The rampant surge of Black-Hundred nationalist sentiment, the growing influence of nationalist tendencies within the liberal bourgeoisie, and the intensifying nationalist currents among the upper strata of oppressed nationalities—these developments are currently bringing the national question to the forefront.

The internal state of affairs within the Social-Democratic movement—such as the attempts by Caucasian Social-Democrats, the Bund{37}, and the Liquidators to revise the Party’s program{38}, and the like—compel the Party to devote even greater attention to this issue.

Drawing upon the program of the RSDLP, the conference—out of a concern for the proper formulation of Social-Democratic agitation on the national question—adopts the following principles:

1. Since national peace is possible in a capitalist society founded upon exploitation, profit‑seeking, and relentless competition, such peace can be achieved only through a consistently, thoroughly democratic, republican form of state organization—one that guarantees full equality among all nations and languages, abolishes any compulsory state language, ensures that schools are established where instruction is conducted in all local languages, and enshrines in the fundamental law of the constitution the principle that no privileges whatsoever may be granted to any single nation, nor may any rights of national minorities be infringed. In particular, broad regional autonomy and fully democratic local self‑government are essential; the boundaries of self‑governing and autonomous regions must be determined on the basis of careful consideration of local economic and social conditions, the ethnic composition of the population, and other relevant factors.

2. The segregation of educational affairs along national lines within a single state is undoubtedly detrimental from the standpoint of democracy in general—and especially from the perspective of the class struggle of the proletariat. It is precisely this kind of segregation that underlies the plan adopted in Russia by all bourgeois Jewish parties, as well as by petty-bourgeois, opportunist elements of various nations, for so‑called “cultural-national” autonomy or for the “establishment of institutions guaranteeing the freedom of national development.”

3. The interests of the working class demand the fusion of workers of all nationalities within a given state into unified proletarian organizations—political, trade‑union, cooperative‑educational, and the like. Only through such a fusion in common organizations can the proletariat wage a victorious struggle against international capital and against reaction, as well as against the propaganda and aspirations of landowners, priests, and bourgeois nationalists of every nationality—those who typically cloak their anti‑proletarian aims beneath the banner of “national culture.” The worldwide labor movement is creating, and with each passing day further developing, an international (transnational) culture of the proletariat.

4. With regard to the right of nations oppressed by the tsarist monarchy to self‑determination—that is, to secede and establish an independent state—the Social-Democratic Party must unconditionally uphold this right. This is required both by the fundamental principles of international democracy in general and, in particular, by the unprecedented national oppression suffered by the vast majority of Russia’s population under the tsarist monarchy—a regime that represents the most reactionary and barbaric form of state organization when compared with neighboring states in Europe and Asia. Moreover, this demand arises from the cause of freedom itself for the Great Russian population, which is incapable of building a democratic state unless the Black-Hundred Great Russian nationalism is eradicated—nationalism that has been sustained by a long tradition of bloody repression against national movements and systematically fostered not only by the tsarist monarchy and all reactionary parties, but also by the Great Russian bourgeois liberalism that has long subserviently bowed before the monarchy, especially during periods of counterrevolution.

5. The question of the right of nations to self‑determination (that is, the constitutional guarantee of a fully free and democratic means of resolving the question of secession) must not be confused with the question of whether it is advisable for a given nation to secede. On the latter question, the Social-Democratic Party must, in each individual case, arrive at its own independent judgment—guided solely by the interests of overall social development and by the interests of the proletariat’s class struggle for socialism.

In doing so, Social-Democracy must bear in mind that landlords, priests, and the bourgeoisie of oppressed nations often cloak their ambitions to divide workers and deceive them behind nationalist slogans, secretly concluding agreements with landlords and the bourgeoisie of the dominant nation—agreements that work to the detriment of the toiling masses of all nations.

The conference places the question of a national program on the agenda of the Party Congress. The conference calls upon the Central Committee and the Party’s local organizations to cover the national question as extensively as possible—in pamphlets, through public debates, and in other forms of discourse.