Date: 1917
Source: ru:PSS/v31

Comrade Lenin reminded us that the Polish Social Democrats opposed the right to national self-determination in 1903, when this question was not yet being considered in the context of a socialist revolution. The distinctive character of their stance on the national question stemmed from their particular position within Poland; tsarist oppression had stoked nationalist passions among the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois strata of Poland. The Polish Social Democrats were forced to wage a desperate struggle against those “socialists” (the PPS{157}) who were ready to plunge into a European war in the name of Poland’s liberation—and it was only they, the Polish Social Democrats, who, by fostering a sense of international solidarity among Polish workers, guided them toward closer ties with the workers of Russia. However, their attempt to impose a rejection of the right to self-determination upon the socialists of oppressed nations is profoundly misguided; if successful, it could lead to nothing other than a shift of Russian Social Democrats toward a chauvinistic position. By denying the right to self-determination to oppressed nations, the socialists of oppressive nations become chauvinists, thereby lending support to their own bourgeoisie. Russian socialists must strive for the freedom of secession for oppressed nations; socialists of oppressed nations must uphold the freedom of union—and both groups must pursue, though formally along different paths (in essence, the same path), a common goal: the international organization of the proletariat. Those who claim that the national question has been resolved within the framework of the bourgeois order forget that it has been resolved—albeit not everywhere—only in Western Europe, where population homogeneity reaches as high as 90%, whereas in the East, population homogeneity is limited to a mere 43%. The case of Finland demonstrates that the national question remains, in practice, very much on the agenda—and that one must choose between supporting the imperialist bourgeoisie and fulfilling the duty of international solidarity, which permits no violence against the will of oppressed nations. The Mensheviks, who proposed that the Finnish Social Democrats “wait” until the Constituent Assembly and resolve the issue of autonomy jointly with it, in fact spoke in the spirit of Russian imperialists.

“Pravda,” No. 46, May 15 (2), 1917

Printed according to the text of the newspaper “Pravda.”