Viktig text om den nationella frågan, i synnerhet när det gäller den storryska chauvinismen, och de skiljda åsikterna i denna fråga mellan Lenin och Stalin (och även mellan Lenin och Luxemburg).
Denna fråga är fortfarande av stor betydelse när det gäller motsättningarna mellan Ukraina och Ryska federationen.
Det bör anmärkas att artikelförfattaren har fel – och Lenin hade rätt – när det gäller distinktionen mellan ett förtryckande lands nationalism och ett förtryckt lands nationalism, som Lenin beskriver på detta sättet:
”A distinction must necessarily be made between the nationalism of an oppressor nation and that of an oppressed nation, the nationalism of a big nation, and that of a small nation.”
Important text regarding the national question, particularly when it comes to the Great Russian chauvinism, and the different opinions on this question between Lenin and Stalin (and also between Lenin and Luxemburg).
This issue is still of great importance in terms of the contradictions between Ukraine and Russian Federation.
It should be noted that the author is wrong – and Lenin was right – when it comes to the distinction between nationalism in a country that oppresses and an oppressed country’s nationalism, which Lenin describes in this way :
”A distinction must necessarily be made between the nationalism of an oppressor nation and that of an oppressed nation, the nationalism of a big nation, and that of a small nation.”
Här ett längre citat ur texten:
Here is a longer quote from the text:
”Lenin was convinced that any future union of proletarian states had to be a voluntary one. This was why the first declarations of the new Soviet power stated that each national territory had the right to determine its own future `up to the point of secession´. Rosa Luxemburg castigated this policy as allowing the local bourgeoisie, with the aid of German imperialist forces, to take over working class territory as in Finland and the Ukraine. This was true enough but it is unlikely that any policy statement actually made much difference since the Bolsheviks were in no position to materially help their working class allies in these areas in 1918. It was only after the collapse of German imperialism that the Russian Civil War could enter, for example the Ukraine. By 1920, at the Ninth Party Congress, Lenin was already warning `Scratch some communists and you will find Great Russian chauvinists.´
With over 70% of the Communist Party membership being of Great Russian origin Lenin was concerned about this, but the worst `Great Russian chauvinists´ were actually from the minority nationalities of the former Tsarist Empire. First amongst these was the Georgian, Stalin, who by virtue of his origins, had been made Commissar for Nationalities following the October Revolution.”
Georgia on His Mind: Lenin’s Final Fight against “Great-Russian Chauvinism”
Källor: I texten ”On the Program of the Party (1915)” uttrycker Lenin sig på följande sätt: ”Scratch some Communists and you will find Great-Russian chauvinists.” och ”In my opinion such a Communist is a Great-Russian chauvinist.”
Här är källhänvisningarna som redovisas i artikeln:
”(1) The telegram is in V.I. Lenin Collected Works Volume 35 (Progress Publishers 1966 edition). This was the first time it had appeared in English.
(2) E.H. Carr The Bolshevik Revolution Volume 1 p.352. The delegation included Kautsky, Vandervelde and Ramsey Macdonald. The Menshevik-dominated Government of Jordania had come to power in 1918 via the local soviets but had then entered into a coalition with local bourgeois nationalists. Lenin now seemed to have considered that as the question of proletarian power had been settled it was now possible to re-engage with Menshevism.
(3) Carr, loc cit p.354. This letter does not appear in the English version of Lenin’s Collected Works (Volume 35) but Carr is quoting the original Russian Sochineniya (Vol 26). The English version does have other telegrams to the Military Revolutionary Committee of Georgia, and Ordzhonikidze, which state similar things, such as,
you are instructed…to observe particular respect for the sovereign bodies of Georgia; to display particular attention and caution in regard to the Georgian population.
Vol. 35, p479
(4) Quoted in Roy Medvedev Let History Judge, p71.
(5) And, of course in his lifetime he was to surpass the Tsars. Although he failed to recapture Finland in the Winter War of 1940, he not only re-invaded the Baltic States but after the Second World War established a physical empire over virtually all Eastern Europe. It is not accidental that Putin today makes constant reference to the achievements of Stalin’s Great Patriotic War.
(6) “Autonomisation” was Stalinspeak to criticise those who advocated a true federation in the USSR. Lenin in the document says that the real issue is the nature of the USSR.
(7) All the quotations from this document are taken from Lenin Selected Works, Vol 3, pp 687-692.
(8) For a more incisive analysis of the nature of Stalinism see “Stalinism is Anti-communism” inInternationalist Communist 22. [£3 including postage from our group address]. A corrected version has been published as a pamphlet, Stalin and Stalinism by the Internationalist Workers Group, our US comrades. It is $1 plus postage from PO Box 14173, Madison, WI 53708-0173.”
Ola Jordán