On the national question, the policy of the proletariat, having conquered state power, consists—in contrast to the bourgeois-democratic formal proclamation of the equality of nations, which is unachievable under imperialism—in the unwavering practical realization of the drawing together and fusion of the workers and peasants of all nations in their revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. The realization of this goal requires the complete liberation of colonial and other nations that were in an oppressed or unequal position, by granting them the freedom of secession as a guarantee that the mistrust of the laboring masses of different nations inherited from capitalism, and the bitterness of the workers of oppressed nations against the workers of oppressor nations, would be completely dispelled and replaced by conscious and voluntary union. On the part of the workers of those nations which were oppressors under capitalism, special caution is required in relation to the national feelings of oppressed nations (for example, on the part of Great Russians, Ukrainians, Poles in relation to Jews, on the part of Tatars towards Bashkirs, etc.), assistance not only in the actual equality of rights, but also in the development of the language and literature of the laboring masses of the nations formerly oppressed, in order to eliminate all traces of the mistrust and alienation inherited from the era of capitalism.