Stalin vs. Lenin on a unitary RSFSR vs. a Soviet Union: an unlikely perspective

[Die Neue Zeit]

I'm surprised to find out that one particular individual has a very unlikely but very informed perspective on the debate between Stalin and Lenin on a unitary RSFSR vs. a federal Soviet Union in 1922. Here it is:

http://en.special.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/51206
(Russian President Vladimir Putin)

Finally, the main reason why I was saying that we need to take a fresh look at the ideas the former leader of the Soviet state Vladimir Lenin formulated. What were we talking about? I was saying that a bomb was planted at the foundation of our statehood. What did I mean by that? I will give you the details now. I was referring to the discussion between Stalin and Lenin regarding the creation of the new state, the Soviet Union.

If you are a historian, you should know that back then Stalin came up with the idea of the autonomisation of the future Soviet Union. Pursuant to this idea, all the different subjects of the future state were to join the USSR as autonomies with broad authority. Lenin criticised Stalin’s views, saying it was an untimely and wrong idea. Moreover, he promoted the idea of uniting the future entities, and there were 4 then – Russia, Ukraine, Belorussia and, as a matter of fact, the south of Russia, the North Caucasus Federation, as it was called – you know this better than I do.

So, Lenin said the state, the Soviet Union should be formed on the basis of full equality with the possibility of seceding from the union – I may have gotten the exact words wrong, but that was the idea. That was the time bomb that was planted under the structure of our statehood. Not only did they set the borders for ethnic groups of a multinational, essentially unitarian state; the borders were also established arbitrarily, without much reason. Thus, why did they make Donbass part of Ukraine? The reason was to raise the share of the proletariat there to ensure greater social support. Pure nonsense, as you may see. And this is not the only example, there are many others.

Say, cultural autonomy is one thing, an autonomy with broad state authority is another, while the right to secede is something else altogether.

[Lacrimi de Chiciură]

The irony of Stalin's "autonomisation" was that it in fact meant less autonomy for the national minorities of the former Russian Empire and more historical continuity between the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, strengthening centralization of authority in the administrative dynamics established by tsarism. Whereas Lenin insisted on the creation of the Soviet Union as the voluntary union of equal nations, Stalin conceived of it as the "adhesion" of Ukraine, Belarus, and Caucasia to Russia (https://books.google.ro/books?id=iheBbViwVksC&pg=PA148&lpg=PA148&dq=%22Stalin+has+already+agreed+to+make+a+concessi on,+that+of+replacing+the+term%22&source=bl&ots=i81W3Yhnjh&sig=fibLPH65f2kaGgSTnP3G2HV3StY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwilsIL3y9zNAhVEOBoKHZxfCU0Q6AEIGjAA#v=on epage&q=%22Stalin%20has%20already%20agreed%20to%20make%2 0a%20concession%2C%20that%20of%20replacing%20the%2 0term%22&f=false). In Lenin's last writings near the end of his life, which were suppressed due to their anti-Stalinist character, he criticized Stalin as a "vulgar Great-Russian bully" for his conduct in "the Georgian Affair", which Lenin further characterized as a "truly Great-Russian nationalist campaign" (where the Georgian communists were accused of lacking internationalism for not wanting to unite with Russia).

Lenin makes the interesting point, talking about Dzerzhinsky but perhaps also not so subtly taking a jab at Stalin, who was of a Georgian background, "it is common knowledge that people of other nationalities who have become Russified over-do this Russian frame of mind".

Another interesting contrast seems to me to be the way in which Lenin and Stalin alternatively describe the basis for the Soviet Union as a unitary state. Lenin writes in The Question of Nationalities or "Autonomisation" (https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/dec/testamnt/autonomy.htm) in December 1922:

It is said that a united apparatus was needed. Where did that assurance come from? Did it not come from that same Russian apparatus which, as I pointed out in one of the preceding sections of my diary, we took over from tsarism and slightly anointed with Soviet oil?



There is no doubt that that measure [autonomisation/unification of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Caucuses] should have been delayed somewhat until we could say that we vouched for our apparatus as our own. But now, we must, in all conscience, admit the contrary; the apparatus we call ours is, in fact, still quite alien to us; it is a bourgeois and tsarist hotch-potch and there has been no possibility of getting rid of it in the course of the past five years without the help of other countries and because we have been "busy" most of the time with military engagements and the fight against famine.

And here in The National Question (https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1924/foundations-leninism/ch06.htm), two or less years later (in 1924), Stalin describes this united apparatus in entirely opposite terms, one that is not at all an inheritance of tsarism, but a decisive break with it.
[...]to win the sympathy and support of these [colonized, non-Russian] peoples it [the revolution] had first of all to break the fetters of Russian imperialism and free these people from the yoke of national oppression.


Without this it would have been impossible to consolidate Soviet power, to implant real internationalism and to create that remarkable organisation for the collaboration of peoples which is called the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and which is the living prototype of the future union of peoples in a single world economic system.


So in just two years the Soviet state apparatus transformed from a "bourgeois and tsarist hotch-potch" carrying out campaigns of "Great-Russian nationalism" to a "remarkable organisation for the collaboration of peoples" which would have been impossible if not for having "[broken] the fetters of Russian imperialism" and totally ending national oppression.

Another stark discrepancy arises when you look at the very different terms in which Lenin and Stalin each ascribe a certain degree of importance to the national question. For Lenin, a kind of internationalism on the part of the "great" nations which goes so far as to translate to a reparative "inequality of the oppressor nation (...) that must make up for the inequality which obtains in actual practice" is "absolutely essential", while for Stalin, the national question is "subordinate" to the proletarian revolution [See hypertext above]. Stalin says, "Cases occur when the national movements in certain oppressed countries came into conflict with the interests of the development of the proletarian movement." Nowadays, this same postulate leads the modern Stalinist to ardently oppose Kurdish national liberation on the basis of it possibly undermining the territorial integrity of Syria, Iraq, and Iran, targets of Western imperialism, while at the same time cheering on the British public's support for Brexit, whose expression of support via referendum would be impossible if not for cheap Tory maneuvering to pander to anti-immigrant sentiment, on the basis of British workers being an oppressed nationality under the yoke of the European Union, a part of whose neoliberal regulations include provisions for the free movement of labor.

Of course, all this seems to be rather besides Vladimir Putin's point, which is to justify post-Soviet capitalist Russia's ambitions of rehabilitating naked imperialism.

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(Left is "a popular flag in Donbass, combining the Soviet colours with the Ribbon of St George, revived by the Russian Federation in 2005." (https://vostokcable.wordpress.com/2015/05/20/ideology-in-the-time-of-the-donbass-war-fascism-and-fascist-anti-fascism/))

"Putin’s idea of Russia is based on the perception of a deep continuity between Russian Empire, Soviet Union and Russian Federation, crafted by playing down moments of historical rupture such as 1917 and 1991"

"The black, yellow and white flag (https://www.rt.com/politics/173124-russia-flag-emperor-nationalist/) was approved as a national symbol by Emperor Alexander II in 1858 and remained as such till 1896. According to the official explanation the flag borrowed the colors from the imperial coat of arms – the Byzantium eagle was black, the Byzantium banner was gold, and the horse of St George, also pictured on the Moscow city emblem, was white."