A second major contribution to the debate came from the Bund (General Jewish Workers’ Union of Lithuania, Poland, and Russia), which was engaged in constant debate and struggle over the national question. There were two main emphases.
1) The internationalists, such as Leon Goldman and Dovid Kats, who argued strenuously that the major concern should be the international working class and not “cultural-national” interests. They saw the latter as divisive, risking a diversion of working-class interests away from the primary struggle against capitalist exploitation.
2) The second grouping – including John Mill, Yekutiel Portnoi, and Vladimir Kossovskii (Nokhem Mendl Levinson) – argued just as strongly for Jewish identity as a nationality. For these nationalists, a nationality should be defined in terms of culture and language.
Between these two sides were some other theorists, especially Vladimir Medem (1943), who argued that “national character” – a term drawn from the Austrian Marxists – was a cultural content common to all human beings, but that it took distinct forms due to historical reasons and the intersections between social forces in a specific location. It followed, Medem argued, that citizenship of a “state of nationalities” should be neutral in terms of one’s identification in terms of a nationality: all should be included, and a person’s nationality should not be identified. While Medem’s proposals may have been an effort to overcome the struggles in the Bund concerning the national question, his proposals did not resolve those struggles.
Now one side, and now the other gained the ascendancy and influenced the Bund’s program. For example, those in favour of identifying the Bund as the representative of Jewish workers were able to get the Fourth Congress of 1901 and the Sixth Congress of 1905 to adopt resolutions concerning the Jews as a “nationality,” the need for “cultural-national autonomy,” and for the future socialist state to be a “federation of nationalities” in which self-government was to be transferred to the “nationality” so as to enable “free cultural development.” In response, the “internationalists” in the Bund worked hard to ensure that the statements of principle were lacking in terms of a concrete program and could not be enacted. They also persuaded the majority to overcome the 1903 split with the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party and re-join that Party in 1906. The story continues with the Bund yet again breaking away, only to participate significantly in the October Revolution and then dissolve itself. Most of its members joined what was soon to become the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) and not a few took up leadership positions.
1.3. Caucasian Social Democrats
The dominant Menshevik section of the Caucasian Social Democrats adopted an extreme “cultural-national autonomy” position, arguing for the determining influence of cultural factors over history and economics. The complex political and economic history of the Caucasus meant that class aspirations were usually expressed in cultural and national terms (Suny 1992; 1993, 20– 83). Thus:
a) the Georgians were mostly peasants with a nobility dreaming of the glories of the Georgian past while being integrated with the Russian tsarist state administration;
b) the dispersed Armenians made up the bulk of the relatively new bourgeoisie and controlled commerce and the oil fields of Baku;
c) and the Azerbaijani (and immigrant Persian) Muslims formed the lowly paid workers in the oil fields.
These realities meant that the Georgians promoted a “feudal-monarchist” nationalism connected with their Eastern Orthodox faith, while the dispersed Armenians sought identity through their Armenian church and promoted a “bourgeois” non-territorial nationalism in competition with the fledgling Russian bourgeoisie. By contrast, the younger and radical Georgian intelligentsia (including Stalin) developed a mass political movement that brought together Georgian peasants and both Georgian and Azerbaijani workers. Their opponents were the tsarist autocracy (and therefore Georgian nobles) and the largely Armenian bourgeoisie. We can see how primary identification of a class would be expressed in cultural terms, especially in terms of language and religion. The Caucasian Social Democrats also struggled over this question, with the Mensheviks promoting a cultural-national autonomy position for a future socialist state, thereby obscuring the question of class.
2. Developments in the Bolshevik Position
In this section we turn to developments in the Bolshevik position. To begin with the key insight, which differed from the preceding proposals: in terms of nationalities, the resolute focus should be on the unifying category of class, which would lead in turn to the recognition and fostering of greater diversity.
2.1. Lenin
In response to the tsarist policy of subordinating all of the linguistic and national variety of the Russian empire to an enforced “Great-Russian nationalism,” Lenin tirelessly reiterated that “whoever does not recognise and champion the equality of nations and languages, and does not fight against all national oppression or inequality is not a Marxist” (Lenin 1913, 28). The specific issue may have varied – from language in schools to bills in the Duma – but the responses repeated the same point: national autonomy, self-determination, linguistic freedom, and no imposition by one nation on another. “All nations in the state are absolutely equal, and all privileges enjoyed by any one nation or any one language are held to be inadmissible and anti-constitutional” (Lenin 1914, 281).
The reason for this position is that class is the bond for all workers, and that nationalities are secondary to class. Workers of all languages, cultures, and nationalities need to work together in a united front, for class is always primary (Lenin 1903). Any insistence on the primacy of the identity of nationalities and the urging of a federation would split the working class into rival groups.
2.2. Stalin
Over three decades or so, Stalin would come to reflect many times on the national question (Stalin 1904; 1918; 1919; 1920; 1921b; 1921a; 1925a; 1925b; 1929) and it would become a standard topic in his many reports to Party congresses and conferences. However, his “Marxism and the National Question” (1913) is perhaps the most well-known and influential piece, so let us consider this essay in a little detail. The article in the midst of immense debate.
All sides were seeking a Marxist solution to the same problem: how to incorporate and protect the many minority nationalities living in the same state. Their disagreements turned on two issues.
- The first was the contrast between class and nationality: is class to be the basis of the national question, or is to be “national culture”? As we have seen, the Austrian Marxists, the Bund, and the Caucasians Mensheviks advocated the latter and developed a culturist federalism with a federated state that would account for multiple nationalities. Stalin criticised this position and instead stressed that the core category is class, and that only through class can we deal more comprehensively with the question of nationalities.
- The second issue concerned diversity and unity: if we begin with “cultural-national” diversity, then we struggle to find unity within a federated state; but if we begin with class, then unity follows.
Now we come to the key point: this emphasis on unity through class produces a dialectical outcome. Unity through class does not result not in assimilation under a uniform culture (as one finds in capitalist states), but in a higher level of diversity that fosters the distinct characteristics of nationalities. This principle would lead to the Soviet Union’s unprecedented recognition of the territorial claims of nationalities and strong protections for minorities without territory.
In light of a long and complex argument, Stalin at one point summarises with a famous and much-quoted definition: “A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture” (Stalin 1913, 307).
Note that Stalin stresses that ethnicity, race, or tribal identity do not constitute a nation. Further, the positions of Austrian Marxists such as Otto Bauer, the nationalist wing of the Bund, and the Mensheviks in the Caucasus may all be seen as limited to the “psychological make-up,” or the “specific spiritual complexion [osobennosti dukhovnogo oblika]” of a common culture and its historical formation.
However, there is a contradiction in Stalin’s study. In the definition quoted, Stalin mentions histories of centuries and millennia (in relation to the Italian, French and other nations). However, in other parts of the study he emphasises that nations arose only after the emergence of capitalism: “The process of elimination of feudalism and development of capitalism is at the same time a process of the constitution of people into nations” (Stalin 1913, 313). This contradiction or tension between longer and shorter histories, between nations with millennia of developments and nations produced by capitalism, runs throughout the essay. If we are not aware of the tension, the risk is that we can misread this 1913 essay.
So we are left with the question: which historical approach has come to be assumed as the basis for later resolutions, policies, and initiatives? The longer historical account. We will return to Stalin’s later contributions below.
3. Party Resolutions and State Constitutions
After the success of the October Revolution, the Bolsheviks were faced with the daunting task of building anew a country that was in many respects a broken and “failed” state. Among many aspects of the construction of the world’s first socialist country were the resolutions of the Party (before gaining revolutionary power) and constitutions of what became the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
3.1. Party Resolutions
To begin with the Party resolutions. At the first congress of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (1898), we find the following article 8 in the program: “The party recognises the right of every nationality to self-determination.” By the second congress of 1903, article 8 had been expanded: “The right of the population to receive education in their native tongue, to be realised by the provision, at the expense of the state and the organs of self-government, of the necessary schools; the right of every citizen to use his native tongue at assemblies; the introduction of native languages on a par with the official language in all local social and state institutions.” Further, article 9 stipulated: “The right to self-determination for all the nations that constitute the state.”
3.2. Constitutions
In light of these developments, it should be no surprise that all nationalities were included in the structures of governance of the USSR.
To begin with the constitutions of 1924 and 1936. As background to the 1924 constitution, the “Declaration of the Formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics,” which was ratified on 30 December, 1922, clearly states that the dictatorship of the proletariat serves to “eradicate national oppression, to create an atmosphere of mutual confidence, and to lay the foundation for the fraternal co-operation of peoples.” This declaration would come to form the preamble to the 1924 constitution, and would be elaborated in the constitution of 1936.
In the 1936 constitution – famous for including the world’s first constitutional articles on the rights of women, the rights to work, social insurance, rest and leisure, holidays, medical care, and education, as well as for the proactive nature of these rights – we also find stipulations concerning minority nationalities. These include governing structures in the autonomous republics, as well as autonomous regions, areas, districts, cities and rural localities (articles 89 to 101).
Further, article 123 states: “Equality of rights of citizens of the U.S.S.R., irrespective of their nationality or race, in all spheres of economic, state, cultural, social and political life, is an indefeasible law. Any direct or indirect restriction of the rights of, or, conversely, any establishment of direct or indirect privileges for, citizens on account of their race or nationality, as well as any advocacy of racial or national exclusiveness or hatred and contempt, is punishable by law.”
In his reflections on the 1936 constitution – which went through many rounds of feedback and revision – Stalin observes (1936, 167–68):
The draft of the new Constitution of the U.S.S.R. is … profoundly internationalistic. It proceeds from the proposition that all nations and races have equal rights. It proceeds from the fact that neither difference in colour or language, cultural level, or level of political development, nor any other difference between nations and races, can serve as grounds for justifying national inequality of rights. It proceeds from the proposition that all nations and races, irrespective of their past and present position, irrespective of their strength or weakness, should enjoy equal rights in all spheres of the economic, social, political and cultural life of society.
4. Structures of Governance
Constitutions do not emerge out of thin air; they respond to and shape the structures of governance. In the Soviet Union, two organs of governance emerged through trial and error. In the 1924 constitution, the first organ was called the Federal Soviet and the second the Soviet of Nationalities. By 1936, the two chambers were known as the Soviet of the Union and the Soviet of Nationalities. Together they formed the Supreme Soviet, which was the highest legislative body. For any proposal – even from the Central Committee of the Communist Party – to become law, it had to be approved by both chambers of the Supreme Soviet.
4.1. Soviet of Nationalities
What was the composition of the Soviet of Nationalities? In the 1924 constitution, article 15 stipulated that it is composed of “representatives of the member Republics and associated autonomous Republics,” with five representatives from the former and one from the latter. By the 1936 constitution, article 35 stipulates elections “according to Union and Autonomous Republics, Autonomous Regions and national areas on the basis of twenty-five deputies from each Union Republic, eleven deputies from each Autonomous Republic, five deputies from each Autonomous Region and one deputy from each national area.” Further, the Soviet of Nationalities had legislative power from the very beginning, not only in terms of approving bills, but also for the sake of initiating legislation. And all legislation had to be published in all the languages spoken in the Union.
Clearly, the structures of governance in the Soviet Union explicitly included the many nationalities that were part of the union.
4.2. Stalin on the Soviet of Nationalities
Among the many debates concerning the 1936 constitution, not a little concerned the two chambers of governance. In relation to a proposed amendment relating to the Soviet of Nationalities, Stalin had this to say (1936, 189– 90):
The fifth amendment concerns Article 33. The creation of two chambers is regarded as inexpedient, and it is proposed that the Soviet of Nationalities be abolished. I think that this amendment is also wrong. A single-chamber system would be better than a dual-chamber system if the U.S.S.R. were a single-nation state. But the U.S.S.R. is not a single-nation state. The U.S.S.R., as we know, is a multi-national state. We have a supreme body in which are represented the common interests of all the working people of the U.S.S.R. irrespective of nationality. This is the Soviet of the Union. But in addition to common interests, the nationalities of the U.S.S.R. have their particular, specific interests, connected with their specific national characteristics. Can these specific interests be ignored? No, they cannot. Do we need a special supreme body to reflect precisely these specific interests? Unquestionably, we do. There can be no doubt that without such a body it would be impossible to administer a multi-national state like the U.S.S.R. Such a body is the second chamber, the Soviet of Nationalities of the U.S.S.R.
4.3. Other Socialist Countries
Despite some differences, the structures of governance in socialist countries would by and large follow a similar model. There would be two chambers of governance, with one of them specifically designated for representation by minority nationalities, along with other groups.
For example, in China there are two organs of governance. However, all legislative power lies with the People’s National Congress, which is similar to the Soviet of the Union. The other chamber became – due to the specific nature of China’s revolutionary history – the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. Comprised of all minority nationalities, other political parties, religious groups, and so on, the CPPCC has wide-ranging consultative powers, but not legislative power.
5. Preferential Policies for Minority Nationalities
Along with the structures of governance, the Soviet Union implemented the world’s first preferential policies for minorities. These policies arose – in part – from the view that rights had to be pro-active and not “negative” rights (as in bourgeois constitutions and states). As Stalin observed (1921b, 20; see also 1923, 269–70): “The victory of the Soviets and the establishment of the proletarian dictatorship are a fundamental condition for abolishing national oppression, establishing national equality and guaranteeing the rights of national minorities.”
This approach was very consistent, since an early form was already expressed in the 1903 platform of the Russian Social Democrats: “The right of the population to receive instruction in their native tongue, to be realised by the provision, at the expense of the state and the organs of self-government, of the necessary schools; the right of every citizen to use his native language at assemblies; the introduction of native languages on a par with the official language in all local social and state institutions.” At this early stage, the platform was consciously developed in response to tsarist repression, which was targeted at all minorities.
5.1. Implementation
The reconstruction of Russia into the Soviet Union entailed the establishment of autonomous territories and regions where there were identifiable nationalities. What about dispersed minorities without clear territories? They were provided with a strong framework of protections, including stiff penalties for any form of racial denigration and abuse. These dispersed minorities should also be able to use their own languages, operate their own schools, law-courts, and soviets, and have freedom of conscience in matters relating to religion.
Across the Soviet Union, these preferential programs cost millions and billions of roubles, producing solutions as well as creating new problems. Since this was the world’s first program of preferential policies for minority nationalities, new and unanticipated problems were bound to arise. But these were good problems to have, for they were part and parcel of socialist construction and required innovative thinking in order to solve them – and to provide lessons for later socialist practices.
Within the vast expanses of what would become by 1924 the Soviet Union, the task of identifying and supporting nationalities created a large number of autonomous republics and regions (oblast or okrug), national districts of 25,000 to 10,000 people, and even village Soviets with as few as 500 people. At the same time, there was continual debate as to who belonged to which group, to what the various levels and groups were entitled, and constant alterations and refinements. Further, the whole program may always not have lived up to some of its lofty aims, since the way forward faced immense hurdles and setbacks. Yet its achievements were significant.
5.2. Raising Minorities to Socialism
A further aspect of the preferential policies for minority nationalities was to “raise” them to socialism within a relatively short period of time. In other words, the task was to raise the cultural, social, and economic level of the minority nationalities, especially those who were in the border regions of the Soviet Union. As was pointed out in the early 1920s, some regions and their nationalities still had a pastoral economy and patriarchal-tribal ways of life, while others had semi-patriarchal and semi-feudal structures. To raise them to the new and still developing level of socialism actually meant taking them directly from much earlier modes of production (tribal society and feudalism) to socialism.
This task could be achieved only by taking into account their specific economic situations, class structures, cultures, and manners of life. So we find stipulations that the minority nationalities in question should develop and strengthen their Soviet statehood in light of their particular conditions; establish courts, administration, economic organisations, and organs of governance; foster presses, schools, theatres, recreation clubs, and cultural and educational institutions – all of the above operating with the local language and staffed with local people who understand the specificities of local habits and customs.
5.3. Coining New Terms
Communist scholars and policy-makers developed some new terms to describe and analyse the process underway. These terms may be worth reconsidering as the CPA develops its First Nations policies.
- Policy – politika. This term was interchangeable with:
- Construction – stroitel’stvo. For example, language policy (iazykovaia politika) and language construction (iazykovoe stroitel’stvo) were interchangeable terms. Why? In some cases languages had to be recreated, written forms developed for those with only an oral language, leading to the development of new types of literature, education, and culture.
- Indigenisation – korenizatsiia. This new term derived not from the stem koren-(“root” – with the meaning “rooting”) but from its adjectival form korennoi as used in the phrase korennoi narod (indigenous people).
Why mention these terms?
The whole process was was seen as the deliberate process of ethnologists and socialists in producing and developing a new society and structures of governance, within which nationalities were central. Most of the material concerning Soviet preferential policies involves policies, research teams, concrete programs, government departments (central and local) and the many significant achievements and mistakes made in the process.
5.4. Creating a New Society
As Stalin observed in his report to he Communist Party’s fifteenth congress of 1931, the preferential policies involved “the creation of new nationalities” out of groups that had been so thoroughly assimilated that they had “earlier never
[pokrovitel’stvennaia politika] in relation to the development of the national cultures of the backward nationalities. I emphasize this so that it will be understood that we are not indifferent, but actively supporting [pokrovitel’stvuiushchie] the development of national culture (quoted in Martin 2001, 17).
6. Anti-Colonial Struggles for National Liberation
Finally, we come to what may well be the most important insight in relation to minority nationalities: the implication for anti-colonial struggles for national liberation. Deriving from Marx and Engels, as well as Lenin, this was Stalin’s distinct contribution to the basic principles of Marxism and had an immense effect on the history of the 20th century until today. This was an insight into the global dimension of class struggle and a new approach to world-wide revolution.
The insight may be stated as follows: the October Revolution and the preferential policies of the Soviet Union provided a microcosm of the global anti-colonial struggle against capitalist imperialism. This insight follows directly from Marx and Engels’s resolute emphasis on anti-colonial struggles for national liberation as inescapably connected with class struggle.
The logic is as follows: a) the focus on class provides a dialectical approach to the national question; b) this led to the world’s first preferential policies for minority nationalities and an important structural feature of socialist governance; c) the next step was to apply this logic to anti-imperialist and anti-colonial struggles.
6.1. Development of the New Basic Principle
In 1921, Stalin observed that it was “the Communists who first revealed the connection between the national question and the question of the colonies, who proved it theoretically and made it the basis of their practical revolutionary activities” (Stalin 1921a, 53). This theoretical and practical breakthrough took some time to emerge, so let us follow how the Bolsheviks came to this insight.
In 1918, Stalin published “The October Revolution and the National Question.” In this article, Stalin notes the uprisings – inspired by the Russian Revolution – in Austria-Hungary and Germany and saw them as the beginning of much wider revolutionary activity in the common struggle against imperialism. Was Stalin simply concerned with a European revolution? He points out that a focus on Western Europe would mean missing the real revolutionary upsurge, which was happening in “the East.” Does he mean the eastern parts of Russia, part of the “border regions”? No, since he moves beyond the orbit of Russian influence: “the East” is a term for all peoples oppressed by colonialist imperialism, including “China, India, Persia, Egypt and Morocco” (Stalin 1918, 175).3
In the same article, Stalin points out: “Thus, from the particular question of combating national oppression, the national question is evolving into the general question of emancipating the nations, colonies and semi-colonies from imperialism” (p. 168). This is the crucial breakthrough, and Stalin repeats the point in the conclusion to this speech, where he observes that the October Revolution had widened the scope of the national question, converting it from “combating national oppression in Europe into the general question of emancipating the oppressed peoples, colonies and semi-colonies from imperialism” (p. 170).
Let us now turn to the 1921 article, “Concerning the Presentation of the National Question.” Here Stalin criticises socialists, especially of the Second International, for restricting their concerns over the national question to “civilised” nations, such as the Irish, Czechs, Poles, Finns, Serbs, Armenians, and Jews, thereby neglecting the millions upon millions of oppressed peoples in Asia and Africa. These global “second-class citizens” were not even on the radar of such socialists, except perhaps as an assumed colonial prop for the sake of maintaining “civilisation.” By contrast, it was precisely revolutionary communists who had first revealed the inescapable link between national question internal to a country such as the Soviet Union and the colonies. Even more, this theoretical proof became “the basis of their practical revolutionary activities” (Stalin 1921a, 53).
Finally, in “The Foundations of Leninism” of 1924 Stalin repeats many of the points already noted, and observes that the “national question was thereby transformed from a particular and internal state problem into a general and international problem, into a world problem of the liberation of the oppressed peoples in the dependent countries and colonies from the yoke of imperialism” (Stalin 1924, 144).
6.2. Attacking the Capitalist “Rear” and the October Revolution as a Form of National Liberation
Stalin frequently used a military metaphor: attacking the “rear” of the colonies for the “war” waged at the “front” against capitalism. Since capitalist imperialist countries were mostly short of crucial raw materials, they relied on the colonies for food and fuel, raw material for industry, markets to sell the items produced, and labour-power. It followed that the communist movement should tackle both “front” and “rear,” uniting the proletarian movement and anti-colonial national liberation movements into a common front. The colonies cannot be completely liberated without the overthrow of capitalism; so also, national liberation movements in the colonies challenge the rule of capital. Without such activity, the victory of any proletarian revolution is never entirely secure.
Further, in the 1927 piece, “The International Character of the October Revolution,” Stalin took the argument a huge step further. He begins by arguing that that revolutionary anti-colonial struggles for national liberation also happened in Russia. He has in mind the minority nationalities, who were liberated from internal tsarist colonialism as a result of the October Revolution. Without landlords and capitalists to oppress these nationalities, they too were freed in a way similar to the proletariat and the peasantry. While the core position of the leadership and example of the proletarian revolution is maintained, the new note here is that the vast territories of the Russian Empire also entailed significant colonisation in the process of expansion across the Eurasian landmass.
6.3. A New Form of Global Revolution
It has been a staple of some Marxist analysis that global revolution would take place first in “advanced” or “developed” capitalist countries.
Those who promote such a position usually refer to selected and decontextualised quotations from Marx and Engels. What they miss is the interest in and emphasis on anti-colonial struggles in places such as Ireland, India, and China. Indeed, specific collections of the works of Marx and Engels on these parts of world have been published (Marx and Engels 1971; 2006; Marx 1951).
As for the Bolsheviks, the concrete support and theoretical insight concerning anti-colonial struggles may be understood as a new development in the global revolution. The Bolsheviks had hoped that once the “weakest link” in the capitalist chain was broken, other links would would follow. They initially looked westward, to Europe, where the social and economic cost of war was high, social unrest widespread, and genuine possibilities for the revolutionary seizure of power existed in countries such as Germany and Austria-Hungary. It was not be. Instead, Stalin and his circle urged communists to look “east,” to anti-colonial struggles for liberation. Here lay real potential for the global revolution, which was to be realised in East Asia. Thus, the Soviet Union, along with other socialist movements, should “support – resolutely and actively support – the national liberation movement of the oppressed and dependent peoples” (Stalin 1924, 147).
Alongside concrete and practical support in terms of investment in infrastructure, educational opportunities, organisation, logistics, and arms for anti-colonial movements, the Soviet Union also influenced the United Nations to adopt the 1960 “Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples.” Initially proposed by the Soviet Union in the 1950s, the declaration was taken up by a coalition of Asian and African states in the growing non-aligned movement. Only after a number of newly liberated countries were admitted to the UN was the critical voting majority achieved and the declaration was adopted on 14 December, 1960. Let us see how this brief but pointed document speaks of a new type of anti-colonial and anti-hegemonic sovereignty.
To begin with, this new type of sovereignty is a right; it is equated again and again with the “inalienable right” to freedom. It follows that “subjection of peoples to alien subjugation, domination and exploitation constitutes a denial of fundamental human rights.” Further, sovereignty provides the required conditions for human rights, since these rights can be enacted only in the context of the “self-determination of all peoples.” Colonialism is therefore an “impediment” to freedom, to “the social, cultural and economic development of dependent peoples.” Finally, territorial integrity is a crucial feature of what becomes a redefinition of sovereignty: “any attempt aimed at the partial or total disruption of the national unity and the territorial integrity of a country is incompatible with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”
Conclusion
By way of conclusion, three points need to be emphasised.
First, the “national question” was a work in progress, all the way from initial parts of the Party’s platform, through policy implementation in the Soviet Union, to the insight into implications for anti-colonial struggles for national liberation. As a work in progress, the approach to minority nationalities policy and anti-imperialist struggle needs constant reform and updating to suit the times. It can be said that by the 1970s the Soviet Union had neglected this important task. For example, the revised constitution of 1977 contained no revisions of the nationalities policy and retained what was by then an outdated “right to secession.” While the main cause of the breakup of the Soviet Union was loss of direction, union, and theoretical knowledge of the Communist Party, the failure to update the nationalities policy was a contributing factor that led to republics declaring independence.
Second, the “national question” should always be addressed in light of concrete realities and the specific historical, economic, social, and cultural conditions of a country or region. While this is an obvious point, it needs to be emphasised when considering the Australian context. It will not do to impose a model developed in different conditions.
Third, the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggle for national liberation is a form of class struggle, an international form of class struggle (Losurdo 2016). This point originally derives from Marx and Engels, but it was the distinct insight from the Soviet Union that turned this point into a basic principle of Marxism. To quote another great communist revolutionary leader: “National struggle, in the final analysis, is a question of class struggle” (Mao 1963, 379).
Notes
2. Benedict Anderson’s widely-read Imagined Communities (2006) is, despite its initial quasi-Marxist appeal, quite misleading in theoretical and historical terms.
3 Mao Zedong (1948) was very appreciative of this important article by Stalin, summarising its main points and developing them further.
References
Anderson, Benedict. 2006. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread Nationalism. London: Verso.
Bauer, Otto. 2000. The Question of Nationalities and Social Democracy. Translated by Joseph O’Donnell. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
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