results of Lenin's policy of national liberation

[Devrim]

There is a lot of talk on here about how socialist must support national liberation struggles, but very little comment about what a disaster the policy was for the Russian Revolution. Maybe this can start a bit of discussion on the subject:


Originally posted by International review
*Finland: the Soviet government recognised its independence on the 18th of December 1917. The working class movement in this country was very strong: it was on the revolutionary ascent, it had strong links with the Russian workers and had actively participated in the 1905 and 1917 revolutions. It was not a question of a country dominated by feudalism, but a very developed capitalist territory. And the Finnish bourgeoisie used the Soviet power's gift in order to crush the workers' insurrection that broke out in January 1918. This struggle lasted nearly 3 months but, despite the resolute support the Soviets gave to the Finnish workers, the new state was able to destroy the revolutionary movement, thanks to German troops whom they called on to help them;

*The Ukraine: the local nationalist movement did not represent a real bourgeois movement, but rather obliquely expressed the vague resentments of the peasants against the Russian landlords and above all the Poles. The proletariat in this region came from all over Russia and was very developed. In these conditions the band of nationalist adventurers that set up the 'Ukraine Rada' (Vinnickenko, Petlyura etc.) rapidly sought the patronage of German and Austrian imperialism. At the same time it dedicated all its forces to attacking the workers' soviets, which had been formed in Kharkov and other cities. The French general Tabouis who, because of the collapse of the central powers, replaced the German influence, employed Ukrainian reactionary bands in the war of the White Guards against the Soviets.

"Ukrainian nationalism... was a mere whim, a folly of a few dozen petty bourgeois intellectuals without the slightest roots in the economic, political or psychological relationships of the country; it was without any historical tradition, since the Ukraine never formed a nation or government, was without any national culture... To what was at first a mere farce they lent such importance that the farce became a matter of the most deadly seriousness - not as a serious national movement for which, afterwards as before, there are no roots at all, but as a shingle and rallying flag of counter-revolution. At Brest, out of this addled egg crept the German bayonets" (Rosa Luxemburg, idem, pages 382-2);

*The Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania): the workers' soviets took power in this zone at the same moment as the October revolution. 'National liberation' was carried out by British marines: "With the termination of hostilities against Germany, British naval units appeared in the Baltic. The Estonian Soviet Republic collapsed in January 1919. The Latvian Soviet Republic held out in Riga for five months and then succumbed to the threat of British naval guns" (E.H.Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, vol. 1, page 317)

*In Asiatic Russia: "A Bashkir government under one Validov, which had proclaimed an autonomous Bashkir state after the October revolution, went over to the Orenburg Cossacks who were in open warfare against the Soviet Government; and this was typical of the prevailing attitude of the nationalists" (idem, page 324). For its part the 'national-revolutionary' government of Kokanda (in central Asia), with a programme that included the imposition of Islamic law, the defence of private property, and the forced seclusion of women, unleashed a fierce war against the workers' Soviet of Tashkent (the principal industrial city of Russian Turkestan).

*In Caucasia a Transcaucasian republic was formed, and its tutelage was fought over between Turkey, Germany and Great Britain. This caused it to break up into 3 'independent' republics (Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan), which fiercely confronted each other, urged on in turn by each of the contesting powers. The three republics supported with all their forces the British troops in their battle against the Baku workers' Soviet, which from 1917-20 suffered bombardment and massacres by the British;

*Turkey: from the beginning the Soviet government supported the 'revolutionary nationalist' Kemal Attaturk. Radek, a member of the CI, exhorted the recently formed Turkish Communist Party thus: "Your first task, as soon as you have formed as an independent party, will be to support the movement for the national freedom of Turkey" (Acts of the first four Congresses of the CI). The result was a catastrophe: Kemal crushed without leniency the strikes and demonstrations of the young Turkish proletariat and, if for a time he allied with the Soviet government, it was only done to put pressure on the British troops who were occupying Constantinople, and on the Greeks who had occupied large parts of Western Turkey. However, once the Greeks had been defeated and having offered British imperialism his fidelity if they left Constantinople, Kemal broke off the alliance with the Soviets and offered the British the head of the Turkish Communist Party, which was viciously persecuted.

*The case of Poland should also be mentioned. The national emancipation of Poland was almost a dogma in the Second International. When Rosa Luxemburg, at the end of the 19th century, demonstrated that this slogan was now erroneous and dangerous since capitalist development had tightly bound the Polish bourgeoisie to the Russian Czarist imperial caste, she provoked a stormy polemic inside the International. But the truth was that the workers of Warsaw, Lodz and elsewhere were at the vanguard of the 1905 revolution and had produced revolutionaries as outstanding as Rosa. Lenin had recognised that "The experience of the 1905 revolution demonstrated that even in these two nations (he is referring to Poland and Finland) the leading classes, the landlords and the bourgeoisie, renounced the revolutionary struggle for liberty and had looked for a rapprochement with the leading classes in Russia and with the Czarist monarchy out of fear of the revolutionary proletariat of Finland and Poland" (minutes of the Prague party conference, 1912).

Unfortunately the Bolsheviks held onto the dogma of 'the right of nations to self-determination', and from October 1917 on they promoted the independence of Poland. On 29 August 1918 the Council of Peoples Commissars declared "All treaties and acts concluded by the government of the former Russian Empire with the government of Prussia or of the Austro-Hungarian Empire concerning Poland, in view of their incompatibility with the principle of the self-determination of nations and with the revolutionary sense of right of the Russian people, which recognises the indefeasible right of the Polish people to independence and unity, are hereby irrevocably rescinded" (quoted in E.H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution, vol 1, p 293).

While it was correct that the proletarian bastion should denounce and annul the secret treaties of the bourgeois government, it was a serious error to do so in the name of 'principles' which were not on a proletarian terrain, but a bourgeois one, viz the 'right of nations'. This was rapidly demonstrated in practice. Poland fell under the iron dictatorship of Pilsudski, the veteran social patriot, who smashed the workers' strikes, allied Poland with France and Britain, and actively supported the counter-revolution of the White Armies by invading the Ukraine in 1920.

When in response to this aggression the troops of the Red Army entered Polish territory and advanced on Warsaw in the hope that the workers would rise up against the bourgeoisie, a new catastrophe befell the cause of the world revolution: the workers of Warsaw, the same workers who had made the 1905 revolution, fell in behind the 'Polish Nation' and participated in the defence of the city against the soviet troops. This was the tragic consequence of years of propaganda about the 'national liberation' of Poland by the Second International and then by the proletarian bastion in Russia. [2]

The outcome of this policy was catastrophic: the local proletariats were defeated, the new nations were not 'grateful' for the Bolsheviks' present and quickly passed into the orbit of British imperialism, collaborating in their blockade of the Soviet power and sustaining with all the means at their disposal the White counter-revolution which provoked a bloody civil war.

"The Bolsheviks were to be taught to their own great hurt and that of the revolution, that under the rule of capitalism there is no self-determination of peoples, that in a class society each class of the nation strives to 'determine itself' in a different fashion, and that, for the bourgeois classes, the stand-point of national freedom is fully subordinated to that of class rule. The Finnish bourgeoisie, like the Ukrainian bourgeoisie, were unanimous in preferring the violent rule of Germany to national freedom, if the latter should be bound up with Bolshevism." (Rosa Luxemburg, 'The Russian Revolution', Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, page 380)

http://en.internationalism.org/ir/066_natlib_01.html
http://en.internationalism.org/ir/068_natlib_02.html
http://en.internationalism.org/ir/068_natlib_02.html

Devrim

[Severian]

Originally posted by [email protected] 11, 2006 01:40 am
There is a lot of talk on here about how socialist must support national liberation struggles, but very little comment about what a disaster the policy was for the Russian Revolution.
Uh....right. Could you make an argument with less relationship to reality?

What you call a "disaster" was actually: 1. the survival of the revolution and 2. the extension of the revolutionary power across most of the territory of a disintegrating multinational empire.

Two other ramshackle multinational empires disintegrated around the same time: Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Turkish. Revolutionary forces certainly did not have the same success in either.

So, why did the Bolsheviks experience this success? A number of historians of the civil war, including E.H. Carr, have pointed to their enlightened nationality policy. In contrast, the Whites had nothing to offer but Russian chauvinism. If the Bolsheviks had followed Rosa Luxemburg's advice, this contrast would have been much less obvious to the subject peoples of the former Russian empire.

Nor did Luxemburg's policies have great success where they were tried out: including in parts of the disintegrating tsarist empire. Her supporters headed the short-lived Lithuanian Soviet government, for example; her policies of opposing land distribution to the peasants, and national self-determination, did not exactly contribute to success there. The example of the Hungarian Soviet Republic also shows the problems resulting from a failure to distribute land to the peasants. And the German Revolution, of course, was put down.


When in response to this aggression the troops of the Red Army entered Polish territory and advanced on Warsaw in the hope that the workers would rise up against the bourgeoisie, a new catastrophe befell the cause of the world revolution: the workers of Warsaw, the same workers who had made the 1905 revolution, fell in behind the 'Polish Nation' and participated in the defence of the city against the soviet troops.

This hardly illustrates the correctness of underestimating nationalism or pretending there could be no more national wars, as Luxemburg and Radek did. The opposite is true; Luxemburg-influenced Polish communists had predicted that Polish workers would support the advancing Red Army. (A number of leaders of Luxemburg's Polish-Lithuanian party became leaders of the early Soviet government, including Radek, Dzerzhinsky, and Marchlewski.) In order to avoid provoking this kind of nationalist backlash - it's necessary for workers of the dominant nation to respect national self-determination.

In none of your examples was a policy of national self-determination to blame for defeats where they occurred. In Finland, for example, it was simply the military relationship of forces which kept Soviet Russia from sending more aid and soldiers.

[Leo]

What you call a "disaster" was actually: 1. the survival of the revolution

This doesn't make sense at all. We are talking about foreign policy here. Interventions the Soviet Government made, support it gave to others. Usually, when you are in the position to be influential in you are bargaining for much more than survival.


the extension of the revolutionary power across most of the territory of a disintegrating multinational empire.

Again, this doesn't make sense because the thread is about the examples where support given to nationalist backfired in the foreign policy as they ended up killing communists.


So, why did the Bolsheviks experience this success? A number of historians of the civil war, including E.H. Carr, have pointed to their enlightened nationality policy. In contrast, the Whites had nothing to offer but Russian chauvinism.

As off-topic as it is, I want to make one thing clear: you seem to be forgetting Lenin's situation before 1917; he was regarded as a traitor who sold out to Germans. The nationalist card in the hands of the Bolsheviks wasn't really that strong, and they were actually pretty opposed the traditional idea of nationalism in Russia, which included a very dangerous antisemitism. When it came to nationalism, whites had a lot more to offer than the Bolsheviks. Lenin's nationality politics might have helped them gain some support, but it is simply wrong to say that their success in the Russian Empire was due to this policy of their. Remember that Lenin wasn't really the only Bolsheviks, and Bolsheviks weren't the only revolutionaries, although they were the most influential.


Nor did Luxemburg's policies have great success where they were tried out: including in parts of the disintegrating tsarist empire. Her supporters headed the short-lived Lithuanian Soviet government, for example; her policies of opposing land distribution to the peasants, and national self-determination, did not exactly contribute to success there. The example of the Hungarian Soviet Republic also shows the problems resulting from a failure to distribute land to the peasants. And the German Revolution, of course, was put down.

If you are saying that the German Revolution was put down because of Luxemburg's ideas on nationalism, this is simply idiocy. It is like saying that the Bolshevik revolution degenerated because of Lenin's ideas on bureaucracy.


This hardly illustrates the correctness of underestimating nationalism or pretending there could be no more national wars, as Luxemburg and Radek did.

Luxemburg never pretended that there could be no more national wars, she just opposed national wars on principle, saying that they should be turned into civil wars. She was right.


The opposite is true; Luxemburg-influenced Polish communists had predicted that Polish workers would support the advancing Red Army.

And other Bolsheviks didn't when they sent the Red Army into Poland?


In Finland, for example, it was simply the military relationship of forces which kept Soviet Russia from sending more aid and soldiers.

The fact that Soviets gave maximum possible support to the Finnish workers is indeed acknowledged in the text:


despite the resolute support the Soviets gave to the Finnish workers

The criticism comes from recognizing the independence of the Finnish state. Of course, I'm guessing that if the the Soviet government didn't recognize Finland's independence, Fins would send their army to take Petersburg and Moscow, right? :rolleyes:


In none of your examples was a policy of national self-determination to blame for defeats where they occurred.

You've gotta do better than that Severian.

[Severian]

Originally posted by Leo Uilleann+November 11, 2006 03:59 am--> (Leo Uilleann @ November 11, 2006 03:59 am)
Severian
So, why did the Bolsheviks experience this success? A number of historians of the civil war, including E.H. Carr, have pointed to their enlightened nationality policy. In contrast, the Whites had nothing to offer but Russian chauvinism.
As off-topic as it is, I want to make one thing clear: you seem to be forgetting Lenin's situation before 1917; he was regarded as a traitor who sold out to Germans. The nationalist card in the hands of the Bolsheviks wasn't really that strong, and they were actually pretty opposed the traditional idea of nationalism in Russia, which included a very dangerous antisemitism. When it came to nationalism, whites had a lot more to offer than the Bolsheviks. [/b]
Could you be any more politically and historically clueless? Of course the Bolsheviks were against Great-Russian chauvinism, that's my whole point! And their support for the self-determination of the oppressed nationalities was an essential part of that. And of making it clear to working people from the oppressed nationalities that they had no intention of perpetuating the old Russian oppression.

The Whites did the opposite. Read something about the Civil War in the Far East, for example.

That was the reason, also, that immediately recognizing Finnish independence helped the Red side of the Finnish Civil War. It's just that the Germans were able to send a lot more weapons and soldiers to aid the White Finns.


Luxemburg never pretended that there could be no more national wars,

"In the present imperialistic milieu there can be no wars of national self-defence." From Luxemburg's Junius pamphlet (http://marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1915/junius/ch07.htm)

See also Radek declaring the Irish national question extinct, (http://www.marxists.org/archive/radek/1916/05/1916rising.htm) On the national question, this tendency was and is as consitently wrong in analysis and prediction as in line.

Now, so far this is basically rehashing old polemics. Like Lenin's response to the Junius pamphlet (http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/jul/junius-pamphlet.htm)

Or: The population of the cities in these borderland Was completely different in its national ingredients from the population of the country. In the Ukraine and White Russia the landlord, capitalist, lawyer, journalist, was a Great Russian, a Pole, a Jew, a foreigner; the rural population was wholly Ukrainian and White Russian. In the Baltic states the cities were havens of the German, Russian and Jewish bourgeoisie; the country was altogether Lettish and Esthonian. In the cities of Georgia, a Russian and Armenian population predominated, as also in Turkish Azerbaidjan, being separated from the fundamental mass of the people not only by their level of life and culture, but also by language, as are the English in India. Being indebted for the protection of their possessions and income to the bureaucratic machine, and being closely bound up with the ruling classes of all other countries, the landlords, industrialists and merchants in these borderlands grouped around themselves a narrow circle of Russian functionaries, clerks, teachers, physicians, lawyers, journalists, and to some extent workers also, converting the cities into centres of Russification and colonisation.

It was possible to ignore the villages so long as they remained silent. When they began, however, more and more impatiently to lift their voices, the city resisted and stubbornly continued to resist, defending its privileged position. The functionary, the merchant, the lawyer, soon learned to disguise his struggle to retain the commanding heights of industry and culture under the form of a top-lofty condemnation of an increasing "chauvinism.” The desire of a ruling nation to maintain the status quo frequently dresses up as a superiority to "nationalism," just as the desire of a victorious nation to hang on to its booty easily takes the form of pacifism. Thus MacDonald in the face of Gandhi feels as though he were an internationalist. Thus, too, the gravitation of the Austrians toward Germany appears to Poincaré an offence against French pacifism.

"People living in the cities of the Ukraine" — so wrote a delegation of the Rada to the Provisional Government in May — "see before them the Russified streets of these cities ... and completely forget that these cities are only little islets in the sea of the whole Ukrainian people.” When Rosa Luxemburg, in her posthumous polemic against the programme of the October revolution, asserted that Ukrainian nationalism, having been formerly a mere "amusement" of the commonplace petty bourgeois intelligentsia, had been artificially raised up by the yeast of the Bolshevik formula of self-determination, she fell, notwithstanding her luminous mind, into a very serious historic error. The Ukrainian peasantry had not made national demands in the past for the reason that the Ukrainian peasantry had not In general risen to the height of political being. The chief service of the February revolution — perhaps its only service, but one amply sufficient — lay exactly in this, that it gave the oppressed classes and nations of Russia at last an opportunity to speak out. This political awakening of the peasantry could not have taken place otherwise, however, than through their own native language — with all the consequences ensuing in regard to schools, courts, self-administration. To oppose this would have been to try to drive the peasants back into non-existence.From Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution (http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1930-hrr/ch39.htm)

But in the hopes of saying something new: How about examining the example of the 1979 Nicaraguan Revolution?

Initially the Sandinistas followed a somewhat 'Luxemburgist' policy on both the land and national questions.

On the Atlantic Coast, they rejected any demand for national autonomy for the Black and indigenous population. The result - the Miskitos and some other Indian tribes began to be recrutied into the contra groups. Despite their history of oppression under Somoza and other capitalist regimes - they felt the revolution was offering them nothing different.

But when the Sandinistas eventually corrected this error and launched the Autonomy Process - they took this base of support away from the contras. The armed Miskito groups disintegrated; some of their leaders negotiated peace with the revolutionary government. The Atlantic Coast population was won to support the revolution.

On land, also: the Sandinistas were slow to distribute land to individual peasants, often insisting that collectives be formed first. This lost them a lot of support among peasants in the central highlands. The contras did win some support despite their Somocista leadership and bloody terrorism against the population.

Unfortunately, this error was never fully corrected - the Sandinistas missed a chance to win more of the population to the revolution.

There are other reasons for the Sandinistas' eventual collapse, certainly. Primarily the abandonment of any course towards smashing capitalist property relations - they began demobilizing working people politically, rather than leading and mobilizing people to make increasing moves on the capitalist economic system.

But their land policy didn't help....

[Leo]

Could you be any more politically and historically clueless? Of course the Bolsheviks were against Great-Russian chauvinism, that's my whole point!

Not all of them was actually (Stalin and co. for example) but again this point is irrelevant as what I said had to do with the internal policy this time, related to your comments about "survival" and you took it for external policy.


"In the present imperialistic milieu there can be no wars of national self-defence."

How nice of you to take something out of context!

So long as capitalist states exist, Le., so long as imperialistic world policies determine and regulate the inner and the outer life of a nation, there can be no “national self-determination” either in war or in peace. In the present imperialistic milieu there can be no wars of national self-defence. Every socialist policy that depends upon this determining historic milieu, that is willing to fix its policies in the world whirlpool from the point of view of a single nation, is built upon a foundation of sand.

This obviously isn't saying that there won't be more wars. It is saying that internationalism is the way to go for the proletariat and "national" liberation is impossible in capitalism. Again, she is right.


Initially the Sandinistas followed a somewhat 'Luxemburgist' policy on both the land and national questions.

Do you know what their proper name is? Sandinista National Liberation Front :rolleyes: It is lunacy to declare the Sandinist policies "Luxemburgist", incomparably idiotic than declaring Stalin a "Leninist".

I'm guessing that you wont actually try to answer the points but keep this polemic?