V. I.

Lenin

Theses on the National Question [1]

1. The article of our programme (on the self-determination of nations)
cannot be interpreted to mean anything but political self-determination, i.e., the right to secede and form a separate state.

2. This article in the Social-Democratic programme is
absolutely essential to the Social-Democrats of Russia =

a) for the sake of the basic principles of democracy in general;

b) also because there are, within the frontiers of Russia and, what is more, in her frontier areas , a number of nations with sharply
distinctive economic, social and other conditions; furthermore, these
nations (like all the nations of Russia except the Great Russians) are
unbelievably oppressed by the tsarist monarchy;

c) lastly, also in view of the fact that throughout Eastern Europe
(Austria and the Balkans) and in Asia—i.e., in countries bordering on
Russia—the bourgeois-democratic re form of the state that has everywhere
else in the world led, in varying degree, to the creation of independent
national states or states with the closest, interrelated national
composition, has either not been consummated or has only just begun;

d) at the present moment Russia is a country whose state system is more
backward and reactionary than that of any of the contiguous
countries, beginning—in the West—with Austria where the fundamentals of
political liberty and a constitutional regime were consolidated in 1867,
and where universal franchise has now been introduced, and ending—in the
East—with republican China. In all their propaganda, therefore, the
Social-Democrats of Russia must insist on the right of all nationalities to form separate states or to
choose freely the state of which they wish to form part.

3. The Social-Democratic Party’s recognition of the right of all
nationalities to self-determination requires of Social-Democrats that they
should.

a) be unconditionally hostile to the use of force in any form
whatsoever by the dominant nation (or the nation which constitutes the
majority of the population) in respect of a nation that wishes to secede
politically;

b) demand the settlement of the question of such secession only on the
basis of a universal, direct and equal vote of the population of the given
territory by secret ballot;

c) conduct an implacable struggle against both the Black
Hundred-Octobrist and the liberal-bourgeois (Progressist, Cadet, etc.)
parties on every occasion when they defend or sanction national oppression
in general or the denial of the right of nations to self-determination in
particular.

4. The Social-Democratic Party’s recognition of the right of all
nationalities to self-determination most certainly does not mean that
Social-Democrats reject an independent appraisal of the advisability of the
state secession of any nation in each separate case. Social-Democracy
should, on the contrary, give its independent appraisal, taking into
consideration the conditions of capitalist development and the oppression
of the proletarians of various nations by the united bourgeoisie of all
nationalities, as well as the general tasks of democracy, first of all and
most of all the interests of the proletarian class struggle for socialism.

From this point of view the following circumstance must be given
special attention. There are two nations in Russia that are more civilised
and more isolated by virtue of a number of historical and social conditions
and that could most easily and most “naturally” put into effect their
right to secession. They are the peoples of Finland and Poland. The
experience of the Revolution of 1905 has shown that even in these two
nations the ruling classes, the landowners and bourgeoisie, reject the
revolutionary struggle for liberty and seek a rapprochement with
the ruling classes of Russia and with the tsarist monarchy because of their fear of the revolutionary proletariat of Finland and Poland.

Social-Democracy, therefore, must give most emphatic warning to the
proletariat and other working people of all nationalities against direct
deception by the nationalistic slogans of “their own” bourgeoisie, who
with their saccharine or fiery speeches about “our native land” try to
divide the proletariat and divert its attention from their bourgeois intrigues while they enter into an economic and political
alliance with the bourgeoisie of other nations and with the tsarist
monarchy.

The proletariat cannot pursue its struggle for socialism and defend its
everyday economic interests without the closest and fullest alliance of the
workers of all nations in all working-class organisations without
exception.

The proletariat cannot achieve freedom other than by revolutionary
struggle for the overthrow of the tsarist monarchy and its replacement by a
democratic republic. The tsarist monarchy precludes liberty and
equal rights for nationalities, and is, furthermore, the bulwark of
barbarity, brutality and reaction in both Europe and Asia. This monarchy
can be overthrown only by the united proletariat of all the nations of
Russia, which is giving the lead to consistently democratic elements
capable of revolutionary struggle from among the working masses of all
nations.

It follows, therefore, that workers who place political unity with
“their own” bourgeoisie above complete unity with the proletariat of all
nations, are acting against their own interests, against the interests of
socialism and against the interests of democracy.

5. Social-Democrats, in upholding a consistently democratic state
system, demand unconditional equality for all nationalities and struggle
against absolutely all privileges for one or several nationalities.

In particular, Social-Democrats reject a “state” language. It is
particularly superfluous in Russia because more than seven-tenths of the
population of Russia belong to related Slav nationalities who, given a free
school and a free state, could easily achieve intercourse by virtue of the
demands of the economic turnover without any “state” privileges for any
one language.

Social-Democrats demand the abolition of the old administrative
divisions of Russia established by the feudal landowners and the civil servants of the autocratic feudal state and their
replacement by divisions based on the requirements of present-day economic
life and in accordance, as far as possible, with the national composition
of the population.

All areas of the state that are distinguished by social peculiarities
or by the national composition of the population, must enjoy wide
self-government and autonomy, with institutions organised on the basis of
universal, equal and secret voting.

6. Social-Democrats demand the promulgation of a law, operative
throughout the state, protecting the rights of every national minority in
no matter what part of the state. This law should declare inoperative any
measure by means of which the national majority might attempt to establish
privileges for itself or restrict the rights of a national minority (in the
sphere of education, in the use of any specific language, in budget
affairs, etc.), and forbid the implementation of any such measure by making
it a punishable offence.

7. The Social-Democratic attitude to the slogan of
“cultural-national” (or simply “national”) “autonomy” or to plans for
its implementation is a negative one, since this slogan
(1) undoubtedly contradicts the internationalism of the class struggle of
the proletariat, (2) makes it easier for the proletariat and the masses of working people to
be drawn into the sphere of influence of bourgeois nationalism, and
(3) is capable of distracting attention from the task of the consistent
democratic transformation of the state as a whole, which transformation
alone can ensure (to the extent that this can, in general, be ensured under
capitalism) peace between nationalities.

In view of the special acuteness of the question of cultural-national
autonomy among Social-Democrats, we give some explanation of the situation.

a) It is impermissible, from the standpoint of Social-Democracy, to
issue the slogan of national culture either directly or
indirectly. The slogan is incorrect because already under capitalism, all
economic, political and spiritual life is becoming more and more
international. Socialism will make it completely international. International culture, which is now already being systematically created by the proletariat of all
countries, does not absorb “national culture” (no matter of what national
group) as a whole, but accepts from each national culture
exclusively those of its elements that are consistently democratic
and socialist.

b) Probably the one example of an approximation, even though it is a
timid one, to the slogan of national culture in Social-Democratic
programmes is Article 3 of the Br\"unn Programme of the Austrian
Social-Democrats. This Article 3 reads: “All self-governing regions of one
and the same nation form a single-national alliance that has complete
autonomy in deciding its national affairs.”

This is a compromise slogan since it does not contain a shadow of
extra-territorial (personal) national autonomy. But this slogan, too, is
erroneous and harmful, for it is no business of the Social-Democrats of
Russia to unite into one nation the Germans in Lodz, Riga, St. Petersburg
and Saratov. Our business is to struggle for full democracy and the
annulment of all national privileges and, to unite the German
workers in Russia with the workers of all other nations in upholding and
developing the international culture of socialism.

Still more erroneous is the slogan of extra-territorial (personal)
national autonomy with the setting up (according to a plan drawn up by the
consistent supporters of this slogan) of national parliaments and national
state secretaries (Otto Bauer and Karl Renner). Such institutions
contradict the economic conditions of the capitalist countries, they have
not been tested in any of the world’s democratic states and are the
opportunist dream of people who despair of setting up consistent democratic
institutions and are seeking salvation from the national squabbles of the
bourgeoisie in the artificial isolation of the proletariat and the
bourgeoisie of each nation on a number of (“cultural”) questions.

Circumstances occasionally compel Social-Democrats to submit for a time
to some sort of compromise decisions, but from other countries we must
borrow not compromise decisions, but consistently Social-Democratic
decisions. It would be particularly unwise to adopt the unhappy Austrian
compromise decision today, when it has been a complete failure in Austria and has led to the separatism and secession of the Czech
Social-Democrats.

c) The history of the “cultural-national autonomy” slogan in Russia
shows that it has been adopted by all Jewish bourgeois parties and
only by Jewish bourgeois parties; and that they have been
uncritically followed by the Bund, which has inconsistently rejected the
national-Jewish parliament (sejm) and national-Jewish state
secretaries. Incidentally, even those European Social-Democrats who accede
to or defend the compromise slogan of cultural-national autonomy, admit
that the slogan is quite unrealisable for the Jews (Otto Bauer and Karl
Kautsky). “The Jews in Galicia and Russia are more of a caste than a
nation, and attempts to constitute Jewry as a nation are attempts at
preserving a caste” (Karl Kautsky).

d) In civilised countries we observe a fairly full (relatively)
approximation to national peace under capitalism only in
conditions of the maximum implementation of democracy throughout
the state system and administration (Switzerland). The slogans of
consistent democracy (the re public, a militia, civil servants elected by
the people, etc.) unite the proletariat and the working people, and, in
general, all progressive elements in each nation in the name of the
struggle for conditions that preclude even the slightest national
privilege—while the slogan of “cultural-national autonomy” preaches the
isolation of nations in educational affairs (or “cultural” affairs, in
general), an isolation that is quite compatible with the retention of the
grounds for all (including national) privileges.

The slogans of consistent democracy unite in a single whole
the proletariat and the advanced democrats of all nations (elements that
demand not isolation but the uniting of democratic elements of the nations
in all matters, including educational affairs), while the slogan of
cultural-national autonomy divides the proletariat of the
different nations and links it up with the reactionary and bourgeois
elements of the separate nations.

The slogans of consistent democracy are implacably hostile to the
reactionaries and to the counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie of all nations,
while the slogan of cultural-national autonomy is quite acceptable to the
reactionaries and counter-revolutionary bourgeoisie of some nations.

8. The sum-total of economic and political conditions in Russia
therefore demands that Social-Democracy should unite unconditionally workers of all nationalities in all proletarian
organisations without exception (political, trade union, co-operative,
educational, etc., etc.). The Party should not be federative in structure
and should not form national Social-Democratic groups but should unite the
proletarians of all nations in the given locality, conduct propaganda and
agitation in all the languages of the local proletariat, promote
the common struggle of the workers of all nations against every kind of
national privilege and should recognise the autonomy of local and regional
Party organisations.

9. More than ten years’ experience gained by the R.S.D.L.P. confirms
the correctness of the above thesis. The Party was founded in 1898 as a
party of all Russia, that is, a party of the proletariat of all the
nationalities of Russia. The Party remained “Russian” when the Bund
seceded in 1903, after the Party Congress had rejected the demand to
consider the Bund the only representative of the Jewish
proletariat. In 1906 and 1907 events showed convincingly that there were no
grounds for this demand, a large number of Jewish proletarians continued to
co-operate in the common Social-Democratic work in many local
organisations, and the Bund re-entered the Party. The Stockholm Congress
(1906) brought into the Party the Polish and Latvian Social-Democrats, who
favoured territorial autonomy, and the Congress, furthermore, did
not accept the principle of federation and demanded unity of
Social-Democrats of all nationalities in each locality. This principle has
been in operation in the Caucasus for many years, it is in operation in
Warsaw (Polish workers and Russian soldiers), in Vilna (Polish, Lettish,
Jewish and Lithuanian workers) and in Riga, and in the three last-named
places it has been implemented against the separatist Bund. In
December 1908, the R.S.D.L.P., through its conference, adopted a special
resolution confirming the demand for the unity of workers of all
nationalities, on a principle other than federation. The splitting
activities of the Bund separatists in not fulfilling the Party decision led to the collapse of all that “federation of the
worst type” [2] and brought about the rapprochement of the Bund and
the Czech separatists and vice versa (see Kosovsky in Nasha Zarya
and the organ of the Czech separatists, Der čechoslavische Sozialdemokrat No. 3, 1913, on Kosovsky), and, lastly, at the August
(1912) Conference of the liquidators it led to an undercover
attempt by the Bund separatists and liquidators and some of the Caucasian
liquidators to insert “cultural-national autonomy” into the Party
programme without any defence of its substance !

Revolutionary worker Social-Democrats in Poland, in the Latvian Area
and in the Caucasus still stand for territorial autonomy and the
unity of worker Social-Democrats of all nations. The
Bund-liquidator secession and the alliance of the Bund with
non-Social-Democrats in Warsaw place the entire national question,
both in its theoretical aspect and in the matter of Party structure, on the order of the day for all Social-Democrats.

Compromise decisions have been broken by the very people who introduced
them against the will of the Party, and the demand for the unity of worker
Social-Democrats of all nationalities is being made more loudly than ever.

10. The crudely militant and Black-Hundred-type nationalism of the
tsarist monarchy, and also the revival of bourgeois nationalism—Great-Russian (Mr. Struve, Russkaya Molva , [3] the Progressists, etc.), the Ukrainian, and Polish (the
anti-Semitism of Narodowa “Demokracja” [4] ), and Georgian and Armenian, etc.—all this makes it
particularly urgent for Social-Democratic organisations in all parts of
Russia to devote greater attention than before to the national question and
to work out consistently Marxist decisions on this subject in the spirit of
consistent internationalism and unity of proletarians of all nations.

α) The slogan of national culture is incorrect and expresses only
the limited bourgeois understanding of the national question. International
culture.

β) The perpetuating of national divisions and the promoting of
refined nationalism—unification, rapprochement , the mingling of nations and the expression of the principles of a
different , international culture.

γ) The despair of the petty bourgeois (hopeless struggle against
national bickering) and the fear of radical-democratic reforms and the
socialist movement—only radical-democratic reforms can establish national
peace in capitalist states and only socialism is able to terminate national
bickering.

δ) National curias in educational affairs. [5] ε) The Jews.