THE EQUALITY OF NATIONS AND THE RIGHTS OF NATIONAL MINORITIES
Lenin
5. THE EQUALITY OF NATIONS AND THE RIGHTS OF NATIONAL MINORITIES
When they discuss the national question, opportunists in Russia are given to citing the example of Austria. In my article in Severnaya Pravda[*] (No. 10, Prosveshcheniye, pp. 96-98), which the opportunists have attacked (Mr. Semkovsky in Novaya Rabochaya Gazeta,[20] and Mr. Liebman in Zeit ), I asserted that, insofar as that is at all possible under capitalism, there was only one solution of the national question, viz., through consistent democracy. In proof of this, I referred, among other things, to Switzerland.
This has not been to the liking of the two opportunists mentioned above, who are trying to refute it or belittle its significance. Kautsky, we are told, said that Switzerland is an exception; Switzerland, if you please, has a special kind of decentralisation, a special history, special geographical conditions, unique distribution of a population that speak different languages, etc., etc.
All these are nothing more than attempts to evade the issue. To be sure, Switzerland is an exception in that she is not a single-nation state. But Austria and Russia are also exceptions (or are backward, as Kautsky adds). To be sure, it was only her special, unique historical and social conditions that ensured Switzerland greater democracy than most of her European neighbours.
But where does all this come in, if we are speaking of the model to be adopted? In the whole world, under present-day conditions, countries in which any particular institution has been founded on consistent democratic principles are the exception. Does this prevent us, in our programme, from upholding consistent democracy in all institutions?
Switzerland's special features lie in her history, her geographical and other conditions. Russia's special features lie in the strength of her proletariat, which has no precedent in the epoch of bourgeois revolutions, and in her shocking general backwardness, which objectively necessitates an exceptionally rapid and resolute advance, under the threat of all sorts of drawbacks and reverses.
We are evolving a national programme from the proletarian standpoint; since when has it been recommended that the worst examples, rather than the best, be taken as a model?
At all events, does it not remain an indisputable and undisputed fact that national peace under capitalism has been achieved (insofar as it is achievable) exclusively in countries where consistent democracy prevails?
Since this is indisputable, the opportunists' persistent references to Austria instead of Switzerland are nothing but a typical Cadet device, for the Cadets[21] always copy the worst European constitutions rather than the best.
In Switzerland there are three official languages, but bills submitted to a referendum are printed in five languages, that is to say, in two Romansh dialects, in addition to the three official languages. According to the 1900 census, these two dialects are spoken by 38,651 out of the 3,315,443 inhabitants of Switzerland, i.e., by a little over one per cent. In the army, commissioned and non-comissioned officers "are given the fullest freedom to speak to the men in their native language". In the cantons of Graubunden and Wallis (each with a population of a little over a hundred thousand) both dialects enjoy complete equality.*
The question is: should we advocate and support this, the living experience of an advanced country, or borrow from the Austrians inventions like "extra-territorial autonomy", which have not yet been tried out anywhere in the world (and not yet been adopted by the Austrians themselves)?
To advocate this invention is to advocate the division of school education according to nationality, and that is a downright harmful idea. The experience of Switzerland proves, however, that the greatest (relative) degree of national peace can be, and has been, ensured in practice where you have a consistent (again relative) democracy throughout the state.
"In Switzerland," say people who have studied this question, "there is no national question in the East-European sense of the term. The very phrase (national question) is unknown there. . . ." "Switzerland left the struggle between nationalities a long way behind, in 1797-1803."[*]
This means that the epoch of the great French Revolution, which provided the most democratic solution of the current problems of the transition from feudalism to capitalism, succeeded incidentally, en passant, in ''soIving " the national question.
Let the Semkovskys, Liebmans, and other opportunists now try to assert that this "exclusively Swiss" solution is inapplicable to any uyezd or even part of an uyezd in Russia, where out of a population of only 200,000 forty thousand speak two dialects and want to have complete equality of language in their area!
Advocacy of complete equality of nations and languages distinguishes only the consistently democratic elements in each nation (i.e., only the proletarians), and unites them, not according to nationality, but in a profound and earnest desire to improve the entire system of state. On the contrary, advocacy of "cultural-national autonomy", despite the pious wishes of individuals and groups, divides the nations and in fact draws the workers and the bourgeoisie of any one nation closer together (the adoption of this "cultural-national autonomy" by all the Jewish bourgeois parties).
Guaranteeing the rights of a national minority is inseparably linked up with the principle of complete equality. In my article in Severnaya Pravda this principle was expressed in almost the same terms as in the later, official and more accurate decision of the conference of Marxists. That decision demands "the incorporation in the constitution of a fundamental law which shall declare null and void all privileges enjoyed by any one nation and all infringements of the rights of a national minority".
Mr. Liebman tries to ridicule this formula and asks: "Who knows what the rights of a national minority are?" Do these rights, he wants to know, include the right of the minority to have "its own programme" for the national schools? How large must the national minority be to have the right to have its own judges, officials, and schools with instruction in his own language? Mr. Liebman wants it to be inferred from these questions that a "positive " national programme is essential.
Actually, these questions clearly show what reactionary ideas our Bundist tries to smuggle through under cover of a dispute on supposedly minor details and particulars.
"Its own programme" in its national schools! . . . Marxists, my dear nationalist-socialist, have a general school programme which demands, for example, an absolutely secular school. As far as Marxists are concerned, no departure from this general programme is anywhere or at any time permissible in a democratic state (the question of introducing any "local" subjects, languages, and so forth into it being decided by the local inhabitants). However, from the principle of "taking educational affairs out of the hands of the state" and placing them under the control of the nations, it ensues that we, the workers, must allow the "nations" in our democratic state to spend the people's money on clerical schools! Without being aware of the fact, Mr. Liebman has clearly demonstrated the reactionary nature of "cultural-national autonomy"!
"How large must a national minority be?" This is not defined even in the Austrian programme, of which the Bundists are enamoured. It says (more briefly and less clearly than our programme does): "The rights of the national minorities are protected by a special law to be passed by the Imperial Parliament" (§4 of the Brünn programme).
Why has nobody asked the Austrian Social-Democrats the question: what exactly is that law, and exactly which rights and of which minority is it to protect?
That is because all sensible people understand that it is inappropriate and impossible to define particulars in a programme. A programme lays down only fundamental principles. In this case the fundamental principle is implied with the Austrians, and directly expressed in the decision of the latest conference of Russian Marxists. That principle is: no national privileges and no national inequality.
Let us take a concrete example to make the point clear to the Bundist. According to the schoal census of January 18, 1911, St. Petersburg elementary schools under the Ministry of Public "Education" were attended by 48,076 pupils. Of these, 396, i.e., less than one per cent, were Jews. The other figures are: Rumanian pupils -- 2, Georgians -- 1, Armenians -- 3, etc.[22] Is it possible to draw up a "positive" national programme that will cover this diversity of relationships and conditions? (And St. Petersburg is, of course, far from being the city with the most mixed population in Russia.) Even such specialists in national "subtleties" as the Bundists would hardly be able to draw up) such a programme.
And yet, if the constitution of the country contained a fundamental law rendering null and void every measure that infringed the rights of a minority, any citizen would be able to demand the rescinding of orders prohibiting, for example, the hiring, at state expense, of special teachers of Hebrew, Jewish history, and the like, or the provision of state-owned premises for lectures for Jewish, Armenian, or Rumanian children, or even for the one Georgian child. At all events, it is by no means impossible to meet, on the basis of equality, all the reasonable and just wishes of the national minorities, and nobody will say that advocacy of equality is harmful. On the other hand, it would certainly be harmful to advocate division of schools according to nationality, to advocate, for example, special schools for Jewish children in St. Petersburg, and it would be utterly impossible to set up national schools for every national minority, for one, two or three children.
Furthermore, it is impossible, in any country-wide law, to define how large a national minority must he to be entitled to special schools, or to special teachers for supplementary subjects, etc.
On the other hand, a country-wide law establishing equality can be worked out in detail and developed through special regulations and the decisions of regional Diets, and town, Zemstvo, village commune and other authorities.
6. CENTRALISATION AND AUTONOMY
In his rejoinder, Mr. Liebman writes:
"Take our Lithuania, the Baltic province, Poland, Volhynia, South Russia, etc. -- everywhere you will find a mixed population; there is not a single city that does not have a large national minority. However far decentralisation is carried out, different nationalities will always be found living together in different places (chiefly in urban communities), and it is democratism that surrenders a national minority to the national majority. But, as we know, V. I. is opposed to the federal state structure and the boundless decentralisation that exist in the Swiss Federation. The question is: what was his point in citing the example of Switzerland?"
My object in citing the example of Switzerland has already been explained above. I have also explained that the problem of protecting the rights of a national minority can be solved only by a country-wide law promulgated in a consistently democratic state that does not depart from the principle of equality. But in the passage quoted above, Mr. Liebman repeats still another of the most common (and most fallacious) arguments (or sceptical remarks) which are usually made against the Marxist national programme, and which, therefore, deserve examination.
Marxists are, of course, opposed to federation and decentralisation, for the simple reason that capitalism requires for its development the largest and most centralised possible states. Other conditions being equal, the class-conscious proletariat will always stand for the larger state. It will always fight against medieval particularism, and will always welcome the closest possible economic amalgamation of large territories in which the proletariat's struggle against the bourgeoisie can develop on a broad basis.
Capitalism's broad and rapid development of the productive forces calls for large, politically compact and united territories, since only here can the bourgeois class -- together with its inevitable antipode, the proletarian class -- unite and sweep away all the old, medieval, caste, parochial, petty-national, religious and other barriers.
The right of nations to self-determination, i.e., the right to secede and form independent national states, will be dealt with elsewhere.* But while, and insofar as, different
nations constitute a single state, Marxists will never, under any circumstances, advocate either the federal principle or decentralisation. The great centralised state is a tremendous historical step forward from medieval disunity to the future socialist unity of the whole world, and only via such a state (inseparably connected with capitalism), can there be any road to socialism.
It would, however, be inexcusable to forget that in advocating centralism we advocate exclusively democratic centralism. On this point all the philistines in general, and the nationalist philistines in particular (including the late Dragomanov[23]), have so confused the issue that we are obliged again and again to spend time clarifying it.
Far from precluding local self-government, with autonomy for regions having special economic and social conditions, a distinct national composition of the population, and so forth, democratic centralism necessarily demands both. In Russia centralism is constantly confused with tyranny and bureaucracy. This confusion has naturally arisen from the history of Russia, but even so it is quite inexcusable for a Marxist to yield to it.
This can best be explained by a concrete example.
In her lengthy article "The National Question and Autonomy",[*] Rosa Luxemburg, among many other curious errors (which we shall deal with below), commits the exceptionally curious one of trying to restrict the demand for autonomy to Poland alone.
But first let us see how she defines autonomy.
Rosa Luxemburg admits -- and being a Marxist she is of course bound to admit -- that all the major and important economic and political questions of capitalist society must be dealt with exclusively by the central parliament of the whole country concerned, not by the autonomous Diets of the individual regions. These questions include tariff policy, laws governing commerce and industry, transport and means of communication (railways, post, telegraph, telephone, etc.), the army, the taxation system, civil** and criminal law, the general principles of education (for example, the law on purely secular schools, on universal education, on the minimum programme, on democratic school management, etc.), the labour protection laws, and political liberties (right of association), etc., etc.
* Przeglad Socjaldemokratyczny,[24] Kraków, 1908 and 1909.
** In elaborating her ideas Rosa Luxemburg goes into details, mentioning, for example and quite rightly -- divorce laws (No. 12, p. 162 of the above-mentioned journal).
The autonomous Diets -- on the basis of the general laws of the country -- should deal with questions of purely local, regional, or national significance. Amplifying this idea in great -- not to say excessive -- detail, Rosa Luxemburg mentions, for example, the construction of local railways (No. 12, p. 149) and local highways (No. 14-15, p. 376), etc.
Obviously, one cannot conceive of a modern, truly democratic state that did not grant such autonomy to every region having any appreciably distinct economic and social features, populations of a specific national composition, etc. The principle of centralism, which is essential for the development of capitalism, is not violated by this (local and regional) autonomy, but on the contrary is applied by it democratically, not bureaucratically. The broad, free and rapid development of capitalism would be impossible, or at least greatly impeded, by the absence of such autonomy, which facilitates the concentration of capital, the development of the productive forces, the unity of the bourgeoisie and the unity of the proletariat on a country-wide scale; for bureaucratic interference in purely local (regional, national, and other) questions is one of the greatest obstacles to economic and political development in general, and an obstacle to centralism in serious, important and fundamental matters in particular.
One cannot help smiling, therefore, when reading how our magnificent Rosa Luxemburg tries to prove, with a very serious air and "purely Marxist" phrases, that the demand for autonomy is applicable only to Poland and only by way of exception! Of course, there is not a grain of "parochial" patriotism in this; we have here only "practical" considerations . . . in the case of Lithuania, for example.
Rosa Luxemburg takes four gubernias -- Vilna, Kovno, Grodno and Suvalki -- assuring her readers (and herself) that these are inhabited "mainly" by Lithuanians; and by adding the inhabitants of these gubernias together she finds that Lithuanians constitute 23 per cent of the total population, and if Zhmuds are added, they constitute 31 per cent -- less than a third. The natural inference is that the idea of autonomy for Lithuania is "arbitrary and artificial" (No. 10, p. 807).
The reader who is familiar with the commonly known defects of our Russian official statistics will quickly see Rosa Luxemburg's mistake. Why take Grodno Gubernia where the Lithuanians constitute only 0.2 per cent, one-fifth of one per cent, of the population? Why take the whole Vilna Gubernia and not its Troki Uyezd alone, where the Lithuanians constitute the majority of the population? Why take the whole Suvalki Gubernia and put the number of Lithuanians at 52 per cent of the population, and not the Lithuanian uyezds of that gubernia, i.e., five out of the seven, in which Lithuanians constitute 72 per cent of the population?
It is ridiculous to talk about the conditions and demands of modern capitalism while at the same time taking not the "modern", not the "capitalist", but the medieval, feudal and official-bureaucratic administrative divisions of Russia, and in their crudest form at that (gubernias instead of uyezds). Plainly, there can be no question of any serious local reform in Russia until these divisions are abolished and superseded by a really "modern" division that really meets the requirements, not of the Treasury, not of the bureaucracy, not of routine, not of the landlords, not of the priests, but of capitalism; and one of the modern requirements of capitalism is undoubtedly the greatest possible national uniformity of the population, for nationality and language identity are an important factor making for the complete conquest of the home market and for complete freedom of economic intercourse.
Oddly enough, this obvious mistake of Rosa Luxemburg's is repeated by the Bundist Medem, who sets out to prove, not that Poland's specific features are "exceptional", but that the principle of national-territorial autonomy is unsuitable (the Bundists stand for national extra-territorial autonomy!). Our Bundists and liquidators collect from all over the world all the errors and all the opportunist vacillations of Social-Democrats of different countries and diflerent nations and appropriate to themselves the worst they can find in world Social-Democracy. A scrap-book of Bundist and liquidator writings could, taken together, serve as a model Social-Democratic museum of bad taste.
Regional autonomy, Medem tells us didactically, is good for a region or a "territory", but not for Lettish, Estonian or other areas (okrugs ), which have populations ranging from half a million to two million and areas equal to a gubernia. "That would not be autonomy, but simply a Zemstvo. . . . Over this Zemstvo it would be necessary to establish real autonomy" . . . and the author goes on to condemn the "break-up" of the old gubernias and uyezds.[*]
* V. Medem: "A Contribution to the Presentation of the National Question in Russia", Vestnik Yevropy,[25] 1912, Nos. 8 and 9.
As a matter of fact, the preservation of the medieval, feudal, official administrative divisions means the "break up" and mutilation of the conditions of modern capitalism. Only people imbued with the spirit of these divisions can, with the learned air of the expert, speculate on the contraposition of "Zemstvo" and "autonomy", calling for the stereotyped application of "autonomy" to large regions and of the Zemstvo to small ones. Modern capitalism does not demand these bureaucratic stereotypes at all. Why national areas with populations, not only of half a million, but even of 50,000, should not be able to enjoy autonomy; why such areas should not be able to unite in the most diverse ways with neighbouring areas of different dimensions into a single autonomous "territory" if that is convenient or necessary for economic intercourse -- these things remain the secret of the Bundist Medem.
We would mention that the Brünn Social-Democratic national programme is based entirely on national-territorial autonomy; it proposes that Austria should be divided into "nationally distinct" areas "instead of the historical crown lands" (Clause 2 of the Brünn programme). We would not go as far as that. A uniform national population is undoubtedly one of the most reliable factors making for free, broad and really modern commercial intercourse. It is beyond doubt that not a single Marxist, and not even a single firm democrat, will stand up for the Austrian crown lands
and the Russian gubernias and uyezds (the latter are not as bad as the Austrian crown lands, but they are very bad nevertheless), or challenge the necessity of replacing these obsolete divisions by others that will conform as far as possible with the national composition of the population. Lastly, it is beyond doubt that in order to eliminate all national oppression it is very important to create autonomous areas, however small, with entirely homogeneous populations, towards which members of the respective nationalities scattered all over the country, or even all over the world, could gravitate, and with which they could enter into relations and free associations of every kind. All this is indisputable, and can be argued against only from the hidebound, bureaucratic point of view.
The national composition of the population, however, is one of the very important economic factors, but not the sole and not the most important factor. Towns, for example, play an extremely important economic role under capitalism, and everywhere, in Poland, in Lithuania, in the Ukraine, in Great Russia, and elsewhere, the towns are marked by mixed populations. To cut the towns off from the villages and areas that economically gravitate towards them, for the sake of the "national" factor, would be absurd and impossible. That is why Marxists must not take their stand entirely and exclusively on the "national-territorial" principle.
The solution of the problem proposed by the last conference of Russian Marxists is far more correct than the Austrian. On this question, the conference advanced the following proposition:
". . . must provide for wide regional autonomy [not for Poland alone, of course, but for all the regions of Russia]* and fully democratic local self-government, and the boundaries of the self-governing and autonomous regions must be determined [not by the boundaries of the present gubernias, uyezds, etc., but] by the local inhabitants themselves on the basis of their economic and social conditions, national make-up of the population, etc."**
* Interpolations in square brackets (within passages quoted by Lenin) are by Lenin, unless otherwise indicated. --Ed.
** See present edition, Vol. 19, pp. 427-28. --Ed.
Here the national composition of the population is placed on the same level as the other conditions (economic first,
then social, etc.) which must serve as a basis for determining the new boundaries that will meet the needs of modern capitalism, not of bureaucracy and Asiatic barharism. The local population alone can "assess" those conditions with full precision, and on that basis the central parliament of the country will determine the boundaries of the autonomous regions and the powers of autonomous Diets.* *
*
We have still to examine the question of the right of nations to self-determination. On this question a whole collection of opportunists of all nationalities -- the liquidator Semkovsky, the Bundist Liebman and the Ukrainian nationalist-socialist Lev Yurkevick -- have set to work to "popularise" the errors of Rosa Luxemburg. This question, which has been so utterly confused by this whole "collection", will be dealt with in our next article.[26]
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