Marxism and National Question

Stalin’s work on theories and political principles of the Bolshevik Party on the ethnic-national issues; it is also an important work within the treasury of Marxist theory on nationality issue. He finished his writing during the meeting of the Central Committee and Party work of the Russian Social-Democratic Party in Lenin’s apartment in Vienna from the end of 1912 to the beginning of 1913. It was first published with the title of “National Question and Social-Democratic Party” in the Prosveshchenie (Enlightenment) magazine, issue No. 3-5, 1913.

In 1914, with the title of “National Question and Marxism”, a separate edition was published in Petersburg. After the victory of the October Revolution, it was re-published with the title “Marxism and National Question”. The Chinese translation is included in Vol. 2 of the Complete Works of Stalin.

In 1912, the Russian revolutionary movement had developed towards a new climax. In this context, it was an urgent task for the proletarian party to unite the workers’ struggles of all nationalities. At the same time, the thought of “national cultural autonomy” which was promoted in Western Europe has impacted the revolutionary struggle of the Russian proletariat and brought great confusion to the work of the Party. Under such circumstances, Stalin met with Lenin twice, and wrote National Question and Social-Democratic Party on the basis of fully understanding Lenin’s views. In this book, Stalin criticized nationalism and opportunistic views of some social democrats on national issues, elaborated Marxist theory of nationality, and established the basic principles of solution to national issues by the Russian Bolshevik Party.

The whole book is divided into eight parts, consisting of a preface and seven chapters.

In the preface, Stalin introduced the situation of Russian Nationalism after 1905, and pointed out that “there must be a serious and comprehensive discussion on national question” in order to “eliminate the fog of nationalism”; in this book, Stalin gave a Marxist definition of “nation”: “A nation is a stable community formed in history with a common language, a common region, a common economic life and a common psychological quality expressed in common culture.” He stressed that as long as one of these characteristics is missing, a nation will not be a nation; as for the national movement, Stalin pointed out that generally the bourgeoisie has played the leading role in promoting the national movement. The content of the national movement depends on the various demands put forward by this movement, such as peasant’s land issue, equality of languages and civil rights, migration, the establishmentand running of national schools and freedom of religious belief for the minority nationality. The strength of the national movement is determined by the degree to which the wide strata of the nation, the proletariat and peasantry, participate in it. However, the participation of the proletariat does not change the bourgeois nature of the movement, and the conscious proletariat should fight under the banner of the bourgeoisie “nationalism”. Stalin pointed out that national questions can only be analyzed and resolved when they are connected with the historical conditions surrounding the question. The fate of Russia, that is to say, the fate of the “liberation” of all ethnic groups, is connected with the resolving of the land problem, that is, the elimination of the remnants of serfdom, that is, the democratization of the country. National issues should be subordinated to the resolving of peasant issue and political emancipation of the whole people including the working class. Stalin analyzed the fallacy of the so-called “national cultural autonomy” advocated by Powell and others and elaborated on the essential difference between “national cultural autonomy” and “national self-determination right”.

He pointed out that “national cultural autonomy” was in conflict with the whole process of class struggle, and was bound to embark on the road of nationalism, split workers from each other according to their nationalities, and aggravate the disputes among them. Stalin pointed out that this was nationalism in politics and separatism in organization. The result is “the collapse of the workers’ movement and the frustration of the will of the Social-Democratic Party”. Stalin pointed out that “national cultural autonomy” policy was useless, absurd and reactionary delusion to resolve the national question in the Caucasus region.

This work of Stalin also revealed the reason behind cancellation of the Party’s representative conference and pointed out that it was obviously in conflict with the “original intention” of the Party programme and it violates it. In the end part of the work, Stalin put forward the way to solve the national question based on the current situation in Russia; he advocated the complete democratization of the state would be the basis and condition to solve the national question; which advocated the right to self-determination, regional autonomy, the implementation of national equality in all aspects (language, school, etc.) and the principle of internationalist solidarity of workers should be the necessary conditions for solving national problems.

The work Marxism and National Question examined and analyzed national questions from the perspectives of dialectical materialism and historical materialism, which provides a theoretical basis for the formulation of national program of Marxism. After the publication of this short book, Lenin spoke highly of it, calling it “the first work in Marxist theoretical literature to elaborate the principles of the Russian Party’s national program”, and commented that it is “the theory and program declaration of Bolshevism on the national question.”