{"id":442,"date":"2014-09-15T11:51:28","date_gmt":"2014-09-15T11:51:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/2014\/09\/15\/national-liberation-and-bolshevism-revisited-eric-blanc-2014\/"},"modified":"2019-09-30T14:59:54","modified_gmt":"2019-09-30T14:59:54","slug":"national-liberation-and-bolshevism-revisited-eric-blanc-2014","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/2014\/09\/15\/national-liberation-and-bolshevism-revisited-eric-blanc-2014\/","title":{"rendered":"National Liberation and Bolshevism Revisited (Eric Blanc, 2014)"},"content":{"rendered":"

A View from the Borderlands<\/strong>
\n<\/strong><\/em>A view from the Czarist empire’s borderlands obliges us to rethink many long-held assumptions about the revolutions of 1905 and 1917, as well as the development of Marxist approaches to national liberation, peasant struggle, permanent revolution, and the emancipation of women.<\/p>\n

The following paper analyzes the socialist debates on the national question up through 1914. I argue that an effective strategy of anti-colonial Marxism was first put forward by the borderland socialists, not the Bolsheviks. Lenin and his comrades lagged behind the non-Russian Marxists on this crucial issue well into the Civil War\u2014and this political weakness helps explain the Bolshevik failure to build roots among dominated peoples.<\/p>\n

Consequently, the Bolsheviks were either too numerically weak and\/or indifferent to national aspirations to successfully lead socialist revolutions in the borderlands, facilitating the isolation of the Russian workers\u2019 government and the subsequent rise of Stalinism.<\/p>\n

Given that activists today continue to look to the Russian revolution for lessons on how to successfully challenge capitalism, engaging with this history has important implications for contemporary political practice.<\/p>\n

Who Were the Borderland Marxists?<\/strong>
\nOur understanding of the revolutionary movement in Russia remains distorted by the historiographic marginalization of the socialist parties of the empire’s dominated nationalities.[1] As ethnic Russians made up at most 42 per cent of the population, it should come as no surprise that the majority of social democrats (SDs) belonged to the national (non-Russian) parties.[2] In fact, the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks combined only represented about 22 per cent of Marxists in imperial Russia. (See Table 1)<\/p>\n

Table 1:<\/em><\/p>\n

Main Marxist Organizations in the Czarist Empire<\/strong> (1890 to 1914)[3]<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Organization<\/strong><\/td>\nYear Founded<\/strong><\/td>\nPeak Membership<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Polish Socialist Party<\/td>\n1892<\/td>\n55,000<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland<\/td>\n1893<\/td>\n40,000<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Georgian Social Democracy \u201cMesame Dasi\u201d<\/td>\n1893<\/td>\n20,000<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Lithuanian Social Democratic Party<\/td>\n1896<\/td>\n3,000<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
General Jewish Labour Bund in Russia and Poland<\/td>\n1897<\/td>\n40,000<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Social Democratic Party of Finland<\/td>\n1899<\/td>\n107,000<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Revolutionary Ukrainian Party<\/td>\n1900<\/td>\n3,000<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Latvian Social Democratic Union<\/td>\n1903<\/td>\n1,000<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Armenian Social Democratic Labour Organization \u201cSpecifists\u201d<\/td>\n1903<\/td>\n2,000<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Bolshevik fraction of the RSDLP<\/td>\n1903<\/td>\n58,000<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Menshevik fraction of the RSDLP<\/td>\n1903<\/td>\n27,000<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Latvian Social Democratic Labour Party<\/td>\n1904<\/td>\n23,800<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Muslim Social Democratic Party \u201cHummet\u201d<\/td>\n1904<\/td>\n1,000<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Ukrainian Social Democratic Union \u201cSpilka\u201d<\/td>\n1904<\/td>\n10,000<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Yet the national SDs have been neglected by both academic and socialist historiography. For decades, if Western historians mentioned the borderlands, it was usually to portray them as victims of Bolshevik domination.[4] As this interpretation reflected the assumption that Marxism inherently disregards national oppression, the impact and influence of the borderland SDs was conveniently left out. Socialists, both Trotskyist and Stalinist, have similarly dismissed the borderland Marxists, as a serious analysis of their perspectives would disrupt the axiom that the Bolsheviks were consistent and pioneering supporters of national liberation.[5] Typical in this respect is British socialist Alan Woods\u2019 claim that, \u201cwithout a clear and principled stand on the national question they [the Bolsheviks] could never have led the working-class to the conquest of power.\u201d[6] Each of these interpretations simplifies a much more complicated reality and in the process overlook the periphery’s Marxists.<\/p>\n

The First Debates on the National Question<\/strong>
\nIn the early years of the twentieth century, the drive of Iskra (Spark)\u2014a principally Russian and Russified SD faction\u2014to build a centralized revolutionary party across the whole territory put it on a collision course with the non-Russian Marxist parties. Iskra’s organizational plan is often erroneously portrayed as simply a continuation of populist traditions.[7] But, in fact, the People’s Will collaborated as a partner with the Polish Proletariat, the empire’s first Marxist party, and explicitly rejected an organizational merger on the following grounds:<\/p>\n

\u201cRespecting the independence and free development of every nation, [the Executive Committee of the People’s Will] recognizes that the differences in social conditions between the Russian and Polish peoples does not allow for identical means in the preparatory work of Russian and Polish socialists. Consequently, the complete merging [of the two parties] would likely inhibit the activities of Russian and Polish socialists, constraining their freedom in selecting the most appropriate methods of organization and struggle.\u201d[8]<\/p>\n

The precedent for this approach was further cemented in 1897 when the social democracy of the Austrian empire federated into six national parties.[9] Most SDs in the Czarist borderlands upheld this organizational perspective, as did the Russian Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs).[10] To cite one example, the founding congress of the Latvian Social Democratic Labour Party (LSDSP) called for a federalist Marxist party for the empire, arguing:<\/p>\n

\u201cSince the life of every nation is established and develops historically in different economic conditions, since each nation has its own language, its own culture, and differs from others even regarding its class groupings, thus only its own national proletarian social democratic organization\u00ad can elucidate its proletarian class interests.\u201d[11]<\/p>\n

Iskra’s perspective broke from these widespread federalist sentiments and reflected a serious underestimation of the fact that Russia was an empire, not a nation-state. It was particularly problematic given that the labour and socialist movements were much stronger in the periphery than the center up through the 1905 revolution.[12] For instance, the Jewish Bund had recruited 30,000 members by 1903, while Russian SDs had at most a few thousand.[13] While the socialist movement in Central Russia remained weak and atomized at the turn of the century, many borderland SDs had already moved beyond disconnected circles and had built strong parties, centralized on a regional level. Their objections were not to \u201ccentralization\u201d as such, but whether this \u201ccentralization\u201d should be extended across the empire.[14]<\/p>\n

The Bund’s break with the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) in 1903 expressed not only organizational differences with Iskra, but also important political ones.[15] In the wake of the 1902 Cz\u0119stochowa pogrom, Lenin dismissed the Bund’s assertion that \u201canti-Semitism has struck roots in the mass of the workers\u201d as \u201cinfantile,\u201d on the grounds that anti-Semitism corresponded to the interests of the bourgeoisie, not the proletariat.[16] Lenin, Trotsky, Martov, and other Iskraists supported legal equality for all, but opposed the Bund’s proposal to explicitly include language equality in the party program.[17] Furthermore, they argued that uncoerced assimilation was the only way to end the oppression of Jews.[18] Latvian LSDSP leader P\u0113teris Stu\u010dka noted that Iskra’s assertion of \u201cthe need to assimilate small ethnicities (i.e. the need to Russify)\u201d was shared by Russian officials and liberals, leading him to conclude that \u201cclearly appearing behind the mask of [Marxist] antinationalism is true nationalism.\u201d[19]<\/p>\n

Lenin’s general opposition to autonomy and federalism on a governmental level was similarly problematic.[20] At the 1903 congress, he opposed a resolution to support \u201cregional self-government,\u201d arguing that it \u201cmight be interpreted to mean that the Social-Democrats wanted to split the whole state up.\u201d[21] Lenin argued that the \u201cdisintegration of Russia\u201d called for by the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) \u201cis and will remain an empty phrase, as long as economic development continues to bring the different parts of a political whole more and more closely together.\u201d[22] Though he justified this position with repeated quotations from Europe’s leading Marxist, Karl Kautsky, Lenin’s concrete political proposals were significantly less accommodating to national aspirations.[23] Most significantly, Lenin \u2013 unlike both Kautsky and Marx \u2013 did not advocate Polish independence.[24] In contrast, Iskra’s predecessors in the populist Land and Freedom had argued that, \u201cit is our duty to promote the break-up of the current Russian empire.\u201d[25]<\/p>\n

The tension between Iskra’s sincere support for national equality and a desire to preserve the widest territorial framework possible helps explain its vague, non-committal interpretation of the right of nations to self-determination. This slogan had become part of Marxist \u201corthodoxy\u201d when it was adopted by the 1896 London congress of the Second International, but its meaning remained unclear. Indeed the extent of the terminological confusion was illustrated in the use of the term \u201cautonomy\u201d in the English and French versions of the 1896 resolution, while the German text referred to \u201cself-determination\u201d (Selbstbestimmungsrecht).[26] Almost all socialists in the Czarist empire\u2014with the notable exception of Rosa Luxemburg and her supporters\u2014supported national self-determination, but how (or if) this concept should be concretized into specific policies sparked heated debate.[27] While Lenin and other Iskraists saw the affirmation of this slogan as politically sufficient, most national SDs argued that it had to be translated into concrete demands for national autonomy, federalism, or independence.<\/p>\n

The latter case was articulated in numerous pamphlets and articles by socialists in the borderlands, which surpassed the approach of their Russian comrades both theoretically and politically. One of the more path-breaking efforts was that of Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz, the main Marxist theoretician of the Polish PPS, to formulate a strategy rooting national liberation in proletarian struggle. While advocating collaboration with Russian socialists in the fight to overthrow the Czar, he called for the break-up of the empire, arguing that even a constitutional Russia would not end the oppression of non-Russians.[28] Unlike the Iskraists, Kelles-Krauz distinguished between the progressive \u201cdefensive and oppressed\u201d nationalism of the Poles and the \u201coffensive and oppressive\u201d nationalism of the Russians.[29] Yet far from advocating class collaboration, he argued that independence could only be won through the self-organization and mobilization of the proletariat given that the native bourgeoisie, fearing its workers, had ceased to fight for political democracy.[30] \u201cAn independent Poland for the sake of the proletariat, not the proletariat for the sake of Polish independence,\u201d was his motto.[31]<\/p>\n

In a period when socialism remained a distant, hazy goal for many SDs, Kelles-Krauz was the first Marxist in the 20th century to directly tie the fight for national liberation to socialist revolution as an immediate task. (In contrast, Trotsky’s famous 1906 theorization of permanent revolution was entirely silent on the struggles of oppressed peoples for self-determination.)[32] In 1902 Kelles-Krauz wrote, \u201cour sacred duty\u2014in every city, in every neighborhood where the Tsarist army and authorities are forced out\u2014will be to immediately proclaim a socialist republic\u201d in which all the major industries will become \u201cproperty of the nation.\u201d[33] Whether the Polish revolution will progress toward \u201cthe dictatorship of the proletariat\u201d or whether the \u201csocial gains of the uprising\u201d will be \u201cpartially undone\u201d through a return of the private ownership of the means of production, he argued, \u201cdefinitely cannot be predicted\u201d as this \u201cto a considerable extent depends\u201d on the dynamic of the revolutionary struggle in the West.[34]<\/p>\n

Such a case was not completely unprecedented among Polish socialists. As early as 1891, the National Socialist Commune had declared that:<\/p>\n

\u201cPolitical revolution, aimed to liberate Poland from foreign yoke, and social revolution, aimed to liberate the Polish proletariat from economic oppression, must be accomplished simultaneously. As the first cannot be effective without the other, so too is the second impossible without the first.\u201d[35]<\/p>\n

The first empire-wide organization in this period to argue that the Russian revolution should immediately overthrow capitalism was also to a significant extent the product of the borderlands. The Socialist-Revolutionary Maximalists\u2014born in 1904 and based out of Bia\u0142ystok, a predominantly Jewish city in the empire’s Northwest\u2014called for the immediate creation of a \u201cWorkers’ Republic\u201d: i.e. the \u201cseizure of power by the working people in town and country\u201d and the expropriation of the factories, mines, and landlords\u2019 estates \u201cfor the public good.\u201d Such a revolution would lead to a \u201cglobal revolt of labour against capital,\u201d which is why the \u201cworkers of the West\u201d looked to the proletariat of Russia and the \u201cworld bourgeoisie\u201d feared and hated it.[36] On the national question, the SR-Maximalists supported federalism, decentralization, and the right to secede, though, like many SRs, they stressed the \u201cAll-Russian\u201d struggle more than national liberation per se.[37]<\/p>\n

The 1905 Revolution in the Borderlands<\/strong>
\nWhile a detailed analysis of 1905 goes beyond the scope of this paper, the particularly explosive mix of national and social discontent in the borderlands should be highlighted. In fact, the revolution advanced much further\u2014and the influence of Marxists was far greater\u2014in the periphery than the center, underscoring the gravity of the Bolsheviks\u2019 failure to build a base beyond ethnic Russians.[38]<\/p>\n

In Baku, the Hummet, the world’s first socialist party of and for a Muslim population, led Azeri and Persian oil and fishery workers in militant strikes and went on to play a leading role in the revolution that overthrew the Shah of Iran in 1909. The fascinating history of the Hummet refutes the common assumption that Muslim people have historically been impervious to socialist ideas. It also contradicts the Bolsheviks\u2019 argument that Marxist parties of specific national groups like the Hummet or the Bund (as distinct from multi-ethnic territorial organizations) were inherently obstacles in the fight to unite the working-class. In fact, Hummetists played a key role in building (an often tenuous) unity between Muslim labourers and their Armenian or Russian co-workers, and the Bolsheviks\u2019 short-lived influence among Muslim workers in 1906-1908 coincided with their collaboration with, and participation within, the Hummet.[39]<\/p>\n

In Finland, the Social Democratic Party, in conjunction with the Federation of Working Women, led massive demonstrations and strikes that successfully restored the autonomy of Finland and transformed it into the world’s first national polity with full women’s suffrage. Decades before theorizations of \u201cintersectionality\u201d arose among U.S. feminists, Finnish socialists simultaneously fought for women’s rights, the end of national oppression, and the elimination of class exploitation. As pointed out by Hilja P\u00e4rssinen\u2014a central leader of Finland’s socialist and working women’s movement and a close collaborator of both Clara Zetkin and Alexandra Kollontai \u2014Finnish women were able to win suffrage under socialist leadership largely because of their key role in the national struggle against Russification begun in 1899 and the general strike in the 1905 revolution.[40]<\/p>\n

Poland witnessed the empire’s most militant labour movement, manifest in the June Lodz insurrection and the establishment of workers\u2019 rule in the mining regions in late 1905.[41]<\/p>\n

Most dramatic of all were the events in Georgia and Latvia, where SDs led massive upheavals of workers, peasants, and farmworkers, culminating in the seizure of power in much of the countryside and many smaller towns by the end of the year.[42]<\/p>\n

The depth and radicalism of 1905 in the borderlands challenges key historiographic myths, such as the idea that the Bolsheviks were the first Marxists to take seriously the revolutionary potential of the peasantry. In fact, the hegemony of the Georgian and Latvian SDs in the rural revolution went further than even the Russian SRs; in contrast, the Bolsheviks had no significant mass influence among peasants or farm workers anytime before 1917. Both the Georgian SDs and the Spilka\u2014which played a leading role, though to a somewhat lesser extent, in the Ukrainian countryside\u2014supported the Menshevik demand for land \u201cmunicipalization.\u201d On my reading of the evidence, however, the success of these parties in the agrarian revolution was less the result of their official planks (the Latvian SDs did not even have a formal agrarian program) and more the fruit of a commitment to organize in the countryside and a flexible, non-dogmatic articulation of local demands.[43]<\/p>\n

The upheavals in the periphery furthermore challenge the historiographic consensus that the revolution’s defeat was the inevitable result of the Czarist government’s superior military force. Trotsky, for instance, argued that, \u201cthe Russian proletariat in December 1905 foundered, not on its own mistakes, but on a more real force: the bayonets of the peasant army.\u201d[44] As I will demonstrate in detail in my forthcoming monograph, this interpretation is contradicted by significant historical evidence and is premised on an untenable dismissal of the \u201csubjective factor\u201d of revolutionary leadership.<\/p>\n

In late October and November 1905 the autocracy was largely paralyzed and could likely have been overthrown. The Czar’s declaration of the \u201cOctober Manifesto\u201d had sparked widespread army mutinies, particularly (but not exclusively) in the borderlands, yet the SD and SR organizations in all the major cities of the empire failed to take any serious steps to organize an armed uprising or even call mass demonstrations to challenge and attempt to win over the troops. As one participant in the Latvian events recalled, \u201cit would have been possible\u201d to have \u201ceven the troops on your side,\u201d but \u201cthe moment was missed.\u201d[45] The failure of the revolutionaries to strike while the iron was hot allowed the regime to eventually retake the initiative, reestablish some discipline in the army, and arrest the St. Petersburg Soviet leaders. The government’s initiative provoked uncoordinated street-fighting in December in Moscow, the major city of the empire whose socialists were least prepared for an uprising; in turn, the crushing of the Moscow fighting demoralized the insurrectionary movement across the empire and the revolution was lost.<\/p>\n

In the wake of 1905, a desire for closer socialist collaboration led to the unification of the Jewish Bund, Polish SDKPiL, and Latvian LSDSP with the RSDLP. The new party was in practice more federalist than centralist, as the national organizations kept their distinct organizations, leaderships, and policies intact. Underlying differences between the organizations were brushed aside rather than resolved. Thus the 1906 unification congress affirmed the principle of centralization at the same time as it sanctioned the preservation of distinct policies and organizational structures for the borderland Marxists, even when contradictory with the RSDLP program as a whole. For example, the adopted unification agreement with the Bund accepted that it was \u201ca social-democratic organization of the Jewish proletariat … not limited in its activities by a regional framework,\u201d while simultaneously affirming the RSDLP’s general opposition to non-territorial party organizations.[46]<\/p>\n

The Bolsheviks accommodated themselves to this looser framework as the national SDs, generally to the left of the Mensheviks, were key allies in the internal factional fights. Yet the Bolsheviks\u2019 ethnic base remained narrow \u2013 78 per cent of their delegates to the 1907 RSDLP congress were Russians.[47] Just as problematically, they refrained from updating their national program and opposed even opening a discussion on this topic at the 1907 congress.[48] For all their claims to \u201corthodoxy,\u201d Lenin and his comrades still lagged behind Kautsky, who in 1905 explicitly called for Russia to be transformed into \u201ca federal state, the \u2018United States of Russia.\u2019\u201d[49] Given the Bolsheviks\u2019 continued hostility to federalism, it is not surprising that the Bund was the first to publish Kautsky’s article in Russian.[50]<\/p>\n

The Prewar Debates<\/strong>
\nIt was only after 1912 that Lenin and some of his comrades began to rethink their national policies, as factional developments pushed the question back to the center of debates. Most national SD parties, particularly among the rank-and-file, rejected the reformism of the Menshevik liquidators and continued to uphold \u201cnon-factional\u201d revolutionary Marxism.[51]<\/p>\n

Yet none of these organizations participated in the 1912 Prague conference of Bolsheviks and Party-Mensheviks which broke from the liquidators.[52] Several months later, the Vienna \u201cAugust Bloc\u201d conference led by the main borderland Marxists, Trotsky, and the Mensheviks resolved that national-cultural autonomy (the demand for the establishment of autonomous cultural institutions for all nationalities, regardless of territory) was not in contradiction with the party program.[53]<\/p>\n

In response to these developments, Lenin enlisted the relatively few borderland Bolshevik cadre, including the Georgian Joseph Stalin, to write on the national question as part of a political counter-offensive.[54] In 1913 and 1914, Lenin published his first theoretical pieces on this topic, directed against supporters of national-cultural autonomy\u2014who, by this time, included most national SDs\u2014and the Luxemburgists.[55] Lenin’s prewar pieces were an important advance in various respects. After two decades of relative neglect, emphasizing the importance of the national question was a major shift, as was his new support for regional autonomy, promotion of language rights, and stress on combating Russian chauvinism.[56] But political weaknesses\u2014combined with the fact that Lenin’s new positions were far from accepted by all of his comrades\u2014continued to undermine the Bolsheviks\u2019 attempts to broaden their base.[57] Three issues stand out in particular.<\/p>\n

National differences and antagonism between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto. \u201d<\/p>\n

First, Bolshevik writings of this period are based on the perspective that \u201cdeveloped capitalism\u201d systematically dissolves national divisions. Stalin approvingly cited The Communist Manifesto’s claim that \u201cnational differences and antagonisms between peoples are daily more and more vanishing.\u201d[58] Lenin similarly emphasized:<\/p>\n

\u201cCapitalism’s world-historical tendency to break down national barriers, obliterate national distinctions, and to assimilate nations\u2014a tendency which manifests itself more and more powerfully with every passing decade, and is one of the greatest driving forces transforming capitalism into socialism.\u201d[59]<\/p>\n

On this basis, Lenin argued that the ongoing assimilation of Ukrainian workers in Czarist Russia was an \u201cundoubtedly progressive\u201d feature of capitalist growth.[60] While acknowledging that the creation of a Ukrainian state was a historic possibility, Lenin at the same time concluded that, \u201cthe historically progressive nature of the \u2018assimilation\u2019 of the Great-Russian and Ukrainian workers will be as undoubted as the progressive nature of the grinding down of nations in America.\u201d[61]<\/p>\n

Linked to this analysis, Lenin and Stalin denounced the fight to defend the national cultures of dominated peoples as a reactionary manifestation of bourgeois nationalism.[62] Even the Bolsheviks\u2019 allies in the Latvian LSDSP\u2014the only borderland organization to eventually side with the Bolsheviks in these years\u2014cut out all of Lenin’s formulations on the national question from the draft program he wrote for their 1914 congress.[63]<\/p>\n

Given that the historiography of the pre-war debates on the national question usually focuses on support or opposition to Austro-Marxist Otto Bauer’s theories, it is important to stress that the most important contributions from the Czarist borderlands forged a distinct orientation. Unlike both Bauer and the Bolsheviks, many national SDs tended to emphasize the need to combine territorial and extra-territorial national solutions. The Bolsheviks\u2019 claim that capitalism dissolved national divisions was generally rejected, as was Bauer’s perspective that nations were permanent entities that would be further cemented by the advent of socialism.[64]<\/p>\n

The Bolsheviks\u2019 second major weak point was the reversal of their post-1905 accommodation to the de-facto<\/em> federal status of the national SD organizations. Reverting to denunciations of organizational federalism, Lenin at one point even argued that the non-Russian SDs were not an essential component of an empire-wide party: \u201cIs an \u2018All-Russia\u2019 S.D.L.P. legitimate without the non-Russian nationalities? It is, because it was an All-Russia party from 1898 to 1903 without the Poles and Letts, and from 1903 to 1906 without the Poles, Letts and the Bund!\u201d[65]<\/p>\n

Third, Lenin continued to oppose state federalism, affirming that big states were progressive and should only be broken up an as exception.[66] He wrote:<\/p>\n

\u201cMarxists will never, under any circumstances, advocate either the federal principle or decentralization. The great centralized state is a tremendous historical step forward from medieval disunity to the future socialist unity of the whole world, and only via such a state (inseparably connected with capitalism), can there be any road to socialism.\u201d[67]<\/p>\n

This stance, sidestepping the difference between an empire and a nation-state, significantly undercut the thrust of his definition of self-determination as the right to political secession.[68] Ukrainian SD leader Lev Yurkevich replied that generalized support for big states and the right of nations to self-determination were \u201cmutually exclusive principles.\u201d[69] On the crucial question of Polish independence, Lenin argued that:<\/p>\n

\u201cNo Russian Marxist has ever thought of blaming the Polish Social-Democrats for being opposed to the secession of Poland. These Social-Democrats err only when, like Rosa Luxemburg, they try to deny the necessity of including the recognition of the right to self-determination in the Programme of the Russian Marxists.\u201d[70]<\/p>\n

This approach was concretised in the Bolsheviks\u2019 continued alliance with Luxemburgists instead of the far healthier PPS-Left (the name was adopted after the PPS majority expelled its nationalist wing in 1906-1907), which was leading a resurgent mass workers\u2019 movement.[71] Yet the Bolsheviks unjustifiably denounced the latter as \u201cnationalists\u201d and built an alliance with a wing of SDKPiL militants (Karl Radek, etc.) who opposed the sectarianism and anti-democratic impositions of the \u00e9migr\u00e9 Rosa Luxemburg-Leo Jogiches leadership, while still supporting their perspective on the national question.[72] The Bolsheviks\u2019 approach to Poland\u2014and national liberation more generally\u2014helps explain why their support in the borderlands was largely limited to anti-patriotic SDs.[73]<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/strong>
\nDespite their desire to build a party representing all workers of the empire, the Bolsheviks\u2019 roots among non-Russians\u2014and their policies toward them\u2014were remarkably weak on the eve of 1917.[74] While this was certainly not the sole cause of the revolution’s defeat outside Central Russia, it was an important factor. The Bolsheviks were too isolated to make a serious bid for power in Georgia, which declared its independence.[75] Similarly, in Finland the Bolsheviks had little influence over the course of the revolution, which was crushed by 1918.[76] In Ukraine and Azerbaijan, soviet governments were established with virtually no native support and were soon driven from power.[77] These failures facilitated a prolonged and devastating Civil War that took place principally in the borderlands.[78] Sovietization was eventually established in Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Ukraine in large measure through intervention by the Red Army, but the 1920 Red Army invasion of Poland catastrophically backfired.[79]<\/p>\n

It should be underscored that Europe’s leading Marxists, without exception, had for many decades seen the non-Russian regions of the Czarist empire as central to the international expansion of revolution.[80] The importance of Poland \u2013 occupied jointly by Germany (Prussia), Austria, and Russia \u2013 in particular was a longstanding theme. As Kautsky wrote in 1904:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Polish question will also become acute again …The Poles will point their bayonets not against Russia but against Austria and Prussia, and to the extent that Poland serves the revolution, it will become a means not to defend the revolution against Russia but to carry it to Austria and Prussia. … Couldn’t those struggles possibly result in the rule of the proletariat in Germany? That, however, would have repercussions on the whole of Europe.\u201d[81]<\/p>\n

Yet the opposite dynamic took place: defeats in the borderlands, particularly the failure of the revolution in Poland, were key turning points in the post-war revolutionary wave.[82] By the end of 1923, the Soviet government found itself stranded in a hostile capitalist world.<\/p>\n

The experience of these setbacks, efforts to build soviet power among non-Russians, and the influx of borderland SDs and revolutionary nationalists into the Communist Parties and the Comintern, brought about a major revision of the Bolshevik approach to the national question. Many of the positions first advocated by borderland SDs were adopted, including support for state federalism and\/or independent socialist republics in the borderlands; the rejection of assimilation and the active promotion of national culture and national schools; and the establishment of separate borderland Marxist parties.[83] These new policies made possible a remarkable \u201cnational renaissance\u201d of non-Russians that lasted until the Stalinist counter-revolution in the 1930’s.[84]<\/p>\n

In short, the Bolsheviks as a whole overcame serious weaknesses concerning the national question only after the initial defeats of the workers\u2019 revolutions in the empire’s periphery. Lenin and his comrades eventually adopted much of the approach of the national SDs, but their delay in doing so cost the revolution dearly. Had the Bolsheviks adopted this orientation at an earlier date, it might have been possible for the socialist revolution to have succeeded in the non-Russian territories and, from there, to have advanced across Europe and Asia. While the historical record supports Trotsky’s contention that the rise of Stalinism was fundamentally caused by the isolation of the revolution, the evidence suggests that this isolation was to a significant extent the fruit of Bolshevik political weaknesses on and in the borderlands.<\/p>\n

Furthermore, a contributing factor in the Stalinist bureaucracy’s defeat of the Left Opposition was the latter’s failure to champion the demands of non-Russians. In 1923, Trotsky famously failed to follow through on Lenin’s plea that he go on the offensive against Stalin concerning the autonomy of Georgia. That same year, Trotsky likewise rejected the proposal for an alliance against Stalin made to him by Mirsaid Sultan Galiev\u2014the Bolsheviks\u2019 main leader among Muslim people, who had organized a broad resistance movement against Russian domination in the borderlands. In subsequent years, the numerous non-Russian opponents of Stalin (with the exception of the Georgian Communists) generally did not see the Left Opposition as an ally, because Luxemburgists such as Georgy Pyatakov were prominent leaders within it, and because it made no mention of the national question until 1927.[85]<\/p>\n

Learning from this experience\u2014and that of borderland Marxism more generally\u2014may be of considerable value for sharpening socialist practice in today’s struggles against class, national, and gender domination.<\/p>\n

Eric Blanc is an activist and historian based in Oakland, California<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Originally published on the http:\/\/johnriddell.wordpress.com<\/a> website.<\/p>\n

Endnotes<\/strong>
\n1. An abridged version of this working paper was presented to the Historical Materialism May 2014 Toronto conference. It is based on the research\u2014using primary sources in Ukrainian, Russian, Latvian, Finnish, and Polish\u2014for my forthcoming monograph on the history of the main non-Russian Marxist organizations, Anti-Colonial Marxism: National Liberation and Socialist Revolution in the Czarist Borderlands.<\/p>\n

2. Most historians, basing themselves on the 1897 census, have listed the percentage of ethnic Russians in the Czarist Empire as 43% or 44%. But apart from the fact that the census undercounted Poles, it did not include the populations of Finland, Bukhara, or Khiva (about 6 million people combined). For the main findings of the census, see \u0412.\u041f. \u0421\u0435\u043c\u0435\u043d\u043e\u0432\u0430, ed., \u0420\u043e\u0441\u0441\u0438\u044f. \u041f\u043e\u043b\u043d\u043e\u0435 \u0433\u0435\u043e\u0433\u0440\u0430\u0444\u0438\u0447\u0435\u0441\u043a\u043e\u0435 \u043e\u043f\u0438\u0441\u0430\u043d\u0438\u0435 \u043d\u0430\u0448\u0435\u0433\u043e \u043e\u0442\u0435\u0447\u0435\u0441\u0442\u0432\u0430 (\u0421\u0430\u043d\u043a\u0442-\u041f\u0435\u0442\u0435\u0440\u0431\u0443\u0440\u0433: \u0410.\u0424.\u0414\u0435\u0432\u0440\u0438\u0435\u043d\u0430, 1913).<\/p>\n

3. This list consists of the major organizations that explicitly considered themselves \u201csocial democratic,\u201d though some began as neo-populist and\/or revolutionary nationalist parties. Peak membership was reached by all parties between 1905 and 1907. Readers should keep in mind that membership numbers of underground parties in Czarist Russia are notoriously unreliable, given the lack of clear member-lists and the tendency for all groups to exaggerate their size. The cited membership for the Mensheviks does not include the Georgian SDs or the Ukrainian Spilka given that they acted politically and organizationally as independent parties, notwithstanding their formal affiliation with the Menshevik faction\u2014of which they constituted, respectively, about 30% and 10% of the total membership. I have compiled this chart on the basis of the following sources: Polish PPS: Anna \u017barnowska, Geneza roz\u0142amu w Polskiej Partii Socjalistycznej, 1904-1906 (Warszawa: Pa\u0144stwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1965), 457; Polish SDKPiL (Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland pre-1899; affiliated to RSDLP post-1906): Pawe\u0142 Samu\u015b, Dzieje SDKPiL w \u0141odzi: 1893-1918 (\u0141\u00f3d\u017a: Wydawnictwo \u0141\u00f3dzkie, 1984), 69; Georgian SDs (affiliated to RSDLP post-1903): Stephen Jones, Socialism in Georgian Colors: the European Road to Social Democracy, 1883-1917 (Cambridge, MA.: Harvard University Press, 2005), 209; Lithuanian LSDP: Leonas Sabali\u016bnas, Lithuanian Social Democracy in Perspective, 1893-1914 (Durham: Duke University Press, 1990), 114; Jewish Bund (General Jewish Labour Bund of Lithuania, Poland and Russia post-1901; affiliated to the RSDLP 1898-1903 and post-1906): \u041c\u043e\u0438\u0441\u0435\u0439 \u0413\u0440\u0438\u0433\u043e\u0440\u044c\u0435\u0432\u0438\u0447 \u0420\u0430\u0444\u0435\u0441, \u041e\u0447\u0435\u0440\u043a\u0438 \u043f\u043e \u0438\u0441\u0442\u043e\u0440\u0438\u0438 \u0411\u0443\u043d\u0434\u0430 (\u041c\u043e\u0441\u043a\u0432\u0430: \u041c\u043e\u0441\u043a\u043e\u0432\u0441\u043a\u0438\u0439 \u0440\u0430\u0431\u043e\u0447\u0438\u0439, 1923), 161; Finnish SDP (Finnish Workers Party pre-1903): Hannu Soikkanen, Sosialismin Tulo Suomeen: Ensimm\u00e4isiin Yksikamarisen Eduskunnan Vaaleihin Asti (Porvoo-Helsinki: Werner S\u00f6derstr\u00f6m Osakeyhti\u00f6, 1961), 338; Ukrainian RUP (Ukrainian Social Democratic Labour Party post-1905): \u0412\u043e\u043b\u043e\u0434\u0438\u043c\u0438\u0440 \u0413\u043e\u043b\u043e\u0432\u0447\u0435\u043d\u043a\u043e, \u0412\u0456\u0434 \u201c\u0421\u0430\u043c\u043e\u0441\u0442\u0456\u0439\u043d\u043e\u0457 \u0423\u043a\u0440\u0430\u0457\u043d\u0438\u201d \u0434\u043e \u0421\u043e\u044e\u0437\u0443 \u0432\u0438\u0437\u0432\u043e\u043b\u0435\u043d\u043d\u044f \u0423\u043a\u0440\u0430\u0457\u043d\u0438 (\u0425\u0430\u0440\u043a\u0456\u0432: \u041c\u0430\u0439\u0434\u0430\u043d, 1996), 65; Latvian Social Democratic Union (Latvian Socialist Revolutionary Party post-1913): Arveds \u0160v\u0101be, Latvijas V\u0113sture, 1800-1914 (Daugava, 1962), 611; Armenian Specifists: \u0418.\u0421. \u0411\u0430\u0433\u0438\u0440\u043e\u0432\u0430, \u041f\u043e\u043b\u0438\u0442\u0438\u0447\u0435\u0441\u043a\u0438\u0435 \u043f\u0430\u0440\u0442\u0438\u0438 \u0438 \u043e\u0440\u0433\u0430\u043d\u0438\u0437\u0430\u0446\u0438\u0438 \u0410\u0437\u0435\u0440\u0431\u0430\u0439\u0434\u0436\u0430\u043d\u0430 \u0432 \u043d\u0430\u0447\u0430\u043b\u0435 XX \u0432\u0435\u043a\u0430 (1900-1917) (\u0411\u0430\u043a\u0443: \u0415\u041b\u041c, 1997), 232; Bolsheviks: \u0410.\u0418. \u0423\u0442\u043a\u0438\u043d, \u201c\u041a \u0432\u043e\u043f\u0440\u043e\u0441\u0443 \u043e \u0447\u0438\u0441\u043b\u0435\u043d\u043d\u043e\u0441\u0442\u0438 \u0438 \u0441\u043e\u0441\u0442\u0430\u0432\u0435 \u0420\u0421\u0414\u0420\u041f \u0432 1905 \u2013 1907 \u0433\u0433.,\u201d in \u0410.\u041f.\u041a\u043e\u0440\u0435\u043b\u0438\u043d, ed., \u041f\u043e\u043b\u0438\u0442\u0438\u0447\u0435\u0441\u043a\u0438\u0435 \u043f\u0430\u0440\u0442\u0438\u0438 \u0420\u043e\u0441\u0441\u0438\u0438 \u0432 \u043f\u0435\u0440\u0438\u043e\u0434 \u0440\u0435\u0432\u043e\u043b\u044e\u0446\u0438\u0438 1905-1907 \u0433\u0433. \u041a\u043e\u043b\u0438\u00ad\u0447\u0435\u0441\u0442\u0432\u0435\u043d\u043d\u044b\u0439 \u0430\u043d\u0430\u043b\u0438\u0437 (\u041c\u043e\u0441\u043a\u0432\u0430: \u0410\u043a\u0430\u0434\u0435\u043c\u0438\u044f \u043d\u0430\u0443\u043a \u0421\u0421\u0421\u0420, 1987), 19; Mensheviks (minus Ukrainian Spilka and Georgian SDs): Ibid.; Latvian LSDSP (Latvian Social Democracy post-1906; affiliated to RSDLP post-1906): Vit\u0101lijs Salda, \u201cLatvijas soci\u0101ldemokr\u0101tijas organizatorisk\u0101s att\u012bst\u012bbas da\u017eas tendences 1905. gada revol\u016bcij\u0101,\u201din J\u0101nis B\u0113rzi\u0146\u0161, ed., 1905. gads Latvij\u0101: 100. P\u0113t\u012bjumi un starptautiskas konferences materi\u0101li, 2005. gada 11.-12. janv\u0101ris, R\u012bga (R\u012bga: Latvijas v\u0113stures instit\u016bta apg\u0101ds, 2006), 209; Muslim Hummet: my rough estimate, based on \u0418\u0441\u043c\u0430\u0438\u043b \u0410\u043b\u043e\u0432\u0441\u0430\u0442 \u043e\u0433\u043b\u044b \u0410\u0433\u0430\u043a\u0438\u0448\u0438\u0435\u0432, \u0412\u043e\u0437\u043d\u0438\u043a\u043d\u043e\u0432\u0435\u043d\u0438\u0435 \u0438 \u0434\u0435\u044f\u0442\u0435\u043b\u044c\u043d\u043e\u0441\u0442\u044c \u0441\u043e\u0446\u0438\u0430\u043b-\u0434\u0435\u043c\u043e\u043a\u0440\u0430\u0442\u0438\u0447\u0435\u0441\u043a\u043e\u0439 \u043e\u0440\u0433\u0430\u043d\u0438\u0437\u0430\u0446\u0438\u0438 \u201c\u0413\u0443\u043c\u043c\u0435\u0442\u201d \u0432 1904-1911 \u0433\u043e\u0434\u0430\u0445 (\u0434\u0438\u0441\u0441\u0435\u0440\u0442\u0430\u0446\u0438\u044f, \u041c\u043e\u0441\u043a\u043e\u0432\u0441\u043a\u0438\u0439 \u0433\u043e\u0441\u0443\u0434\u0430\u0440\u0441\u0442\u0432\u0435\u043d\u043d\u044b\u0439 \u0443\u043d\u0438\u0432\u0435\u0440\u0441\u0438\u0442\u0435\u0442, 1991); Ukrainian Spilka (affiliated to RSDLP post-1905): \u0410. \u0420\u0438\u0448, \u041e\u0447\u0435\u0440\u043a\u0438 \u043f\u043e \u0438\u0441\u0442\u043e\u0440\u0438\u0438 \u0423\u043a\u0440\u0430\u0438\u043d\u0441\u043a\u043e\u0439 \u0441\u043e\u0446\u0438\u0430\u043b-\u0434\u0435\u043c\u043e\u043a\u0440\u0430\u0442\u0438\u0447\u0435\u0441\u043a\u043e\u0439 \u201c\u0421\u043f\u0456\u043b\u043a\u0438\u201d (\u0425\u0430\u0440\u044c\u043a\u043e\u0432: \u041f\u0440\u043e\u043b\u0435\u0442\u0430\u0440\u0438\u0439, 1926), 25.<\/p>\n

4. See Richard Pipes, The Formation of the Soviet Union: Communism and Nationalism, 1917-1923 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1954). Similarly, non-Soviet historiography from the nations formerly dominated by the Czar has been marked by nationalist denunciations of \u201cBolshevik imperialism.\u201d For a typical example, see Arveds Schwabe, The Story of Latvia: a Historical Survey (Stockholm: E. Olofssons Boktryckeri, 1949). Though the history of the borderland SDs largely remains to be told, important pioneering works have been written, some of which are cited below.<\/p>\n

5. For a classic Soviet account, see \u0422.\u042e. \u0411\u0443\u0440\u043c\u0438\u0441\u0442\u0440\u043e\u0432\u0430, \u041d\u0430\u0446\u0438\u043e\u043d\u0430\u043b\u044c\u043d\u044b\u0439 \u0432\u043e\u043f\u0440\u043e\u0441 \u0438 \u0440\u0430\u0431\u043e\u0447\u0435\u0435 \u0434\u0432\u0438\u0436\u0435\u043d\u0438\u0435 \u0432 \u0420\u043e\u0441\u0441\u0438\u0438. (\u041b\u0435\u043d\u0438\u043d\u0441\u043a\u0430\u044f \u043f\u043e\u043b\u0438\u0442\u0438\u043a\u0430 \u043f\u0440\u043e\u043b\u0435\u0442\u0430\u0440\u0441\u043a\u043e\u0433\u043e \u0438\u043d\u0442\u0435\u0440\u043d\u0430\u0446\u0438\u043e\u043d\u0430\u043b\u0438\u0437\u043c\u0430. 1907-1917 \u0433\u0433.) (\u041c\u043e\u0441\u043a\u0432\u0430: \u041c\u044b\u0441\u043b\u044c, 1969).<\/p>\n

6. Alan Woods, Bolshevism: The Road to Revolution (London: Wellred Publications, 1999), 398.<\/p>\n

7. Richard Pipes, \u201cRussian Marxism and Its Populist Background: The Late Nineteenth Century,\u201d Russian Review 19, no. 4 (1960): 316-337.<\/p>\n

8. \u201c\u041e\u0442\u0432\u0435\u0442 \u0418\u0441\u043f\u043e\u043b\u043d\u0438\u0442\u0435\u043b\u044c\u043d\u043e\u0433\u043e \u041a\u043e\u043c\u0438\u0442\u0435\u0442\u0430 \u043f\u0430\u0440\u0442\u0438\u0438 \u041d\u0430\u0440\u043e\u0434\u043d\u043e\u0439 \u0432\u043e\u043b\u0438,\u201d \u041d\u0430\u0440\u043e\u0434\u043d\u0430\u044f \u0432\u043e\u043b\u044f 10 (1884), in \u041b\u0438\u0442\u0435\u0440\u0430\u0442\u0443\u0440\u0430 \u0441\u043e\u0446\u0438\u0430\u043b\u044c\u043d\u043e-\u0440\u0435\u0432\u043e\u043b\u044e\u0446\u0438\u043e\u043d\u043d\u043e\u0439 \u043f\u0430\u0440\u0442\u0438\u0438 \u201c\u041d\u0430\u0440\u043e\u0434\u043d\u043e\u0439 \u0432\u043e\u043b\u0438\u201d (\u0422\u0438\u043f\u043e\u0433\u0440\u0430\u0444\u0438\u044f \u043f\u0430\u0440\u0442\u0438\u0438 \u0441\u043e\u0446\u0438\u0430\u043b\u0438\u0441\u0442\u043e\u0432-\u0440\u0435\u0432\u043e\u043b\u044e\u0446\u0438\u043e\u043d\u0435\u0440\u043e\u0432, 1905), 680-681.<\/p>\n

9. On social democrats in Austria and the national question, see Hans Mommsen, Die Sozialdemokratie und die Nationalit\u00e4tenfrage im habsburgischen Vielv\u00f6lkerstaat (Wien: Europa-Verlag, 1963).<\/p>\n

10. The SRs\u2019 federalist orientation won them the support of many revolutionaries in the borderlands. While SRs have been often dismissed as pure-and-simple populists or terrorists, the party was in fact deeply involved in the labour movement, and the younger generation of SRs led by Victor Chernov saw themselves as revolutionary socialists closer to Marx’s critical method than the \u201corthodox\u201d SDs\u2014an assessment borne out at least in part by the fact that SRs were the first Russian socialists to articulate many of positions eventually adopted by Bolshevik leaders concerning peasant struggle, permanent revolution, and national liberation. For early SR articulations on the national question, see \u0412.\u041c. \u0427\u0435\u0440\u043d\u043e\u0432, \u201c\u041d\u0430\u0446\u0438\u043e\u043d\u0430\u043b\u044c\u043d\u043e\u0435 \u043f\u043e\u0440\u0430\u0431\u043e\u0449\u0435\u043d\u0438\u0435 \u0438 \u0440\u0435\u0432\u043e\u043b\u044e\u0446\u0438\u043e\u043d\u043d\u044b\u0439 \u0441\u043e\u0446\u0438\u0430\u043b\u0438\u0437\u043c,\u201d \u0420\u0435\u0432\u043e\u043b\u044e\u0446\u0438\u043e\u043d\u043d\u0430\u044f \u0420\u043e\u0441\u0441\u0438\u044f 18 (1903), and \u0412.\u041c. \u0427\u0435\u0440\u043d\u043e\u0432, \u201c\u041d\u0430\u0446\u0438\u043e\u043d\u0430\u043b\u044c\u043d\u044b\u0439 \u0432\u043e\u043f\u0440\u043e\u0441 \u0438 \u0440\u0435\u0432\u043e\u043b\u044e\u0446\u0438\u044f,\u201d \u0420\u0435\u0432\u043e\u043b\u044e\u0446\u0438\u043e\u043d\u043d\u0430\u044f \u0420\u043e\u0441\u0441\u0438\u044f 35 (1903). On the SRs, SDs, and the national struggle in Finland, see Antti Kujala, Vallankumous ja kansallinen itsem\u00e4\u00e4r\u00e4\u00e4misoikeus: Ven\u00e4j\u00e4n sosialistiset puolueet ja suomalainen radikalismi vuosisadan alussa (Helsinki: Suomen Historiallinen Seura, 1989).<\/p>\n

11. \u201cPar attiec\u012bb\u0101m pret cittautu soci\u0101ldemokr\u0101tisk\u0101m organiz\u0101cij\u0101m,\u201d (1904) in Latvijas Komunistisk\u0101s partijas kongresu, konferen\u010du un CK pl\u0113numu rezolucijas un l\u0113mumi (R\u012bga: Latvijas Valsts izdevniec\u012bba, 1958), 8.<\/p>\n

12. The strength of the mass workers\u2019 movement in the periphery\u2014manifest in the 1903 general strike wave in Ukraine and Transcaucasia\u2014helps explains why the majority of borderland RSDLP committees sided with the Mensheviks after 1903, as the Bolsheviks were perceived to be overly conspiratorial and dismissive of economic struggles. These Bolshevik weaknesses were evident in the most important labour action preceding the revolution, the Baku general strike of 1904. On the labour movement in this period, plus statistics on the low membership of the early RSDLP, the few number of workers in its ranks, and comparisons with the non-Russian SD parties, see \u0418.\u041c. \u041f\u0443\u0448\u043a\u0430\u0440\u0435\u0432\u0430 \u0435t \u0430l., \u0422\u0440\u0443\u0434\u043e\u0432\u044b\u0435 \u043a\u043e\u043d\u0444\u043b\u0438\u043a\u0442\u044b \u0438 \u0440\u0430\u0431\u043e\u0447\u0435\u0435 \u0434\u0432\u0438\u0436\u0435\u043d\u0438\u0435 \u0432 \u0420\u043e\u0441\u0441\u0438\u0438 \u043d\u0430 \u0440\u0443\u0431\u0435\u0436\u0435 XIX-XX \u0432\u0432. (\u0421\u0430\u043d\u043a\u0442-\u041f\u0435\u0442\u0435\u0440\u0431\u0443\u0440\u0433: \u0410\u043b\u0435\u0442\u0435\u0439\u044f, 2011), particularly 198-201.<\/p>\n

13. \u201c\u041e\u0442\u0447\u0435\u0442 \u043e \u0434\u0435\u044f\u0442\u0435\u043b\u044c\u043d\u043e\u0441\u0442\u0438 \u0411\u0443\u043d\u0434\u0430 \u0437\u0430 \u0432\u0440\u0435\u043c\u044f \u043e\u0442 IV \u0434\u043e V \u0441\u044a\u0435\u0437\u0434\u0430 (1901-1903 \u0433\u0433.),\u201d (1903) in \u041a.\u041c. \u0410\u043d\u0434\u0435\u0440\u0441\u043e\u043d et al., ed., \u0411\u0443\u043d\u0434: \u0434\u043e\u043a\u0443\u043c\u0435\u043d\u0442\u044b \u0438 \u043c\u0430\u0442\u0435\u0440\u0438\u0430\u043b\u044b, 1894-1921 (\u041c\u043e\u0441\u043a\u0432\u0430: \u0420\u041e\u0421\u0421\u041f\u042d\u041d, 2010), 353.<\/p>\n

14. On the early history of the PPS, see Jan Kancewicz, Polska Partia Socjalistyczna w latach 1892-1896 (Warszawa: Pa\u0144stwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1984); on the SDKPiL, Bronis\u0142aw Radlak, Socjaldemokracja Kr\u00f3lestwa Polskiego i Litwy w latach 1893-1904 (Warszawa: Pa\u0144stwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1979); onthe Bund, \u041d.\u0410. \u0411\u0443\u0445\u0431\u0438\u043d\u0434\u0435\u0440, \u0418\u0441\u0442\u043e\u0440\u0438\u044f \u0435\u0432\u0440\u0435\u0439\u0441\u043a\u043e\u0433\u043e \u0440\u0430\u0431\u043e\u0447\u0435\u0433\u043e \u0434\u0432\u0438\u0436\u0435\u043d\u0438\u044f \u0432 \u0420\u043e\u0441\u0441\u0438\u0438 (\u041b\u0435\u043d\u0438\u043d\u0433\u0440\u0430\u0434: \u0410\u043a\u0430\u0434\u0435\u043c\u0438\u0447\u0435\u0441\u043a\u043e\u0435 \u0438\u0437\u0434\u0430\u0442\u0435\u043b\u044c\u0441\u0442\u0432\u043e, 1925); on the Finnish SDP, Hannu Soikkanen, Kohti kansanvaltaa 1: Suomen Sosialidemokraattinen Puolue 75 vuotta, osa 1 1899-1937 (Helsinki: Suomen Sosialidemokraattinen Puolue, Puoluetoimikunta, 1975).<\/p>\n

15. On socialists and the Jewish question in Czarist Russia, see Klaus Heller, Revolution\u00e4rer Sozialismus und nationale Frage. Das Problem des Nationalismus bei russischen und j\u00fcdischen Sozialdemokraten und Sozialrevolution\u00e4ren bis zur Revolution 1905-1907 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1977).<\/p>\n

16. \u201cDoes the Jewish Proletariat Need an \u2018Independent Political Party\u2019?\u201d (1903) in V.I. Lenin, Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977) 6: 331-332.<\/p>\n

17. See Brian Pearce, ed., 1903, Second Ordinary Congress of the RSDLP: Complete Text of the Minutes (London: New Park Publications, 1978), 223-229. Due to the pressure of the Bund and the Georgian SDs, a plank on language rights was eventually included in the party program, though the existence of a \u201cstate language\u201d was still accepted. Ibid., 6.<\/p>\n

18. For Lenin’s early arguments in favor of Jewish assimilation, see \u201cThe Position of the Bund in the Party,\u201d (1903) in Lenin, Collected Works 7: 100-101. After the rise of Nazism in the 1930’s, Trotsky broke from this assimilationist position and, from 1937 onwards, argued that Jews were a nationality with the right to self-determination, including their own \u201cautonomous republic.\u201d While making this case, Trotsky remained implacably opposed to Zionism. See Leon Trotsky, \u201cOn the Jewish Problem,\u201d Fourth International 6, no. 12 (December 1945): 378.<\/p>\n

19. P\u0113teris Stu\u010dka, \u201cProvin\u010du autonomija socialdemokratu partiju program\u0101,\u201d N\u0101kotne 4 (June 1906): 51.<\/p>\n

20. \u201cOn the Manifesto of the League of the Armenian Social-Democrats,\u201d (1903) in Lenin, Collected Works 6: 326-327.<\/p>\n

21. Pearce, 1903, Second Ordinary Congress, 221.<\/p>\n

22. \u201cThe National Question in Our Programme,\u201d (1903) in Lenin, Collected Works 6: 459. This claim was disputed by PPS leader Kelles-Krauz, who argued that the Russian and Austrian empires were pre-capitalist in origin and could not be equated with progressive capitalist development. See Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz, \u201cNiepodleg\u0142o\u015b\u0107 Polski a materialistyczne pojmowanie dziej\u00f3w,\u201d (1905) in Wyb\u00f3r pism politycznych (Krak\u00f3w: Nak\u0142adem Drukarni Narodowej, 1907), 248.<\/p>\n

23. Karl Kautsky, \u201cFinis Poloniae?\u201d Die Neue Zeit 2, no. 42 (1896): 484-491, no. 43 (1896): 513-525. This influential article was published in Polish by the PPS and became one of its most popular pro-independence pamphlets; see Karol Kautsky, Niepodleg\u0142o\u015b\u0107 polski (Londyn: W drukarni Zwi\u0105zku Zagr. Socyalist\u00f3w Polskich, 1897).<\/p>\n

24. As Lenin emphasized throughout the article, his argument that the party’s program \u201cin no way precludes the adoption by the Polish proletariat of the slogan of a free and independent Polish republic, even though the probability of its becoming a reality before socialism is introduced is infinitesimal\u201d did not mean he was either advocating or even necessarily supporting Polish independence. See Lenin, Collected Works 6: 458. This non-committal attitude constituted a break from European and Russian socialists\u2019 traditionally explicit advocacy of Polish independence \u2013 the first Land and Freedom organization, for instance, had actively promoted the 1863 Polish secessionist uprising. \u201cWhy does the government not want to give up Poland?\u201d it wrote, \u201cBecause it realizes that when Poland is free Russia will be free, and that means that the government itself will be ruined.\u201d See Franco Venturi, Roots of Revolution: A History of the Populist and Socialist Movements in Nineteenth Century Russia (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1960), 272. On Marx and Engels\u2019 support for Polish independence, see Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, The Russian Menace to Europe: a Collection of Articles, Speeches, Letters, and News Dispatches, ed. Paul Blackstock, Bert Hoselitz (Glencoe: Free Press, 1952).<\/p>\n

25. \u201c\u041f\u0440\u043e\u0433\u0440\u0430\u043c\u043c\u0430 \u0417\u0435\u043c\u043b\u0438 \u0438 \u0432\u043e\u043b\u0438,\u201d (1878) in \u0412. \u041d. \u0413\u0438\u043d\u0435\u0432, \u041a. \u0413. \u041b\u044f\u0448\u0435\u043d\u043a\u043e, ed., \u0418\u0437 \u0438\u0441\u0442\u043e\u0440\u0438\u0438 \u201c\u0417\u0435\u043c\u043b\u0438 \u0438 \u0432\u043e\u043b\u0438\u201d \u0438 \u201c\u041d\u0430\u0440\u043e\u0434\u043d\u043e\u0439 \u0432\u043e\u043b\u0438\u201d: \u0441\u043f\u043e\u0440\u044b \u043e \u0442\u0430\u043a\u0442\u0438\u043a\u0435: \u0441\u0431\u043e\u0440\u043d\u0438\u043a \u0434\u043e\u043a\u0443\u043c\u0435\u043d\u0442\u043e\u0432 (\u041c\u043e\u0441\u043a\u0432\u0430: \u0410\u043b\u044c\u044f\u043d\u0441-\u0410\u0440\u0445\u0435\u043e, 2012), 35.<\/p>\n

26. For the full resolutions in English, French, and German, see Histoire de la IIe Internationale (Gen\u00e8ve: Minkoff Reprint, 1980), 10: 223, 455, 478.<\/p>\n

27. Bundists have often been unfairly portrayed as opponents of national self-determination. In reality, their argument was generally that territorial solutions to the national question had to be supplemented by \u201cspecial institutions to ensure freedom of cultural development\u201d for every people, given that not all nationalities coincided with a specific territory. See, for instance, the intervention of Vladimir Medem (\u201cGoldblatt\u201d) in Pearce, 1903, Second Ordinary Congress, 229-230.<\/p>\n

28. Elehard Esse [Kelles-Krauz], \u201cSocialistes Polonais et Russes,\u201d L\u2019Humanit\u00e9 nouvelle: revue internationale: sciences, lettres et arts 1, no. 4 (1899): 434-450.<\/p>\n

29. Ibid., 444.<\/p>\n

30. Kelles-Krauz, Wyb\u00f3r pism, 252, 256-263.<\/p>\n

31. Michal Lu\u015bnia [Kelles-Krauz], \u201cKlasowo\u015b\u0107 naszego programu,\u201d (1894) in Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz, Nar\u00f3d i historia: wyb\u00f3r pism, Stanis\u0142aw Ciesielski, ed., (Warszawa: Pa\u0144stwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1989), 51.<\/p>\n

32. \u201cResults and Prospects,\u201d (1906) in Leon Trotsky, The Permanent Revolution (London: New Park Publications, 1962).<\/p>\n

33. Michal Lu\u015bnia [Kelles-Krauz], \u201cNasz kryzys,\u201d Przed\u015bwit 2 (1902): 55.<\/p>\n

34. This was not an isolated argument. As early as 1896 Kelles-Krauz wrote: \u201cWho says that the Polish republic that we will win will necessarily be a bourgeois state?\u2026 The day we kick out the Tsarist invasion\u2014the main obstacle to [the socialist program’s] implementation\u2014we will do everything possible at the same time, it goes without saying, to socialize the means of production and democratize the political order. Up to what point will we succeed? That depends on the circumstances and the moment in which the general march of events in Europe and Russia launches us into the struggle…. The abolition of foreign oppression in our country can become the point of departure for the abolition of the capitalist system itself.\u201d See \u201cLes Motifs de Notre Programme,\u201d Bulletin Officiel du Parti Socialiste Polonais 9 (1896): 3, 5. His last major article before his death in June 1905 reiterated this possibility. See Kelles-Krauz, \u201cNiepodleg\u0142o\u015b\u0107 Polski,\u201d 265.<\/p>\n

35. \u201cNasze zadanie,\u201d Pobudka 10 (1891):1.<\/p>\n

36. \u0421\u0435\u0440\u0433\u0435\u044f \u041f-\u043e\u0432\u0438\u0447\u0430, \u201c\u041f\u0440\u044f\u043c\u043e \u043a \u0446\u0435\u043b\u0438\u201d (1906) in \u0414\u043c\u0438\u0442\u0440\u0438\u0439 \u0411\u043e\u0440\u0438\u0441\u043e\u0432\u0438\u0447 \u041f\u0430\u0432\u043b\u043e\u0432, ed., \u0421\u043e\u044e\u0437 \u044d\u0441\u0435\u0440\u043e\u0432-\u043c\u0430\u043a\u0441\u0438\u043c\u0430\u043b\u0438\u0441\u0442\u043e\u0432: \u0434\u043e\u043a\u0443\u043c\u0435\u043d\u0442\u044b, \u043f\u0443\u0431\u043b\u0438\u0446\u0438\u0441\u0442\u0438\u043a\u0430, 1906-1924 (\u041c\u043e\u0441\u043a\u0432\u0430: \u0420\u041e\u0421\u0421\u041f\u042d\u041d, 2002), 11-14.<\/p>\n

37. \u0414\u043c\u0438\u0442\u0440\u0438\u0439 \u0411\u043e\u0440\u0438\u0441\u043e\u0432\u0438\u0447 \u041f\u0430\u0432\u043b\u043e\u0432, \u042d\u0441\u0435\u0440\u044b-\u043c\u0430\u043a\u0441\u0438\u043c\u0430\u043b\u0438\u0441\u0442\u044b \u0432 \u043f\u0435\u0440\u0432\u043e\u0439 \u0440\u043e\u0441\u0441\u0438\u0439\u0441\u043a\u043e\u0439 \u0440\u0435\u0432\u043e\u043b\u044e\u0446\u0438\u0438 (\u041c\u043e\u0441\u043a\u0432\u0430: \u0412\u0441\u0435\u0441\u043e\u044e\u0437\u043d\u043e\u0433\u043e \u0437\u0430\u043e\u0447\u043d\u043e\u0433\u043e \u043f\u043e\u043b\u0438\u0442\u0435\u0445\u043d\u0438\u0447\u0435\u0441\u043a\u043e\u0433\u043e \u0438\u043d\u0441\u0442\u0438\u0442\u0443\u0442\u0430, 1989), 118.
\n38. Reflecting in 1927 on the vanguard role of the borderlands in the first Russian revolution, Nikolai Popov noted that it \u201cwould have seemed monstrous\u201d in 1905 to imagine that Russia would experience ten years of workers\u2019 rule while Latvia and Poland would still be under bourgeois dictatorship. See \u041f\u043e\u043f\u043e\u0432, \u041d.\u041d., \u041e\u0447\u0435\u0440\u043a \u0438\u0441\u0442\u043e\u0440\u0438\u0438 \u041a\u043e\u043c\u043c\u0443\u043d\u0438\u0441\u0442\u0438\u0447\u0435\u0441\u043a\u043e\u0439 \u041f\u0430\u0440\u0442\u0438\u0438 (\u0411\u043e\u043b\u044c\u0448\u0435\u0432\u0438\u043a\u043e\u0432) \u0423\u043a\u0440\u0430\u0438\u043d\u044b (\u041a\u0438\u0435\u0432: \u041f\u0440\u043e\u043b\u0435\u0442\u0430\u0440\u0438\u0439, 1929), 49.<\/p>\n

39. After the decline of the Hummet in 1909-1911, the Bolsheviks lost this base, leading the \u201cBaku Commune\u201d of 1917-1918 to have little support beyond Russians and Armenians. On the Hummet, see \u0410\u0433\u0430\u043a\u0438\u0448\u0438\u0435\u0432, \u201c\u0413\u0443\u043c\u043c\u0435\u0442.\u201d<\/p>\n

40. See Hilja P\u00e4rssinen, \u201c\u00dcber das Stimmrecht der finnischen Frau,\u201d Die Gleichheit, October 3, 1906, 136-137. The Finnish struggle for universal suffrage\u2014led by the socialists and opposed until the last minute by the mainstream women’s organizations (which supported property qualifications for suffrage)\u2014has been systematically marginalized by a historiographic focus on liberal feminism. On the fight for suffrage in Finland and the first women in parliament, see Eeva Ahtisaari et al., Yksi kamari, kaksi sukupuolta. Suomen eduskunnan ensimm\u00e4iset naiset (Helsinki: Eduskunnan Kirjasto, 1997).<\/p>\n

41. W\u0142adys\u0142aw Lech Karwacki, \u0141\u00f3d\u017a w latach rewolucji: 1905-1907 (\u0141\u00f3d\u017a: Wydawnictwo \u0141\u00f3dzkie, 1975).<\/p>\n

42. On Latvia, see A. B\u012brons, A. Pu\u013c\u0137is, ed., Latvijas str\u0101dnieki un zemnieki 1905.-1907. g. revol\u016bcij\u0101 (R\u012bga: Zin\u0101tne, 1986); on Georgia, \u0413\u0440\u0438\u0433\u043e\u0440\u0438\u0439 \u0423\u0440\u0430\u0442\u0430\u0434\u0437\u0435, \u0412\u043e\u0441\u043f\u043e\u043c\u0438\u043d\u0430\u043d\u0438\u044f \u0433\u0440\u0443\u0437\u0438\u043d\u0441\u043a\u043e\u0433\u043e \u0441\u043e\u0446\u0438\u0430\u043b-\u0434\u0435\u043c\u043e\u043a\u0440\u0430\u0442\u0430 (Stanford: Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace, 1968).<\/p>\n

43. On the Spilka, see \u0420\u0438\u0448, \u201c\u0421\u043f\u0456\u043b\u043a\u0438.\u201d<\/p>\n

44. Leon Trotsky, 1905 (New York: Random House, 1971), 296.<\/p>\n

45. J\u0101nis Akuraters, Dienu atsp\u012bdumi: Revol\u016bcijas atminu gr\u0101mata (1905-1908), Ilgonis B\u0113rsons, ed.(R\u012bga: Zvaigzne, 1996), 17.<\/p>\n

46. See \u0427\u0435\u0442\u0432\u0435\u0440\u0442\u044b (\u043e\u0431\u044a\u0435\u0434\u0438\u043d\u0438\u0442\u0435\u043b\u044c\u043d\u044b\u0439) \u0441\u044a\u0435\u0437\u0434 \u0420\u0421\u0414\u0420\u041f. \u0410\u043f\u0440\u0435\u043b\u044c (\u0430\u043f\u0440\u0435\u043b\u044c-\u043c\u0430\u0439) 1906 \u0433\u043e\u0434\u0430: \u041f\u0440\u043e\u0442\u043e\u043a\u043e\u043b\u044b (\u041c\u043e\u0441\u043a\u0432\u0430: \u0413\u043e\u0441\u0443\u0434\u0430\u0440\u0441\u0442\u0432\u0435\u043d\u043d\u043e\u0435 \u0438\u0437\u0434\u0430\u0442\u0435\u043b\u044c\u0441\u0442\u0432\u043e \u043f\u043e\u043b\u0438\u0442\u0438\u0447\u0435\u0441\u043a\u043e\u0439 \u043b\u0438\u0442\u0435\u0440\u0430\u0442\u0443\u0440\u044b, 1959), 532-533.<\/p>\n

47. \u041f\u044f\u0442\u044b\u0439 \u0441\u044a\u0435\u0437\u0434 \u0420\u0421\u0414\u0420\u041f. \u041c\u0430\u0439-\u0438\u044e\u043d\u044c 1907 \u0433.: \u041f\u0440\u043e\u0442\u043e\u043a\u043e\u043b\u044b. (\u041c\u043e\u0441\u043a\u0432\u0430: \u041f\u0430\u0440\u0442\u0438\u0437\u0434\u0430\u0442, 1935), 659.<\/p>\n

48. Ibid., 25-26, 57.<\/p>\n

49. See Karl Kautsky, \u201cDie Nationalit\u00e4tenfrage in Russland,\u201d Leipziger Volkszeitung 98 (April 29, 1905): 17.<\/p>\n

50. Kautsky’s article was included in \u0412\u043b\u0430\u0434\u0438\u043c\u0438\u0440 \u041c\u0435\u0434\u0435\u043c, \u0421\u043e\u0446\u0438\u0430\u043b-\u0434\u0435\u043c\u043e\u043a\u0440\u0430\u0442\u0438\u044f \u0438 \u043d\u0430\u0446\u0438\u043e\u043d\u0430\u043b\u044c\u043d\u044b\u0439 \u0432\u043e\u043f\u0440\u043e\u0441 (\u0421\u0430\u043d\u043a\u0442-\u041f\u0435\u0442\u0435\u0440\u0431\u0443\u0440\u0433: \u0422\u0440\u0438\u0431\u0443\u043d\u0430, 1906).<\/p>\n

51. On the Bund in this period, see Hersch Mendel, Erinnerungen eines j\u00fcdischen revolution\u00e4rs (Berlin: Rotbuch Verlag, 1979); on the Latvian SDs, Ilga Apine, Jaunie revolucion\u0101rie uzpl\u016bdi Latvij\u0101, 1910-1914 (R\u012bga: Latvijas Valsts izdevniec\u012bba, 1964); on the PPS-Left, Janina Kasprzakowa, Ideologia i polityka PPS-Lewicy w latach 1907-1914 (Warszawa: Ksi\u0105\u017cka i Wiedza, 1965).<\/p>\n

52. See \u0412.\u0412. \u0428\u0435\u043b\u043e\u0445\u0430\u0435\u0432, ed., et al., \u041a\u043e\u043d\u0444\u0435\u0440\u0435\u043d\u0446\u0438\u0438 \u0420\u0421\u0414\u0420\u041f 1912 \u0433\u043e\u0434\u0430: \u0434\u043e\u043a\u0443\u043c\u0435\u043d\u0442\u044b \u0438 \u043c\u0430\u0442\u0435\u0440\u0438\u0430\u043b\u044b (\u041c\u043e\u0441\u043a\u0432\u0430: \u0420\u041e\u0421\u0421\u041f\u042d\u041d, 2008).<\/p>\n

53. \u201c\u041f\u043e \u0432\u043e\u043f\u0440\u043e\u0441\u0443 \u043e \u043a\u0443\u043b\u044c\u0442\u0443\u0440\u043d\u043e-\u043d\u0430\u0446\u0438\u043e\u043d\u0430\u043b\u044c\u043d\u043e\u0439 \u0430\u0432\u0442\u043e\u043d\u043e\u043c\u0438\u0438,\u201d (1912) in Ibid., 947.<\/p>\n

54. \u201cMarxism and the National Question,\u201d (1913) in J.V. Stalin, Works (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1954) 2: 300-381.<\/p>\n

55. \u201cCritical Remarks on the National Question,\u201d (1913) in Lenin, Collected Works 20: 17-51; \u201cThe Right of Nations to Self-Determination,\u201d (1914) in Lenin, Collected Works 20: 393-454.<\/p>\n

56. It should be noted that Lenin’s vision of regional autonomy at this time was noticeably narrow. He argued that, \u201call the major and important economic and political questions of capitalist society must be dealt with exclusively by the central parliament of the whole country concerned, not by the autonomous Diets of the individual regions.\u201d See Lenin, Collected Works 20: 46. In contrast, borderland SDs tended to demand a much broader form of autonomy, which would include full legislative and administrative sovereignty. See, for example, \u201cProgram PPS-Lewicy,\u201d (1908) in Kasprzakowa, Ideologia i polityka PPS-Lewicy, 254.<\/p>\n

57. For instance, Stepan Shaumian, the Bolsheviks\u2019 main leader in Baku, objected to Lenin’s push to drop the party plank accepting a \u201cstate language,\u201d as well as Lenin’s newfound support for regional autonomy. See \u201c\u041f\u0438\u0441\u044c\u043c\u043e \u0412.\u0418. \u041b\u0435\u043d\u0438\u043d\u0443 30 \u043c\u0430\u044f 1914 \u0433.,\u201d in \u0421. \u0413. \u0428\u0430\u0443\u043c\u044f\u043d, \u0418\u0437\u0431\u0440\u0430\u043d\u043d\u044b\u0435 \u043f\u0440\u043e\u0438\u0437\u0432\u0435\u0434\u0435\u043d\u0438\u044f (\u041c\u043e\u0441\u043a\u0432\u0430: \u0418\u0437\u0434\u0430\u0442\u0435\u043b\u044c\u0441\u0442\u0432\u043e \u043f\u043e\u043b\u0438\u0442\u0438\u0447\u0435\u0441\u043a\u043e\u0439 \u043b\u0438\u0442\u0435\u0440\u0430\u0442\u0443\u0440\u044b, 1978) 1: 461-463.<\/p>\n

58. Stalin, Works 2: 341.<\/p>\n

59. Lenin, Collected Works 20: 28.<\/p>\n

60. Ibid., 31.<\/p>\n

61. Ibid., 31.<\/p>\n

62. Lenin, Collected Works 20: 21-22; Stalin, Works 2: 374-375.<\/p>\n

63. \u0418\u043d\u0441\u0442\u0438\u0442\u0443\u0442 \u0438\u0441\u0442\u043e\u0440\u0438\u0438 \u043f\u0430\u0440\u0442\u0438\u0438 \u043f\u0440\u0438 \u0426\u041a \u041a\u041f \u041b\u0430\u0442\u0432\u0438\u0438. \u0444\u0438\u043b\u0438\u0430\u043b \u0418\u043d\u0441\u0442\u0438\u0442\u0443\u0442\u0430 \u043c\u0430\u0440\u043a\u0441\u0438\u0437\u043c\u0430-\u043b\u0435\u043d\u0438\u043d\u0438\u0437\u043c\u0430 \u043f\u0440\u0438 \u0426\u041a \u041a\u041f\u0421\u0421, \u041e\u0447\u0435\u0440\u043a\u0438 \u0438\u0441\u0442\u043e\u0440\u0438\u0438 \u041a\u043e\u043c\u043c\u0443\u043d\u0438\u0441\u0442\u0438\u0447\u0435\u0441\u043a\u043e\u0439 \u043f\u0430\u0440\u0442\u0438\u0438 \u041b\u0430\u0442\u0432\u0438\u0438 (R\u012bga: \u041b\u0430\u0442\u0433\u043e\u0441\u0438\u0437\u0434\u0430\u0442\u044c, 1962) 1: 262-63.<\/p>\n

64. For example, see \u041a. \u0417\u0430\u043b\u0435\u0432\u0441\u043a\u0438\u0439 [Stanis\u0142aw Trusiewicz], \u201c\u041d\u0430\u0446\u0438\u043e\u043d\u0430\u043b\u044c\u043d\u044b\u0439 \u0432\u043e\u043f\u0440\u043e\u0441 \u0432 \u0420\u043e\u0441\u0441\u0438\u0438,\u201d \u041d\u0430\u0448\u0430 \u0417\u0430\u0440\u044f 5 (1914): 15-23, 6 (1914): 24-29.<\/p>\n

65. Lenin, Collected Works 20: 533.<\/p>\n

66. Ibid., 430.<\/p>\n

67. Lenin, Collected Works 20: 46.<\/p>\n

68. Lenin’s definition of self-determination as meaning only the right to secede broke from the position of most national SDs, as well as his closest Bolshevik allies on the national question (Stalin and Shaumian). This slogan was commonly assumed to include the right to autonomy and federation, in addition to secession. For example, Stalin wrote: \u201cThe right of self-determination means that a nation may arrange its life in the way it wishes. It has the right to arrange its life on the basis of autonomy. It has the right to enter into federal relations with other nations. It has the right to complete secession.\u201d See Stalin, Works 2: 321. For Shaumian’s similar definition and Lenin’s objections, see \u201cA Letter to S.G. Shahumyan,\u201d (1913) in Lenin, Collected Works 19: 500-501.<\/p>\n

69. \u041b. \u0420\u0438\u0431\u0430\u043b\u043a\u0430 [Lev Yurkevich], \u201c\u0420\u0443\u0441\u0441\u043a\u0438\u0435 \u0441\u043e\u0446\u0438\u0430\u043b-\u0434\u0435\u043c\u043e\u043a\u0440\u0430\u0442\u044c\u0456 \u0438 \u043d\u0430\u0446\u0438\u043e\u043d\u0430\u043b\u044c\u043d\u044c\u0457\u0439 \u0432\u043e\u043f\u0440\u043e\u0441,\u201d (\u0416\u0435\u043d\u0435\u0432\u0430, 1917) cited in \u0406\u0432\u0430\u043d \u041c\u0430\u0439\u0441\u0442\u0440\u0435\u043d\u043a\u043e, \u201c\u041b\u0435\u043d\u0456\u043d \u0456 \u043d\u0430\u0446\u0456\u043e\u043d\u0430\u043b\u044c\u043d\u0435 \u043f\u0438\u0442\u0430\u043d\u043d\u044f\u201d \u0421\u0443\u0447\u0430\u0441\u043d\u0456\u0441\u0442\u044c 6 (1975): 62.<\/p>\n

70. Collected Works, 20: 430.<\/p>\n

71. On the strength and radicalism of the PPS-Left in this period see Kasprzakowa, Ideologia i polityka PPS-Lewicy, 187-246.<\/p>\n

72. Luxemburg’s current reputation as the epitome of democratic \u201copen\u201d Marxism is impossible to reconcile with her role in the Polish revolutionary movement and the actual practices of her party. The split of the SDKPiL in 1911 was the culmination of the opposition by the majority of party members to the top-down organizational practices and obsessive campaign against the PPS imposed by the Luxemburg-Jogiches leadership. On the SDKPiL in this period, and its relations with the Russian SDs, see Walentyna Najdus, SDKPiL a SDPRR 1908\u20131918, (Wroc\u0142aw: Zak\u0142ad Narodowy im. Ossoli\u0144skich, 1980).<\/p>\n

73. This dynamic was also evident in Ukraine. Georgy Pyatakov joined the Bolsheviks in Kiev in this period, and would go on\u2014with Radek and his Polish comrades\u2014to lead the Luxemburgist wing of the party after 1914. For Lenin’s post-1914 polemics against Radek and Pyatakov, see \u201cThe Discussion on Self-Determination Summed Up\u201d (1916) in Lenin, Collected Works 22: 320-360 and \u201cA Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism\u201d (1916) in Lenin, Collected Works 23: 28-76. These writings marked a further break from Lenin’s previous positions on the national question: he now contended that capitalism in the epoch of imperialism increased national antagonisms and argued that national movements of oppressed peoples were key components of the worldwide struggle for socialism.<\/p>\n

74. On the eve of the February revolution, among all the non-Russian peoples of the empire, the Bolsheviks only had substantial popular support among the Latvians. It would appear that the major reason for the collapse of the Latvian soviet republic in 1919 was the Communists\u2019 refusal to distribute land to the landless and their doctrinaire campaign to nationalize agriculture, which turned the mass of farmers against the revolutionary government. See J\u0101nis \u0160ili\u0146\u0161, Padomju Latvija 1918-1919 (R\u012bga: V\u0113stures izp\u0113tes un populariz\u0113\u0161anas bied, 2013).<\/p>\n

75. Ronald Grigor Suny, The Making of the Georgian Nation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988).<\/p>\n

76. Jarmo Peltola, Sami Suodenjoki, K\u00f6yh\u00e4 Suomen kansa katkoo kahleitansa: Luokka, liike ja yhteiskunta 1880-1918: Vasemmistolainen ty\u00f6v\u00e4enliike Pirkanmaalla I (Tampere: Tampere University Press, 2007).<\/p>\n

77. On Azerbaijan, see \u0414\u0436\u0430\u043c\u0438\u043b\u044c \u0413\u0430\u0441\u0430\u043d\u043b\u044b, \u0420\u0443\u0441\u0441\u043a\u0430\u044f \u0440\u0435\u0432\u043e\u043b\u044e\u0446\u0438\u044f \u0438 \u0410\u0437\u0435\u0440\u0431\u0430\u0439\u0434\u0436\u0430\u043d. \u0422\u0440\u0443\u0434\u043d\u044b\u0439 \u043f\u0443\u0442\u044c \u043a \u043d\u0435\u0437\u0430\u0432\u0438\u0441\u0438\u043c\u043e\u0441\u0442\u0438, 1917-1920 (\u041c\u043e\u0441\u043a\u0432\u0430: \u0424\u043b\u0438\u043d\u0442\u0430, 2011); on Ukraine, from the perspective of Ukrainian socialists, see \u041e.\u042e. \u0412\u0438\u0441\u043e\u0446\u044c\u043a\u0438\u0439, \u0423\u043a\u0440\u0430\u0457\u043d\u0441\u044c\u043a\u0456 \u0441\u043e\u0446\u0456\u0430\u043b-\u0434\u0435\u043c\u043e\u043a\u0440\u0430\u0442\u0438 \u0442\u0430 \u0435\u0441\u0435\u0440\u0438: \u0434\u043e\u0441\u0432\u0456\u0434 \u043f\u0435\u0440\u0435\u043c\u043e\u0433 \u0456 \u043f\u043e\u0440\u0430\u0437\u043e\u043a (\u041a\u0438\u0457\u0432: \u041e\u0441\u043d\u043e\u0432\u043d\u0456 \u0446\u0456\u043d\u043d\u043e\u0441\u0442\u0456, 2004) and \u0422\u0435\u0442\u044f\u043d\u0430 \u0410\u043d\u0430\u0442\u043e\u043b\u0456\u0457\u0432\u043d\u0430 \u0411\u0435\u0432\u0437, \u041f\u0430\u0440\u0442\u0456\u044f \u043d\u0430\u0446\u0456\u043e\u043d\u0430\u043b\u044c\u043d\u0438\u0445 \u0456\u043d\u0442\u0435\u0440\u0435\u0441\u0456\u0432 \u0456 \u0441\u043e\u0446\u0456\u0430\u043b\u044c\u043d\u0438\u0445 \u043f\u0435\u0440\u0441\u043f\u0435\u043a\u0442\u0438\u0432 (\u041f\u043e\u043b\u0456\u0442\u0438\u0447\u043d\u0430 \u0456\u0441\u0442\u043e\u0440\u0456\u044f \u0423\u041f\u0421\u0420) (\u041a\u0438\u0457\u0432: \u0406\u043d\u0441\u0442\u0438\u0442\u0443\u0442 \u043f\u043e\u043b\u0456\u0442\u0438\u0447\u043d\u0438\u0445 \u0456 \u0435\u0442\u043d\u043e\u043d\u0430\u0446\u0456\u043e\u043d\u0430\u043b\u044c\u043d\u0438\u0445 \u0434\u043e\u0441\u043b\u0456\u0434\u0436\u0435\u043d\u044c \u0456\u043c. \u0406. \u0424. \u041a\u0443\u0440\u0430\u0441\u0430, 2008).<\/p>\n

78. Evan Mawdsley, The Russian Civil War (Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1987).<\/p>\n

79. On the Polish Communists in this period, see Konrad Zieli\u0144ski, O Polsk\u0105 Republik\u0119 Rad. Dzia\u0142alno\u015b\u0107 polskich komunist\u00f3w w Rosji Radzieckiej 1918-1922 (Lublin: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Sk\u0142odowskiej, 2013).<\/p>\n

80. See Marx, The Russian Menace; Trotsky, The Permanent Revolution, 241-242; \u201cThe Soviet-Polish War,\u201d (1920) Alan Adler, ed., Theses, Resolutions and Manifestos of the First Four Congresses of the Third International (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1980), 66. Similar arguments were also made concerning other peoples living on both sides of the Czarist border, notably Ukrainians and Azeris. On the importance of the Caucasus and Central Asia for the spread of revolution to non-European peoples, see John Riddell, ed., To See the Dawn: Baku, 1920 \u2013 First Congress of the Peoples of the East (New York: Pathfinder, 1993). Borderland Marxists and revolutionary nationalists intervened in this conference to denounce the chauvinist policies of soviet authorities in the non-European regions of Russia, a dynamic that went furthest in Central Asia.<\/p>\n

81. Karl Kautsky, \u201cRevolutionary Questions,\u201d (1904) in Richard Day, Daniel Gaido, ed., Witnesses to Permanent Revolution: The Documentary Record (Leiden: Brill, 2009), 218.
\n82. The impact of the Polish defeat on the termination of the post-war revolutionary wave was acknowledged by the 1921 Third Congress; see \u201cTheses of the Third World Congress on the International Situation and the Tasks of the Comintern,\u201d (1921) Adler, Theses, Resolutions and Manifestos, 184.<\/p>\n

83. On the evolution of Bolsheviks\u2019 post-1917 national approach\u2014as well as the party’s internal theoretical and practical tensions on this questionVsee Jeremy Smith, The Bolsheviks and the National Question, 1917-23 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999).<\/p>\n

84. On the Soviet Union’s \u201caffirmative action\u201d policies in this period, see Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939 (London: Cornell University Press, 2001).<\/p>\n

85. On Sultan Galiev, see Alexandre Bennigsen, Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay, Sultan Galiev, Le p\u00e8re de la r\u00e9volution tiers-mondiste (Paris: Fayard, 1986); on the Left Opposition and the national question, see Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire, 230-238 and the documentary record in Leon Trotsky, The Challenge of the Left Opposition (1923-25) (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1975).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A View from the Borderlands A view from the Czarist empire’s borderlands obliges us to rethink many long-held assumptions about the revolutions of 1905 and 1917, as well as the development of Marxist approaches to national liberation, peasant struggle, permanent revolution, and the emancipation of women. The following paper analyzes the socialist debates on the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[27,40],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=442"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1674,"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/442\/revisions\/1674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/global-labour.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}