N.I. Bukharin and E. Preobrazhensky: The
ABC of Communism
Chapter 7: Communism and the Problem of Nationality
§ 55. The oppression of subject nationalities
One of the forms of the oppression of man by man is the oppression of
subject nationalities. Among the barriers by which human beings are
separated, we have, in addition to the barriers of class, those of
national disunity, of national enmity and hatred.
National enmity and ill-feeling are among the means by which the
proletariat is stupefied and by which its class consciousness is dulled.
The bourgeoisie knows how to cultivate these sentiments skilfully in order
to promote its own interests.
Let us consider how class-conscious proletarians should approach the
problem of nationality, and how they can best solve it so as to further
the speedy victory of communism.
A nation or a people is the name given to a group of persons who are
united by the use of a common tongue and who inhabit a definite area.
There are additional characteristics of nationality, but these two are the
most important and the most fundamental.1)
A few examples will help us to understand what is meant by the
oppression of a subject nationality. The tsarist government persecuted the
Jews, forbade them to live in certain parts of Russia, refused to admit
them into the State service, restricted their entry into the schools,
organized anti-Jewish pogroms, etc. The tsarist government, moreover,
would not allow the Ukrainians to have their children taught the Ukrainian
language in the schools. The issue of newspapers in the Ukrainian tongue
was forbidden. None of the subject nationalities in Russia were even
permitted to decide whether they wished to form part of the Russian State
or not.
The German government closed the Polish schools. The Austrian government
prohibited the use of the Czech language and forcibly imposed German upon
the Czechs. The British bourgeoisie regards the indigens of Africa and
Asia with contempt; it subjugates the backward semi-savage peoples,
plunders them, and shoots them down when they attempt to deliver
themselves from the British yoke.
In a word, when in any State the people of one nation possess all rights
and the people of another nation possess only a part of these rights; when
one nation, the weaker nation, has been forcibly united to a stronger
nation; when the stronger nation has against the will of the weaker nation
imposed upon the latter a foreign tongue, foreign customs, etc.; when the
people of the weaker nation are not allowed to lead their own lives then
we have what is termed oppression of a subject nationality, we have
national enslavement.
§ 56. The unity of the proletariat
First of all, however, we must propound and decide an extremely
important and fundamental problem. Should the Russian worker and the
Russian peasant look upon the Germans, the French, the British, the Jews,
the Chinese, or the Tartars, as enemies, irrespective of the class to
which these belong? Are the Russian workers and peasants entitled to hate
or to regard with suspicion those who belong to another nation, for the
sole reason that these latter speak a different tongue, that their skins
are black or yellow, that they have different customs and laws? Obviously,
this would be quite wrong. The German workers, the French workers, the
Negro workers, are just as much proletarians as the Russians are. No
matter what tongue the workers of other lands may speak, the essential
feature of their condition lies in this, that they are all exploited by
capital, that they are all comrades, that they all alike suffer from
poverty, oppression, and injustice.
Is the Russian worker to love the Russian capitalist because his fellow-
countryman abuses him in the familiar Russian terms, because his employer
cuffs him with a Russian fist, or lashes him with a Russian whip? Of
course not. Nor is the German workman likely to love the German capitalist
any better because the latter taunts him in the German language and after
the German fashion. The workers of all lands are brothers of one class,
and they are the enemies of the capitalists of all lands.
The same considerations apply in the case of the poor peasants of every
nation. To the Russian peasant (the poor peasant or the middle peasant),
the semi-proletarian peasant of Hungary, or the poor peasant of Sicily or
Belgium, is nearer and dearer than can possibly be the rich peasant of his
own land who exploits him, or the skinflint landlord who happens to be
born on Russian soil and to speak the Russian tongue.
But the workers of the whole world must not merely recognize themselves
to be brothers by class, to be brothers in oppression and slavery. It
would do no good if they were to rest content with railing against their
capitalist compatriots in their respective tongues; if in each land the
sufferers were to wipe one another's tears, and only within their own
State were to carry on the struggle against the enemy. Brothers in
oppression and slavery must be brothers in one world-wide league for the
struggle with the capitalists. Forgetting all the national differences
that tend to hinder union, they must unite in one great army to carry on a
joint war against capitalism. Only by closing their ranks in such an
international alliance, can they hope to conquer world capitalism. This is
why, more than seventy years ago, the founders of communism, Marx and
Engels, in their famous Communist Manifesto, fulminated the splendid
slogan: 'Proletarians of all lands, unite!'
It is essential that the working class should overcome all national
prejudices and national enmities. This is requisite, not only for the
world-wide attack upon capital and for the complete overthrow of the
capitalist system, but also for the organization of a single world-wide
economic system. Soviet Russia cannot exist without Donetz coal, Baku
mineral oil, Turkestan cotton; but it is just as true that Central and
Western Europe cannot do without Russian wood, hemp, flax, and platinum,
or without American wheat; it is just as true that Italy finds British
coal a vital necessity, and that Britain urgently needs Egyptian cotton,
etc., etc. The bourgeoisie has found itself unable to organize a world
economy, and the bourgeois system has been shipwrecked upon this
difficulty. The proletariat is alone competent to organize such a system
with success. To this end, however, it must proclaim the watchword, 'All
the world and all the wealth that it contains belong to the whole world of
labour.' This watchword implies that the German workers must completely
renounce their national wealth, the British theirs, and so on. If national
prejudice and national greed oppose the internationalization of industry
and agriculture, away with them, wherever they may show themselves and
under whatever colours they may sail!
§ 57. The causes of national enmity
But it does not suffice that the communists should declare war on the
oppression of nationalities and upon national prejudices, that they should
advocate international unity in the struggle against capitalism, and that
they should desire to found a world-wide economic alliance of the
victorious proletariat. We must seek a far quicker way towards the
overthrow of all jingoism and national egoism, of national stupidity and
pride, of mutual mistrust among the workers of the various nations. This
legacy from a brutal period of human life and from the brutal nationalist
quarrel of the feudal and capitalist epochs, still hangs like a heavy
burden round the neck of the world proletariat.
National enmities are of very ancient date. There was a time when the
different tribes were not content with fighting one another for lands and
forests, but when the men of one tribe would actually eat those of
another. Remnants of this brutal mistrust and enmity between nation and
nation, between race and race, continue to exist between the workers and
peasants of all lands. These vestiges of intertribal enmity are gradually
dying out; in proportion as world commerce develops, as economic contact
ensues, as migrations and minglings bring people of various stocks into
close association on the same territory; but especially do they die out
owing to the universality of the class struggle of the workers of all
lands. Yet these vestiges of intertribal enmity do not merely fail to
become extinct, but actually glow with renewed life, when to the old
causes of national ill-feeling there is superadded an antagonism of class
interests or the appearance of such antagonism.
The bourgeoisie in each country exploits and oppresses the proletariat
of its own land. But it does its utmost to convince its own proletariat
that the latter's enemies are not to be found among bourgeois
fellow-countrymen, but among the peoples of other lands. The German
bourgeoisie cries to the German workers, 'Down with the French! Down with
the English!' The British bourgeoisie cries to the British workers, 'Down
with the Germans!' The bourgeoisies of all countries, especially of late,
join in the cry, 'Down with the Jews!' The aim of this is to switch off
the class struggle of the workers against their capitalist oppressors,
into a struggle between nationalities.
The bourgeoisie, however, in its desire to divert the workers' minds
from the struggle for socialism, is not content with inflaming national
hatred. It endeavours in addition to give the workers a material interest
in the oppression of other peoples. During the recent war, when the
bourgeois were chanting the German national anthem 'Germany, Germany above
all', the bourgeois economists of Germany tried to convince the German
workers that the latter stood to gain a great deal from the victory, stood
to gain from the oppression and plunder of the workers of the conquered
lands. Before the war the bourgeoisie made a practice of bribing the
leaders of the working class with the lure of the profits derivable from
colonial plunder and from the oppression of backward and weakly
nationalities. The workers of the more advanced European lands, acting on
the instigation of the most highly paid members of the working class,
acceded to the proposals of the capitalists, and allowed themselves to be
talked over by the jingo socialists into accepting the belief that they
too would have a fatherland if only they would acquiesce in the plunder of
the colonies and of the partially dependent nations. The worker who, under
capitalism, proclaims himself a patriot, is selling for a copper or two
his real fatherland, which is socialism; and thereby he becomes one of the
oppressors of the backward and weak nations.
§ 58. The equal rights of the nations and the
right to self-determination; federation
The Communist Party, declaring a relentless war upon all oppression of
man by man, takes a decisive stand against that oppression of subject
nationalities which is indispensable to the existence of the bourgeois
system. Even more relentlessly do communists resist the slightest
participation in this oppression on the part of the working class. It does
not suffice, however, that the proletariat of a great and strong country
should re pudiate all attempts at the oppression of the other peoples
which the bourgeoisie or the aristocracy of its own land has crushed. It
is also essential that the proletarians of oppressed nations should not
feel any mistrust of their comrades who belong to the lands of the
oppressors. When the Czechs were oppressed by the German bourgeoisie of
Austria, the Czech workers looked upon all Germans as their oppressors.
Our tsarist government oppressed the Poles, and the population of Poland
has con tinued to cherish mistrust of all Russians; not merely of the
Russian tsar, the Russian landlord, and the Russian capitalist. If we are
to eradicate the mistrust felt by the workers of op pressed nations for
the workers of oppressor nations, we must not merely proclaim national
equality, but must realize it in practice. This equality must find
expression in the granting of equal rights in the matter of language,
education, religion, etc. Nor is this all. The proletariat must be ready
to grant complete national self- determination, must be ready, that is, to
concede to the workers who form the majority in any nation the full right
to decide the question whether that nation is to be completely integrated
with the other, or is to be federated with it, or is to be entirely
separated from it.
Is it possible, the reader will ask, that the communists can advocate
the severance of the nations? How then will come into existence that
unified proletarian world-embracing State which the communists aspire to
found? There seems to be a contradiction here.
There is no contradiction, however. In order to secure as speedily as
possible the full union of all the workers of the world, it is sometimes
necessary to countenance the temporary separation of one nation from
another.
Let us consider the circumstances in which such a course may be
requisite. We will suppose that in Bavaria, which now forms part of
Germany, a Soviet republic has been declared, while at Berlin the
bourgeois dictatorship of Noske and Scheidemann still prevails. Is it
right for the Bavarian communists, in that case, to strive for the
independence of Bavaria? Certainly! And not only the Bavarian communists,
but also the communists of other parts of Germany, must welcome the
separation of Soviet Bavaria, for this will not be a separation from the
German proletariat, but will be a deliverance from the yoke of the German
bourgeoisie.
Here is the obverse example. A Soviet republic has been proclaimed
throughout Germany, Bavaria alone excepted. The Bavarian bourgeoisie
desires separation from Soviet Germany, but the Bavarian proletariat
desires union. What should the communists do? It is obvious that the
communists of Germany should help the Bavarian workers, and should offer
armed resistance to the separatist endeavours of the Bavarian bourgeoisie.
This would not be the oppression of Bavaria, but the oppression of the
Bavarian bourgeoisie.
Again, the Soviet Power has been proclaimed both in England and in
Ireland, both in the land of the oppressors and in the land of the
oppressed. Furthermore, the Irish workers will not trust the English
workers, who belong to a country which has oppressed Ireland for
centuries. From the economic point of view, the separation will be
harmful. What course should the English communists pursue in these
circumstances? Whatever happens, they must not use force, as the English
bourgeoisie has done, to maintain the union with Ireland. They must grant
the Irish absolute freedom to separate. Why must they do this?
First of all, because it is necessary to convince the Irish workers that
the oppression of Ireland has been the work of the English bourgeoisie and
not of the English proletariat. The English workers have to win the Irish
workers' confidence.
Secondly, because the Irish workers will have to learn by experience
that it is disadvantageous for them to form a small independent State.
They will have to learn by experience that production in Ireland cannot be
properly organized unless Ireland is in close political and economic union
with proletarian England and other proletarian lands.
Finally, take the case of a nation with a bourgeois government which
wishes to separate from a nation with a proletarian I regime, and let us
suppose that, in the nation which desires to separate, the majority of the
workers or a notable proportion of them are in favour of the separation.
We may suppose that the workers of the separating country are distrustful,
not only of the capitalists, but also of the workers belonging to the
country whose bourgeoisie has oppressed them in the past. Even in this
case it would be better to allow the proletariat of the separating land to
come to terms in its own way with its own bourgeoisie, for otherwise the
latter would retain the power of saying: ' It is not I who oppress you,
but the people of such and such a country.' The working class will
speedily realize that the bourgeoisie has desired independence that it may
independently flay its own proletariat. The workers will speedily realize,
moreover, that the proletariat of the neighbouring Soviet State desires
the union, not for the sake of exploiting or oppressing the workers of the
smaller land, but that all the workers may join in a common struggle for
deliverance from exploitation and oppression.
Although, therefore, communists are, as a general principle, opposed to
the severance of one nation from another, especially when the lands in
question have close economic ties, they can nevertheless countenance
temporary separations. They will act as a mother acts when she allows her
child to burn its fingers once that it may dread the fire evermore.
§ 59. Who expresses the "Will of the
Nation"?
The Communist Party recognizes that the nations have the right to self-
determination even up to the point of secession; but it considers that the
working majority of the nation and not the bourgeoisie embodies the will
of the nation. It would, therefore, be more accurate to say that when we
speak of recognizing the right of the nations to self-determination, we
are referring to the right of the working majority in any nation. As far
as the bourgeoisie is concerned, inasmuch as during the period of civil
war and proletarian dictatorship we deprive it of civic freedoms, we
deprive it also of the right to any voice in the question of national
affairs.
What have we to say concerning the right of self-determination and the
right of secession in the case of nations at a comparatively low or
extremely low level of cultural development? What is to happen to nations
which not only have no proletariat, but have not even a bourgeoisie, or if
they have it, have it only in an immature form? Consider, for example, the
Tunguses, the Kalmucks, or the Buryats, who inhabit Russian territory.
What is to be done if these nations demand complete separation from the
great civilized nations? Still more, what is to be done if they wish to
secede from nations which have realized socialism? Surely to permit such
secessions would be to strengthen barbarism at the expense of
civilization?
We are of opinion that when socialism has been realized in the more
advanced countries of the world, the backward and semi-savage peoples will
be perfectly willing to join-the general alliance of the peoples. The
imperialist bourgeoisie which has seized its colonial possessions and has
annexed them by force has good reason to fear the secession of the
colonies. The proletariat, having no desire to plunder the colonies, can
procure from them by the exchange of goods such raw materials as are
required, and can leave to the natives of backward lands the right to
arrange their own internal affairs as they please. The Communist Party,
therefore, wishing to put an end for ever to all forms of national
oppression and national inequality, voices the demand for the national
right of self- determination.
The proletariat of all lands will avail itself of this right, first of
all in order to destroy nationalism, and secondly in order to form a
voluntary federative league.
When this federative league proves incompetent to establish a world-
wide economic system, and when the great majority has been convinced of
its inadequacy by actual experience, the time will have come for the
creation of one world-wide socialist republic.
If we examine the manner in which the bourgeoisie
propounded and solved the problem of nationality (or, as mostly happened,
complicated the issue), we see that in the days of its youth the
capitalist class dealt with questions of nationality in one fashion, and
that in the days of its old age and decay it is dealing with them quite
differently.
When the bourgeoisie was an oppressed class, when the
aristocracy headed by a king or a tsar held the reins of power, when kings
and tsars gave away whole peoples as their daughters' dowries, then the
bourgeoisie was not merely accustomed to say fine things about the freedom
of the nations, but actually attempted to realize such freedoms in
practice - or at least the bourgeoisie of each nation did so as far as its
own case was concerned. For example, when Italy was ruled by the Austrian
crown, the Italian bourgeoisie headed the movement for national
independence, endeavouring to secure the deliverance of Italy from the
foreign yoke and its union to form a single state. When Germany was split
up into a large number of petty princedoms and was crushed beneath the
heel of Napoleon, the German bourgeoisie endeavoured to promote the union
of Germany into a single great State, and it fought for the deliverance of
the country from the French enslavers. When France, having overthrown the
autocracy of Louis XVI, was attacked by the monarchical States of the rest
of Europe, the revolutionary French bourgeoisie led the defence of the
country and composed the national anthem known as the Marseillaise. In a
word, the bourgeoisie of the oppressed nations always took the van in the
struggle for deliverance; it created a rich national literature; it
produced numerous men of genius painters, prose writers, poets, and
philosophers. This is what happened in earlier days, when the bourgeoisie
was an oppressed class.
Why did the bourgeoisie of oppressed nations strive on
behalf of national freedom? If we are to listen to bourgeois poets, if we
are to heed the works of bourgeois artists, the motive which animated the
bourgeoisie was its hatred of all national oppression, its longing for the
freeing and self-determination of every national stock, however small. In
truth, when the bourgeoisie in any country fought for the deliverance of
that country from a foreign yoke, it was fighting for the establishment of
its own bourgeois State; for the power of fleecing the people of its own
land without any competition on the part of other exploiters; for the
right to the whole of the surplus value created by the town and country
workers of their own land.
The history of all capitalist countries bears witness
to this truth. When the bourgeoisie is oppressed in conjunction with the
working people of its own nation, it clamours for the freedom of the
nations in general, and insists upon the wrongfulness of any kind of
national enslavement. But as soon as the capitalist class has secured
power and has expelled the foreign conquerors be these aristocrats or
bourgeois - it does its utmost to subjugate any weak nationality whose
subjugation may seem profitable. The revolutionary French bourgeoisie, as
represented by Danton, Robespierre, and the other noted figures of the
first epoch of the revolution, appealed to all the people of the world on
behalf of deliverance from every form of tyranny; the Marseillaise,
written by Rouget de l'Isle, and sung by the armies of the revolution, is
dear to the hearts of all oppressed peoples. But this same French
bourgeoisie, having entered the second .phase of its revolution under the
régime of Napoleon, subjugated the peoples of Spain, Italy,
Germany, and Austria, to the strains of the aforesaid Marseillaise, and
continued to plunder them throughout the Napoleonic wars. When the German
bourgeoisie was subject to oppression, such writers as Schiller with his
Wilhelm Tell voiced the struggle of the peoples against foreign tyrants.
But this same German bourgeoisie under the leadership of Bismarck and
Moltke forcibly annexed the French provinces of AlsaceLorraine, seized
Schleswig from the Danes, tyrannized over the Poles of Posen, etc. The
Italian bourgeoisie, having delivered itself from the yoke of the Austrian
aristocracy, was perfectly ready to shoot down the conquered Bedouins of
Tripoli, the Albanians and the Dalmatians on the shores of the Adriatic,
and the Turks in Anatolia.
Why did these things happen, and why do they happen now? Why has the
bourgeoisie invariably voiced the demand for national freedom, and why has
it never been able to realize such freedom in actual fact?
The explanation is that every bourgeois State which has
freed itself from the yoke of another nation inevitably strives to extend
its own dominion. In any capitalist country you please to select, you will
find that the bourgeoisie is not content with the exploitation of its own
proletariat. The capitalists need raw materials from all the ends of the
earth. They therefore strive to acquire colonies, whence, after
subjugating the natives, they can without hindrance procure the raw
materials they need for their factories. They require markets for the sale
of their wares, and they endeavour to find such markets in backward lands,
being quite unconcerned as to how this may affect the general population
or the still immature bourgeoisies of such countries. They need
territories to which they can export surplus capital, so that they may
extract profits from these distant workers, and they enslave such
territories, disposing of them as freely as they do of their own land. If
during the conquest of colonies and during the economic enslavement of
backward lands, another powerful bourgeoisie is encountered as a
competitor, the dispute is settled by war, and this tends to take the form
of such a world war as the one which has just been finished in Europe. The
great war did not end the enslavement of the colonies and of the backward
lands; if any change has taken place for these, it has only been a change
of masters. Furthermore, as the outcome of the war, Germany, Austria, and
Bulgaria, which were free countries, have been enslaved. In this manner it
has come to pass that the development of the bourgeois system, far from
leading to a reduction in the number of the countries which are enslaved
by other countries and by the bourgeoisies of these, has led to a positive
increase in the number of enslaved lands. The bourgeois dominion has
culminated in universal national oppression, for the whole world is now
enslaved by the victorious group of capitalist States.
§ 60. Antisemitism and the proletariat
One of the worst forms of national enmity is antisemitism, that is to
say, racial hostility towards the Jews, who belong to the Semitic stock
(of which the Arabs form another great branch). The tsarist autocracy
raised the hunt against the Jews in the hope of averting the workers' and
peasants' revolution. 'You are poor because the Jews fleece you,' said the
members of the Black Hundreds; and they endeavoured to direct the
discontent of the oppressed workers and peasants away from the landlords
and the bourgeoisie, and to turn it against the whole Jewish nation. Among
the Jews, as among other nationalities, there are different classes. It is
only the bourgeois strata of the Jewish race which exploit the people, and
these bourgeois strata plunder in common with the capitalists of other
nationalities. In the outlying regions of tsarist Russia, where the Jews
were allowed to reside, the Jewish workers and artisans lived in terrible
poverty and degradation, so that their condition was even worse than that
of the ordinary workers in other parts of Russia.
The Russian bourgeoisie raised the hunt against the Jews, not only in
the hope of diverting the anger of the exploited workers, but also in the
hope of freeing themselves from competitors in commerce and industry.
Of late years, anti-Jewish feeling has increased among the bourgeois
classes of nearly all countries. The bourgeoisie in other countries
besides Russia can take example from Nicholas II in the attempt to inflame
anti-Jewish feeling, not only in order to get rid of rival exploiters, but
also in order to break the force of the revolutionary movement. Until
recently, very little was heard of antisemitism in Germany, Great Britain,
and the United States. Today, even British ministers of State sometimes
deliver antisemitic orations. This is an infallible sign that the
bourgeois system in the west is on the eve of a collapse, and that the
bourgeoisie is endeavouring to ward off the workers' revolution by
throwing Rothschilds and Mendelssohns to the workers as sops. In Russia,
antisemitism was in abeyance during the March revolution, but the movement
regained strength as the civil war between the bourgeoisie and the
proletariat grew fiercer; and the attacks on the Jews became more and more
bitter in proportion as the attempts of the bourgeoisie to recapture power
proved fruitless.
All these considerations combine to prove that antisemitism is one of
the forms of resistance to socialism. It is disastrous that any worker or
peasant should in this matter allow himself to be led astray by the
enemies of his class.
Notes
1)
Long ago, the Jews inhabited a definite territory and possessed a common
speech; today they have no territory, and many of them do not understand
Hebrew. The gypsies have their own language, but they do not inhabit any
definite territory. The non-nomadic Tunguses in Siberia have a territory,
but they have forgotten their distinctive tongue.
Literature
Lenin,
The Right
of Self-Determination; Stalin,
Marxism
and the Problem of Nationality; Zalevsky, The International
and the Problem of Nationality; Petrov, Truth and Falsehood about
the Yews; Kautsky, The Yews; Bebel, Antisemitism and the
Proletariat; Steklov, The Last Word in Antisemitism.