Lenin on the World Revolution

1914

April 6 (19), 1914

On the Question of National Policy

Lenin Collected Works, Volume 20, pages 217-225.

Eighteen years ago, in 1896, the International Congress of Labour and Socialist Organisations in London adopted a resolution on the national question, which indicated the only correct way to work for both real "popular liberties" and socialism. The resolution reads:

"This Congress declares that it stands for the full right of all nations to self-determination, and expresses its sympathy for the workers of every country now suffering under the yoke of military, national or other absolutism. This Congress calls upon the workers of all these countries to join the ranks of the class-conscious workers of the whole world in order jointly to fight for the defeat of international capitalism and for the achievement of the aims of international Social-Democracy."

And we, too, call for unity in the ranks of the workers of all nations in Russia, for only such unity can guarantee the equality of nations and popular liberties, and safeguard the interests of socialism.

But true democracy, headed by the working class, holds aloft the banner of complete equality of nations and of unity of the workers of all nations in their class struggle. From this point of view we reject so-called "cultural-national autonomy", that is, the division of educational affairs in a given state according to nationality, or the proposal that education should be taken out of the hands of the state and transferred to separately organised national associations. A democratic state must grant autonomy to its various regions, especially to regions with mixed populations. This form of autonomy in no way contradicts democratic centralism; on the contrary, it is only through regional autonomy that genuine democratic centralism is possible in a large state with a mixed population. A democratic state is bound to grant complete freedom for the native languages and annul all privileges for any one language. A democratic state will not permit the oppression or the overriding of any one nationality by another, either in any particular region or in any branch of public affairs.

April 16, 1914.

National Equality

Lenin Collected Works, Volume 20, pages 237-238.

The policy of oppressing nationalities is one of dividing nations. At the same time it is a policy of systematic corruption of the people's minds. The Black Hundreds' plans are designed to foment antagonism among the different nations, to poison the minds of the ignorant and downtrodden masses. Pick up any Black-Hundred newspaper and you will find that the persecution of non-Russians, the sowing of mutual distrust between the Russian peasant, the Russian petty bourgeois and the Russian artisan on the one hand, and the Jewish, Finnish, Polish, Georgian and Ukrainian peasants, petty bourgeois and artisans on the other, is meat and drink to the whole of this Black-Hundred gang.

But the working class needs unity, not division. It bas no more bitter enemy than the savage prejudices and superstitions which its enemies sow among the ignorant masses. The oppression of "subject peoples" is a double-edged weapon. It cuts both ways—against the "subject peoples" and against the Russian people.

That is why the working class must protest most strongly against national oppression in any shape and form.

May 10, 1914.

Corrupting the Workers with Refined Nationalism

Lenin Collected Works, Volume 20, pages 289-291.

The class-conscious workers fight hard against every kind of nationalism, both the crude, violent, Black-Hundred nationalism, and that most refined nationalism which preaches the equality of nations together with ... the splitting up of the workers' cause, the workers' organisations and the working-class movement according to nationality. Unlike all the varieties of the nationalist bourgeoisie, the class conscious workers, carrying out the decisions of the recent (summer 1913) conference of the Marxists, stand, not only for the most complete, consistent and fully applied equality of nations and languages, but also for the amalgamation of the workers of the different nationalities in united proletarian organisations of every kind.