10. Conclusion

Let us sum up.

From the standpoint of the theory of Marxism in general, the question of the right to self-determination presents no difficulties. There can be no serious question either of disputing the London decision of 1896, or of denying that self-determination means only the right to secession, or that the formation of independent national states is the tendency of all bourgeois-democratic revolutions.

A difficulty is created to some extent by the fact that in Russia the proletariat of oppressed nations and the proletariat of the oppressing nation are fighting, and must fight, side by side. The task is to preserve the unity of the proletariat’s class struggle for socialism and to resist all bourgeois and Black-Hundred nationalist influences. Among the oppressed nations, the separation of the proletariat into an independent party sometimes leads to so bitter a struggle against the nationalism of the nation concerned that the perspective becomes distorted and the nationalism of the oppressing nation is forgotten.

But such a distortion of perspective can last only a short time. The experience of the joint struggle of the proletarians of different nations shows all too clearly that we must pose political questions not from the “Cracow” but from the all-Russian standpoint. And in all-Russian politics it is the Purishkeviches and the Kokoshkins who rule. Their ideas hold sway; their persecution of the non-Russian nationalities for “separatism”, for thinking of secession, is preached and practised in the Duma, in the schools, in the churches, in the barracks, in hundreds and thousands of newspapers. It is this Great Russian poison of nationalism that is poisoning the whole all-Russian political atmosphere. It is the misfortune of a nation that, by enslaving other nations, it strengthens reaction throughout Russia. The memories of 1849 and 1863 form a living political tradition which, unless storms on a very great scale occur, threatens to hamper every democratic and especially every Social-Democratic movement for many decades to come.

There can be no doubt that, however natural the point of view of certain Marxists of the oppressed nations may sometimes seem (their “misfortune” sometimes consists in the blinding of the mass of the population by the idea of “their own” national liberation), in reality, given the objective relation of class forces in Russia, refusal to defend the right to self-determination is equivalent to the worst opportunism, to infecting the proletariat with the ideas of the Kokoshkins. And these ideas are, in essence, the ideas and the policy of the Purishkeviches.

Therefore, while Rosa Luxemburg’s point of view could at first have been excused as a specifically Polish, “Cracow” narrowness, at the present time, when nationalism has grown stronger everywhere, and above all government nationalism, Great Russian nationalism, when it is this that directs policy, such narrowness becomes inexcusable. In reality it is clung to by the opportunists of all nations, who shun the idea of “storms” and “leaps”, who regard the bourgeois-democratic revolution as completed, and who tag along behind the liberalism of the Kokoshkins.

Great Russian nationalism, like every nationalism, will pass through various phases, according to which classes are dominant in the bourgeois country. Before 1905 we knew almost only national-reactionaries. After the revolution national-liberals were born among us.

This is in fact the position of both the Octobrists and the Cadets (Kokoshkin), that is, of the whole of the present-day bourgeoisie.

And further on the birth of Great Russian national-democrats is inevitable. One of the founders of the “Popular Socialist” party, Mr. Peshekhonov, has already expressed this point of view when (in the August 1906 issue of Russkoye Bogatstvo) he called for caution towards the nationalist prejudices of the muzhik. However much we Bolsheviks may be slandered for “idealising” the muzhik, we have always drawn and always will draw a strict distinction between the muzhik’s good sense and the muzhik’s prejudice, between muzhik democracy against Purishkevich and the muzhik’s striving to make peace with the priest and the landlord.

Proletarian democracy must reckon with the nationalism of the Great Russian peasants (not in the sense of making concessions to it, but in the sense of fighting it) now, and will probably have to reckon with it for a fairly long time. The awakening of nationalism among the oppressed nations, which made itself felt so strongly after 1905 (let us recall, for example, the group of “Autonomist-Federalists” in the First Duma, the growth of the Ukrainian movement, of the Muslim movement, and so on), will inevitably cause an intensification of nationalism among the Great Russian petty bourgeoisie in town and country. The more slowly the democratic transformation of Russia proceeds, the more stubborn, brutal and embittered will be the national persecution and bickering among the bourgeoisie of the various nations. The particularly reactionary character of the Russian Purishkeviches will at the same time engender (and intensify) “separatist” tendencies among this or that oppressed nation, which sometimes enjoy far greater freedom in neighbouring states.

This state of affairs confronts the proletariat of Russia with a twofold, or rather a two-sided, task: the struggle against all nationalism, and above all against Great Russian nationalism; the recognition not only of the complete equality of all nations in general, but also of equality in the matter of forming a state, that is, the right of nations to self-determination, to secession; and, alongside this, and precisely in the interests of a successful struggle against every kind of nationalism of all nations, the defence of the unity of the proletarian struggle and of the proletarian organisations, of their closest amalgamation into an international community, in spite of bourgeois strivings for national segregation.

Complete equality of nations; the right of nations to self-determination; the amalgamation of the workers of all nations: this is the national programme that Marxism teaches the workers, that the experience of the whole world and the experience of Russia teach them.

This article was already in type when I received No. 3 of Nasha Rabochaya Gazeta, in which Mr. Vl. Kosovsky writes of the recognition of the right of all nations to self-determination:

“Having been mechanically transferred from the resolution of the First Congress of the party (1898), which in its turn had borrowed it from the decisions of the international socialist congresses, it was understood by the 1903 Congress, as the debates show, in the same sense as the Socialist International gave it: in the sense of political self-determination, that is, the self-determination of a nation in the direction of political independence. Thus the formula of national self-determination, denoting the right to territorial separation, does not touch at all on the question of how national relations are to be regulated within a given state organism, for nationalities that cannot or do not wish to leave the existing state.”

This shows that Mr. Vl. Kosovsky has had the minutes of the Second Congress of 1903 in his hands and knows perfectly well the real (and only) meaning of the concept of self-determination. Compare this with the fact that the editors of the Bund paper Di Tsayt let loose Mr. Liebman to mock the programme and declare it vague!! Strange “party” ways these Bundist gentlemen have… Why Kosovsky declares the Congress’s adoption of self-determination a mechanical transfer, “Allah only knows”. There are people who “want to object”, but what, how, why and wherefore is not given to them.