V. I.

Lenin

What a lot of talk, argument and vociferation there is nowadays about
nationality and the fatherland! Liberal and radical cabinet ministers in
Britain, a host of “forward-looking” journalists in France (who
have proved in full agreement with their reactionary colleagues), and a
swarm of official Cadet and progressive scribblers in Russia (including
several Narodniks and “Marxists”)—all have effusive praise for the liberty and independence of their respective countries, the
grandeur of the principle of national independence. Here one cannot tell
where the venal eulogist of the butcher Nicholas
Romanov [1] or of the brutal oppressors of Negroes and Indians ends, and where the common philistine
begins, who from sheer stupidity or spinelessness drifts with the streams,
begins. Nor is that distinction important. We see before us an extensive
and very deep ideological trend, whose origins are closely interwoven with
the interests of the landowners and the capitalists of the dominant
nations. Scores and hundreds of millions are being spent every year for
the propaganda of ideas advantageous to those classes: it is a pretty big
mill-race that takes its waters from all sources—from Menshikov, a
chauvinist by conviction, to chauvinists for reason of opportunism or
spinelessness such as Plekhanov and Maslov, Rubanovich and Smirnov,
Kropotkin and Burtsev.

Let us, Great-Russian Social-Democrats, also try to define our attitude
to this ideological trend. It would be unseemly for us, representatives of
a dominant nation in the far east of Europe and a goodly part of Asia, to
forget the immense significance of the national question—especially in a country which has been rightly called the “prison of the
peoples”, and particularly at a time when, in the far east of Europe
and in Asia, capitalism is awakening to life and self-consciousness a
number of #8220;new” nations, large and small; at a moment when the
tsarist monarchy has called up millions of Great Russians and
non-Russians, so as to “solve” a number of national problems in
accordance with the interests of the Council of the United
Nobility [2] and of the Guchkovs, Krestovnikovs, Dolgorukovs, Kutlers and Rodichevs.

Is a sense of national pride alien to us, Great-Russian class-conscious
proletarians? Certainly not! We love our language and our country, and we
are doing our very utmost to raise her toiling masses (i.e.,
nine-tenths of her population) to the level of a democratic and
socialist consciousness. To us it is most painful to see and feel the
outrages, the oppression and the humiliation our fair country suffers at the
hands of the tsar’s butchers, the nobles and the capitalists. We take
pride in the resistance to these outrages put up from our midst, from the
Great Russians; in that midst having produced
Radishchev, [3] the
Decembrists [4] and the revolutionary commoners of the seventies [5] ; in the Great-Russian working class having
created, in 1905, a mighty revolutionary party of the masses; and in the
Great-Russian peasantry having begun to turn towards democracy and set about
overthrowing the clergy and the landed proprietors.

We remember that Chernyshevsky, the Great-Russian democrat, who dedicated
his life to the cause of revolution, said half a century ago: “A
wretched nation, a nation of slaves, from top to bottom—all
slaves." [6] The overt and covert Great-Russian slaves (slaves with regard to the tsarist
monarchy) do not like to recall these words. Yet, in our opinion, these were
words of genuine love for our country, a love distressed by the absence of a
revolutionary spirit in the masses of the Great-Russian people. There was
none of that spirit at the time. There is little of it now, but it already
exists. We are full of national pride because the Great-Russian nation,
too , has created a revolutionary class, because it, too ,
has proved capable of providing mankind with great models of the struggle
for freedom and socialism, and not only with great pogroms, rows of gallows,
dungeons, great famines and great servility to priests, tsars, landowners
and capitalists.

We are full of a sense of national pride, and for that very reason we
particularly hate our slavish past (when the landed nobility led the peasants into war to stifle the freedom of Hungary,
Poland, Persia and China), and our slavish present, when these selfsame
landed proprietors, aided by the capitalists, are loading us into a war in
order to throttle Poland and the Ukraine, crush the democratic movement in
Persia and China, and strengthen the gang of Romanovs, Bobrinskys and
Purishkeviches, who are a disgrace to our Great-Russian national
dignity. Nobody is to be blamed for being born a slave; but a slave who
not only eschews a striving for freedom but justifies and eulogises his
slavery (e.g., calls the throttling of Poland and the Ukraine, etc., a
“defence of the fatherland” of the Great Russians)—such a
slave is a lickspittle and a boor, who arouses a legitimate feeling of
indignation, contempt, and loathing.

" No nation can be free if it oppresses other nations,” said Marx and
Engels, the greatest representatives of consistent nineteenth century
democracy, who became the teachers of the revolutionary proletariat. And,
full of a sense of national pride, we Great-Russian workers want, come what
may, a free and independent, a democratic, republican and proud Great
Russia, one that will base its relations with its neighbours on the human
principle of equality, and not on the feudalist principle of privilege,
which is so degrading to a great nation. Just because we want that, we say:
it is impossible, in the twentieth century and in Europe (even in the far
east of Europe), to “defend the fatherland” otherwise than by
using every revolutionary means to combat the monarchy, the landowners and
the capitalists of one’s own fatherland, i.e., the worst
enemies of our country. We say that the Great Russians cannot “defend
the fatherland” otherwise than by desiring the defeat of tsarism in any
war, this as the lesser evil to nine-tenths of the inhabitants of Great
Russia. For tsarism not only oppresses those nine-tenths economically and
politically, but also demoralises, degrades, dishonours and prostitutes them
by teaching them to oppress other nations and to cover up this shame with
hypocritical and quasi-patriotic phrases.

The objection may be advanced that, besides tsarism and under its wing,
another historical force has arisen and become strong, viz., Great-Russian
capitalism, which is carrying on progressive work by economically
centralising and welding together vast regions. This objection, however,
does not excuse, but on the contrary still more condemns our
socialist-chauvinists, who should be called tsarist-Purishkevich
socialists [7] (just as Marx called the Lassalleans
Royal-Prussian socialists). [8] Let us even assume that history will decide in
favour of Great-Russian dominant-nation capitalism, and against the
hundred and one small nations. That is not impossible, for the entire
history of capital is one of violence and plunder, blood and
corruption. We do not advocate preserving small nations at all costs;
other conditions being equal , we are decidedly for centralisation
and are opposed to the petty-bourgeois ideal of federal
relationships. Even if our assumption were true, however, it is, firstly,
not our business, or that of democrats (let alone of socialists), to help
Romanov-Bobrinsky-Purishkevich throttle the Ukraine, etc. In his own
Junker fashion, Bismarck accomplished a progressive historical task, but
he would be a fine “Marxist” indeed who, on such grounds,
thought of justifying socialist support for Bismarck! Moreover, Bismarck
promoted economic development by bringing together the disunited Germans,
who were being oppressed by other nations. The economic prosperity and
rapid development of Great Russia, however, require that the country be
liberated from Great-Russian oppression of other nations—that is the
difference that our admirers of the true-Russian would-be Bismarcks
overlook.

Secondly, if history were to decide in favour of Great Russian
dominant-nation capitalism, it follows hence that the socialist
role of the Great-Russian proletariat, as the principal driving force of the
communist revolution engendered by capitalism, will be all the greater. The
proletarian revolution calls for a prolonged education of the workers in the
spirit of the fullest national equality and brotherhood. Consequently, the interests of the Great-Russian proletariat
require that the masses be systematically educated to champion—most
resolutely, consistently, boldly and in a revolutionary
manner—complete equality and the right to self-determination for all
the nations oppressed by the Great Russians. The interests of the Great
Russians’ national pride (understood, not in the slavish sense)
coincide with the socialist interests of the Great-Russian (and all
other) proletarians. Our model will always be Marx, who, after living in
Britain for decades and becoming half-English, demanded freedom and national
independence for Ireland in the interests of the socialist movement of the
British workers.

In the second hypothetical case we have considered, our home-grown
socialist-chauvinists, Plekhanov, etc., etc., will prove traitors, not only
to their own country—a free and democratic Great Russia, but also to
the proletarian brotherhood of all the nations of Russia, i.e., to the cause
of socialism.