The minutes of the 1903 congress, which adopted the programme of the Russian Marxists, have become a very great rarity, and the vast majority of present-day activists in the working-class movement are not acquainted with the motives behind the individual points of the programme (all the more so since by no means all of the relevant literature enjoys the blessings of legality…). It is therefore necessary to dwell on the discussion of the question that interests us at the 1903 congress.

Let us note first of all that, however scanty the Russian Social-Democratic literature relating to the “right of nations to self-determination” may be, it is nevertheless perfectly clear from it that this right was always understood in the sense of the right to secession. Messrs. Semkovsky, Liebman and Yurkevich, who doubt this and declare § 9 to be “unclear”, etc., are only prattling about “lack of clarity” out of extreme ignorance or carelessness. As early as 1902, in *Zarya*, Plekhanov,[44] defending the “right to self-determination” in the draft programme, wrote that this demand, while not obligatory for bourgeois democrats, is “obligatory for Social-Democrats”. “If we were to forget about it or not dare to put it forward,” wrote Plekhanov, “fearing to touch the national prejudices of our compatriots of the Great-Russian tribe, then the call… ‘Workers of all countries, unite!’ would become a shameful lie upon our lips.”{124}

This is a very apt characterisation of the basic argument in favour of the point under consideration, so apt that it is not for nothing that the “critics” of our programme who “remember not their kinship” have fearfully skirted and continue to skirt it. Refusal of this point, whatever motives may be used to hedge it, in practice signifies a “shameful” concession to Great-Russian nationalism. Why Great-Russian, when it speaks of the right of all nations to self-determination? Because it is a matter of secession from the Great-Russians. The interest of uniting the proletarians, the interest of their class solidarity, demands recognition of the right of nations to secession—this is what Plekhanov acknowledged in the words quoted twelve years ago; had our opportunists pondered this, they would probably not have talked so much nonsense about self-determination.

At the 1903 congress, where this draft programme defended by Plekhanov was approved, the main work was concentrated in the programme commission. Its minutes, unfortunately, were not kept. And it is precisely in relation to this point that they would have been especially interesting, for it was only in the commission that the representatives of the Polish Social-Democrats, Warszawski and Hanecki, attempted to defend their views and dispute the “recognition of the right to self-determination”. A reader who might wish to compare their arguments (set forth in Warszawski’s speech and in the statement by him and Hanecki, pp. 134–136 and 388–390 of the minutes) with the arguments of Rosa Luxemburg in her Polish article, which we have examined, would see the complete identity of these arguments.

How, then, did the programme commission of the Second Congress, where it was above all Plekhanov who opposed the Polish Marxists, react to these arguments? These arguments were cruelly ridiculed! The absurdity of proposing to the Russian Marxists that they delete the recognition of the right of nations to self-determination was shown so clearly and vividly that the Polish Marxists did not even dare to repeat their arguments at the full assembly of the congress!! They left the congress, convinced of the hopelessness of their position before the supreme assembly of Marxists—Great-Russian, Jewish, Georgian, and Armenian.

This historical episode has, it goes without saying, very great significance for anyone seriously interested in their programme. The complete rout of the arguments of the Polish Marxists in the programme commission of the congress and their refusal to attempt to defend their views at the assembly of the congress is an extremely significant fact. It was not for nothing that Rosa Luxemburg “modestly” remained silent about this in her 1908 article—the memory of the congress was evidently too unpleasant! She also remained silent about the, to the point of being laughably unsuccessful, proposal to “correct” § 9 of the programme, made by Warszawski and Hanecki in the name of all the Polish Marxists in 1903, and which neither Rosa Luxemburg nor the other Polish Social-Democrats have dared (and will not dare) to repeat.

But if Rosa Luxemburg, concealing her defeat in 1903, remained silent about these facts, then people interested in the history of their party will take care to learn these facts and think through their meaning.

“…We propose,” wrote Rosa Luxemburg’s friends to the 1903 congress as they left it, “to give the following formulation to the seventh (present-day 9th) point in the draft programme: § 7. Institutions guaranteeing full freedom of cultural development to all nations entering into the composition of the state” (p. 390 of the minutes).

Thus, the Polish Marxists at that time came forward with views on the national question so indefinite that, instead of self-determination, they proposed, in essence, nothing other than a pseudonym for the notorious “cultural-national autonomy”!

This sounds almost incredible, but it is, unfortunately, a fact. At the congress itself, although there were 5 Bundists with 5 votes and 3 Caucasians with 6 votes, not counting Kostrov’s consultative vote, not a single vote was found for eliminating the point on self-determination. Three votes were cast for adding “cultural-national autonomy” to this point (for Goldblat’s formula: “the creation of institutions guaranteeing the nations full freedom of cultural development”) and four votes for Lieber’s formula (“the right to freedom of their—the nations’—cultural development”).

Now, when a Russian liberal party, the Cadet party, has appeared, we know that in its programme political self-determination of nations is replaced by “cultural self-determination”. Rosa Luxemburg’s Polish friends, consequently, while “fighting” against the nationalism of the PPS, did so with such success that they proposed replacing the Marxist programme with a liberal programme! And in doing so they accused our programme of opportunism—is it surprising that in the programme commission of the Second Congress this accusation was met only with laughter!

In what sense did the delegates of the Second Congress, among whom, as we have seen, there was not one opposed to “self-determination of nations”, understand “self-determination”?

The following three excerpts from the minutes testify to this:

“Martynov considers that the word ‘self-determination’ cannot be given a broad interpretation; it means only the right of a nation to separate itself into a distinct political whole, and by no means regional self-government” (p. 171). Martynov was a member of the programme commission, in which the arguments of Rosa Luxemburg’s friends were refuted and ridiculed. In his views Martynov was then an “Economist”, a vehement opponent of *Iskra*, and had he expressed an opinion not shared by the majority of the programme commission, he would, of course, have been refuted.

Goldblat, a Bundist, was the first to take the floor when, after the commission’s work, § 8 (the present-day 9th) of the programme was discussed at the congress.

“Against the ‘right to self-determination’,” said Goldblat, “nothing can be objected. In the event that some nation fights for independence, this cannot be opposed. If Poland does not wish to enter into lawful wedlock with Russia, then it is not to be hindered, as Comrade Plekhanov put it. I agree with this opinion within these limits” (pp. 175–176).

Plekhanov did not take the floor at all at the full assembly of the congress on this point. Goldblat refers to Plekhanov’s words in the programme commission, where the “right to self-determination” was explained in detail and in popular form in the sense of the right to secession. Lieber, who spoke after Goldblat, remarked:

“Of course, if some nationality is unable to live within the bounds of Russia, the party will not hinder it” (p. 176).

The reader sees that at the Second Congress of the party, which adopted the programme, there were not two opinions on the question that self-determination means “only” the right to secession. Even the Bundists then grasped this truth, and it is only in our sad time of continuing counter-revolution and all manner of “renunciation” that people bold in their ignorance have been found who declared the programme “unclear”. But before devoting time to these sad “also-Social-Democrats”, let us finish with the attitude of the Poles to the programme.

They came to the Second (1903) Congress with a declaration of the necessity and urgency of unification. But they left the congress after their “failures” in the programme commission, and their last word was a written statement printed in the minutes of the congress and containing the proposal, cited above, to replace self-determination with cultural-national autonomy.

In 1906 the Polish Marxists joined the party, and, neither upon joining it nor once thereafter (neither at the 1907 congress, nor at the conferences of 1907 and 1908, nor at the plenum of 1910), did they introduce a single proposal to amend § 9 of the Russian programme!!

This is a fact.

And this fact demonstrates clearly, despite all phrases and assurances, that Rosa Luxemburg’s friends considered the question exhausted by the debates in the programme commission of the Second Congress and the decision of that congress, that they silently recognised their mistake and corrected it when, in 1906, they joined the party, after leaving the congress in 1903, without once attempting to raise the question of revising § 9 of the programme through party channels.

Rosa Luxemburg’s article appeared under her signature in 1908—of course, it never occurred to a single person to deny the right of party writers to criticise the programme—and after this article, just the same, not a single official institution of the Polish Marxists raised the question of revising § 9.

Therefore Trotsky truly does a disservice to some of Rosa Luxemburg’s admirers when, in the name of the editorial board of *Borba*, he writes in No. 2 (March 1914):

“…The Polish Marxists consider ‘the right to national self-determination’ to be completely devoid of political content and subject to removal from the programme” (p. 25).

Obliging Trotsky is more dangerous than an enemy! From nowhere but “private conversations” (i.e., simply gossip, on which Trotsky always subsists) could he have borrowed proof to classify “Polish Marxists” in general as supporters of every article by Rosa Luxemburg. Trotsky presented the “Polish Marxists” as people without honour or conscience, incapable even of respecting their own convictions and the programme of their own party. Obliging Trotsky!

When, in 1903, the representatives of the Polish Marxists left the Second Congress on account of the right to self-determination, Trotsky could then say that they considered this right devoid of content and subject to removal from the programme.

But after that the Polish Marxists joined a party having such a programme and never once introduced a proposal to revise it.[45]

Why did Trotsky keep silent about these facts before the readers of his journal? Only because it is advantageous to him to speculate on inflaming the disagreements between the Polish and Russian opponents of liquidationism and to deceive the Russian workers on the question of the programme.

Never yet, on any serious question of Marxism, has Trotsky held firm opinions, always “slipping through the crack” of one or another disagreement and running across from one side to the other. At the present moment he is in the company of the Bundists and the liquidators. Well, these gentlemen do not stand on ceremony with the party.

Here you have the Bundist Liebman.

“When Russian Social-Democracy,” writes this gentleman, “fifteen years ago in its programme put forward the point on the right of every nationality to ‘self-determination’, then everyone (!!) asked themselves: what actually does this fashionable (!!) expression mean? There was no answer to this (!!). This word remained (!!) surrounded by a fog. In actual fact it was difficult at that time to dispel that fog. The time had not yet come when it was possible to concretise this point—they said at the time—let it now remain in a fog (!!), and life itself will show what content is to be put into this point.”

Is it not true, how magnificent is this “boy without trousers”,{125} mocking the party programme?

And why does he mock it?

Solely because he is a thorough ignoramus, who has never studied anything, has not even read up on party history, but has simply fallen into the liquidator milieu, where it is “the accepted thing” to go about stark naked on the question of the party and party spirit.

In Pomyalovsky, a bursak boasts of how he “spat into the tub of sauerkraut”.{126} The Bundist gentlemen have gone further. They release the Liebmans so that these gentlemen may publicly spit into their own tub. That there was some decision of an international congress, that at the congress of their own party two representatives of their own Bund revealed (for all that they were “strict” critics and resolute enemies of *Iskra*!) a full ability to understand the meaning of “self-determination” and even agreed with it—what business is all this to Messrs. Liebman? And will it not be easier to liquidate the party if the “publicists of the party” (no joking!) treat the history and the programme of the party in bursak fashion?

Here you have the second “boy without trousers”, Mr. Yurkevich of *Dzvin*. Mr. Yurkevich has probably had the minutes of the Second Congress in his hands, for he quotes Plekhanov’s words, reproduced by Goldblat, and reveals acquaintance with the fact that self-determination can mean only the right to secession. But this does not prevent him from spreading slander among the Ukrainian petty bourgeoisie about the Russian Marxists, alleging that they stand for the “state integrity” (1913, Nos. 7–8, p. 83, et al.) of Russia. Of course, Messrs. Yurkevich and Co. could not have devised a better method than this slander for alienating Ukrainian democracy from Great-Russian democracy. And such alienation lies along the line of the entire policy of the literary group *Dzvin*, which preaches the separation of the Ukrainian workers into a special national organisation![46]

The propagation of godless confusion on the national question is, of course, entirely befitting a group of nationalistic philistines who split the proletariat—such is precisely the objective role of *Dzvin*. It goes without saying that Messrs. Yurkevich and Liebman—who are “terribly” offended when they are called “near-party”—have said not a word, literally not a single little word, about how they themselves would wish to solve the question of the right to secession in the programme.

Here you have the third and chief “boy without trousers”, Mr. Semkovsky, who on the pages of the liquidator newspaper, before the Great-Russian public, “tears to shreds” § 9 of the programme and at the same time declares that he “does not share, for certain considerations, the proposal” to delete this paragraph!!

Incredible, but a fact.

In August 1912 a conference of the liquidators officially raised the national question. For a year and a half, not a single article on the question of § 9 except the article by Mr. Semkovsky. And in this article the author refutes the programme, “not sharing, for certain (a secret illness, perhaps?) considerations”, the proposal to correct it!! One can wager that it would not be easy anywhere in the world to find examples of such opportunism and worse than opportunism, of renunciation of the party, of its liquidation.

What Semkovsky’s arguments are like can be sufficiently shown by one example:

“What is to be done,” he writes, “if the Polish proletariat wishes, within the framework of a single state, to wage a joint struggle with the entire Russian proletariat, while the reactionary classes of Polish society, on the contrary, wished to separate Poland from Russia and gathered, in a referendum (a general poll of the population), a majority of votes in favour of this: should we, Russian Social-Democrats, vote in the central parliament together with our Polish comrades against secession, or, in order not to violate the ‘right to self-determination’, for secession?” (*Novaya Rabochaya Gazeta*, No. 71).

From this it is evident that Mr. Semkovsky does not even understand what is being talked about! He did not consider that the right to secession presupposes the resolution of the question precisely not by the central parliament, but only by the parliament (Sejm, referendum, etc.) of the seceding region.

With a childish perplexity—“what is to be done” if, under democracy, the majority is for reaction—he obscures the question of a real, genuine, living policy, when both Purishkevich and Kokoshkin consider even the thought of secession criminal! Probably the proletarians of the whole of Russia should today wage a struggle not against Purishkevich and Kokoshkin, but, bypassing them, against the reactionary classes of Poland!!

And such incredible nonsense is written in the organ of the liquidators, in which one of the ideological leaders is Mr. L. Martov. The very same L. Martov who drafted the programme and carried it through in 1903, who later also wrote in defence of the freedom of secession. L. Martov now reasons, evidently, according to the rule:

He sends out Read-Semkovsky and permits, in a daily newspaper, before new strata of readers who do not know our programme, to distort and muddle it without end!

Yes, yes, liquidationism has gone far—of very many, even prominent former Social-Democrats, not a trace of party spirit remains.

Rosa Luxemburg, of course, cannot be equated with the Liebmans, Yurkeviches, Semkovskys, but the fact that it is precisely such people who have seized upon her error proves with particular vividness into what opportunism she has fallen.