Lenin on the World Revolution

1903

July 15, 1903

The national question in our programme

„Iskra" No. 44, July 15, 1903

Works Volume 6, page 452 – 461

As the party of the proletariat, the Social-Democratic Party considers it to be its positive and principal task to further the self-determination of the proletariat in each nationality rather than that of peoples or nations. We must always and unreservedly work for the very closest unity of the proletariat of all nationalities, and it is only in isolated and exceptional cases that we can advance and actively support demands conducive to the establishment of a new class state or to the substitution of a looser federal unity, etc., for the complete political unity of a state. (page 452)

But it is to the interests of this struggle [class-struggle of the proletariat ] that we must subordinate the demand for national self-determination. It is this that makes all the difference between our approach to the national question and the bourgeois-democratic approach. (Seite 454)