Democracy and Class Struggle republishes this letter of Lenin's to Workers and Peasants of Ukraine has it still resonates with advice for today in dealing with National Question
Comrades, four months
ago, towards the end of August 1919, I had occasion to address a letter to the
workers and peasants in connection with the victory over Kolchak.
I am now having this
letter reprinted in full for the workers and peasants of the Ukraine in
connection with the victories over Denikin.
Red troops have taken
Kiev, Poltava and Kharkov and are advancing victoriously on Rostov. The Ukraine
is seething with revolt against Denikin. All forces must he rallied for the
final rout of Denikin’s army, which has been trying to restore the power of the
landowners and capitalists. We must destroy Denikin to safeguard ourselves
against even the slightest possibility of a new incursion.
The workers and
peasants of the Ukraine should familiarise themselves with the lessons which
all Russian workers and peasants have drawn from the conquest of Siberia by
Kolchak and her liberation by Red troops after many months of landowner and
capitalist tyranny.
Denikin’s rule in the
Ukraine has been as severe an ordeal as Kolchak’s rule was in Siberia. There
can be no doubt that the lessons of this severe ordeal will give the Ukrainian
workers and peasants—as they did the workers and peasants of the Urals and
Siberia—a clearer understanding of the tasks of Soviet power and induce them to
defend it more staunchly.
In Great Russia the
system of landed estates has been completely abolished. The same must be done
in the Ukraine, and the Soviet power of the Ukrainian workers and peasants must
effect the complete abolition of the landed estates and the complete liberation
of the Ukrainian workers and peasants from all oppression by the landowners,
and from the landowners themselves.
But apart from this
task, and a number of others which confronted and still confront both the Great-Russian
and the Ukrainian working masses, Soviet power in the Ukraine has its own
special tasks. One of these special tasks deserves the greatest attention at
the present moment.
It is the national question, or, in other words, the
question of whether the Ukraine is to be a separate and independent Ukrainian
Soviet Socialist Republic bound in alliance (federation) with the Russian
Socialist Federative Soviet Republic, or whether the Ukraine is to amalgamate
with Russia to form a single Soviet republic.
All Bolsheviks and all politically-conscious
workers and peasants must give careful thought to this question.
The independence of
the Ukraine has been recognised both by the All-Russia Central Executive
Committee of the R.S.F.S.R. (Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic) and
by the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). It is therefore self-evident and
generally recognised that only the Ukrainian workers and peasants themselves
can and will decide at their All-Ukraine Congress of Soviets whether the
Ukraine shall amalgamate with Russia, or whether she shall remain a separate
and independent republic, and, in the latter case, what federal ties shall be
established between that republic and Russia.
How should this
question be decided insofar as concerns the interests of the working people and
the promotion of their fight for the complete emancipation of labour from the
yoke of capital?
In the first place,
the interests of labour demand the fullest confidence and the closest alliance
among the working people of different countries and nations. The supporters of
the landowners and capitalists, of the bourgeoisie, strive to disunite the
workers, to intensify national discord and enmity, in order to weaken the
workers and strengthen the power of capital.
Capital is an
international force. To vanquish it, an international workers’ alliance, an
international workers’ brotherhood, is needed.
We are opposed to
national enmity and discord, to national exclusiveness. We are
internationalists.
We stand for the close union and the complete amalgamation
of the workers and peasants of all nations in a single world Soviet republic.
Secondly, the working
people must not forget that capitalism has divided nations into a small number
of oppressor, Great-Power (imperialist), sovereign and privileged nations and
an overwhelming majority of oppressed, dependent and semi-dependent,
non-sovereign nations.
The arch-criminal and arch-reactionary war of 1914-18 still
further accentuated this division and as a result aggravated rancour and
hatred. For centuries the indignation and distrust of the non-sovereign and
dependent nations towards the dominant and oppressor nations have been
accumulating, of nations such as the Ukrainian towards nations such as the Great-Russian.
We want a voluntary
union of nations—a union which precludes any coercion of one nation by
another—a union founded on complete confidence, on a clear recognition of
brotherly unity, on absolutely voluntary consent.
Such a union cannot be
effected at one stroke; we have to work towards it with the greatest patience
and circumspection, so as not to spoil matters and not to arouse distrust, and
so that the distrust inherited from centuries of landowner and capitalist
oppression, centuries of private property and the enmity caused by its
divisions and redivisions may have a chance to wear off.
We must, therefore,
strive persistently for the unity of nations and ruthlessly suppress everything
that tends to divide them, and in doing so we must be very cautious and
patient, and make concessions to the survivals of national distrust. We must be
adamant and uncompromising towards everything that affects the fundamental
interests of labour in its fight for emancipation from the yoke of capital. The
question of the demarcation of frontiers now, for the time being—for we are
striving towards the complete abolition of frontiers—is a minor one, it is not
fundamental or important. In this matter we can afford to wait, and must wait,
because the national distrust among the broad mass of peasants and small owners
is often extremely tenacious, and haste might only intensify it, in other
words, jeopardise the cause of complete and ultimate unity.
The experience of the
workers’ and peasants’ revolution in Russia, the revolution of October-November
1917, and of the two years of victorious struggle against the onslaught of
international and Russian capitalists, has made it crystal-clear that the
capitalists have succeeded for a time in playing upon the national distrust of
the Great Russians felt by Polish, Latvian, Estonian and Finnish peasants and
small owners, that they have succeeded for a time in sowing dissension between
them and us on the basis of this distrust. Experience has shown that this
distrust wears off and disappears only very slowly, and that the more caution
and patience displayed by the Great Russians, who have for so long been an
oppressor nation, the more certainly this distrust will pass. It is by
recognising the independence of the Polish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian and
Finnish states that we are slowly but steadily winning the confidence of the
labouring masses of the neighbouring small states, who were more backward and
more deceived and downtrodden by the capitalists. It is the surest way of
wresting them from the influence of “their” national capitalists, and leading
them to full confidence, to the future united international Soviet republic.
As long as the
Ukraine is not completely liberated from Denikin, her government, until the
All-Ukraine Congress of Soviets meets, is the All-Ukraine Revolutionary Committee.
Besides the Ukrainian Bolshevik Communists, there are Ukrainian Borotba
Communists working on this Revolutionary Committee as members of the
government. One of the things distinguishing the Borotbists from the Bolsheviks
is that they insist upon the unconditional independence of the Ukraine.
The
Bolsheviks will not make this a subject of difference and disunity,
they do not regard this as an obstacle to concerted proletarian
effort. There must be unity in the struggle against the yoke of capital and for
the dictatorship of the proletariat, and there should be no parting of the ways
among Communists on the question of national frontiers, or whether there should
be a federal or some other tie between the states. Among the Bolsheviks there
are advocates of complete independence for the Ukraine, advocates of a more or
less close federal tie, and advocates of the complete amalgamation of the
Ukraine with Russia.
There must be no
differences over these questions. They will be decided by the All-Ukraine Congress
of Soviets.
If a Great-Russian
Communist insists upon the amalgamation of the Ukraine with Russia, Ukrainians
might easily suspect him of advocating this policy not from the motive of
uniting the proletarians in the fight against capital, but because of the
prejudices of the old Great-Russian nationalism, of imperialism. Such mistrust
is natural, and to a certain degree inevitable and legitimate, because the
Great Russians, under the yoke of the landowners and capitalists, had for
centuries imbibed the shameful and disgusting prejudices of Great-Russian
chauvinism.
If a Ukrainian
Communist insists upon the unconditional state independence of the Ukraine, he
lays himself open to the suspicion that he is supporting this policy not
because of the temporary interests of the Ukrainian workers and peasants in
their struggle against the yoke of capital, but on account of the
petty-bourgeois national prejudices of the small owner. Experience has provided
hundreds of instances of the petty-bourgeois “socialists” of various
countries—all the various Polish, Latvian and Lithuanian pseudo-socialists,
Georgian Mensheviks, Socialist-Revolutionaries and the like—assuming the guise
of supporters of the proletariat for the sole purpose of deceitfully promoting
a policy of compromise with “their” national bourgeoisie against the
revolutionary workers. We saw this in the case of Kerensky’s rule in Russia in
the February-October period of 1917, and we have seen it and are seeing it in
all other countries.
Mutual distrust between
the Great-Russian and Ukrainian Communists can, therefore, arise very easily.
How is this distrust to be combated? How is it to be overcome and mutual
confidence established?
The best way to
achieve this is by working together to uphold the dictatorship of the
proletariat and Soviet power in the fight against the landowners and
capitalists of all countries and against their attempts to restore their
domination. This common fight will clearly show in practice that whatever the
decision in regard to state independence or frontiers may be, there must be a
close military and economic alliance between the Great-Russian and Ukrainian
workers, for otherwise the capitalists of the “Entente,” in other words, the
alliance of the richest capitalist countries—Britain, France, America, Japan
and Italy—will crush and strangle us separately. Our fight against Kolchak and
Denikin, whom these capitalists supplied with money and arms, is a clear
illustration of this danger.
He who undermines the
unity and closest alliance between the Great-Russian and Ukrainian workers and
peasants is helping the Kolchaks, the Denikins, the capitalist bandits of all
countries.
Consequently, we
Great-Russian Communists must repress with the utmost severity the slightest
manifestation in our midst of Great-Russian nationalism, for such
manifestations, which are a betrayal of communism in general, cause the gravest
harm by dividing us from our Ukrainian comrades and thus playing into the hands
of Denikin and his regime.
Consequently, we
Great-Russian Communists must make concessions when there are differences with
the Ukrainian Bolshevik Communists and Borotbists and these differences concern
the state independence of the Ukraine, the forms of her alliance with Russia,
and the national question in general.
But all of us, Great-Russian Communists,
Ukrainian Communists, and Communists of any other nation, must be unyielding
and irreconcilable in the underlying and fundamental questions which are the
same for all nations, in questions of the proletarian struggle, of the
proletarian dictatorship; we must not tolerate compromise with the bourgeoisie
or any division of the forces which are protecting us against Denikin.
Denikin must be
vanquished and destroyed, and such incursions as his not allowed to recur. That
is to the fundamental interest of both the Great-Russian and the Ukrainian
workers and peasants. The fight will be a long and hard one, for the
capitalists of the whole world are helping Denikin and will help all other
Denikins.
In this long and hard
fight we Great-Russian and Ukrainian workers must maintain the closest
alliance, for separately we shall most definitely be unable to cope with the
task. Whatever the boundaries of the Ukraine and Russia may be, whatever may be
the forms of their mutual state relationships, that is not so important; that
is a matter in which concessions can and should be made, in which one thing, or
another, or a third may be tried—the cause of the workers and peasants, of the
victory over capitalism, will not perish because of that.
But if we fail to
maintain the closest alliance, an alliance against Denikin, an alliance against
the capitalists and kulaks of our countries and of all countries, the cause of
labour will most certainly perish for many years to come in the sense that the
capitalists will be able to crush and strangle both the Soviet
Ukraine and Soviet Russia.
And what the bourgeoisie of all
countries, and all manner of petty-bourgeois parties— i.e., “compromising”
parties which permit alliance with the bourgeoisie against the workers—try most
of all to accomplish is to disunite the workers of different nationalities, to
evoke distrust, and to disrupt a close international alliance and international
brotherhood of the workers. Whenever the bourgeoisie succeeds in this the cause
of the workers is lost.
The Communists of Russia and the Ukraine must therefore
by patient, persistent, stubborn and concerted effort foil the nationalist
machinations of the bourgeoisie and vanquish nationalist prejudices of every
kind, and set the working people of the world an example of a really solid
alliance of the workers and peasants of different nations in the fight for
Soviet power, for the overthrow of the yoke of the landowners and capitalists,
and for a world federal Soviet republic.
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