When Lenin and the Bolsheviks, recognising the oppressive history of the Tsarist Empire, argued for the Russian Marxists, whilst opposing national self-determination and separation, to emphasis the right to free secession, of the oppressed nations within the Empire, they did so, because of that specific history of Tsarism, and its oppression of those nations. The entire purpose of it, was to be able to try to mobilise the opposition of those oppressed nations in a fight against Tsarism. It was to say to the workers and peasants of those oppressed nations, “We are not the Russian ruling class. We have no desire to oppress you as they do. We want you to stay part of the state, so that we can engage in a joint struggle against Tsarism, and to build a workers and peasants state in place of it. However, to show you that we mean it, if you do want to separate, we will defend your right to do so.”
In other words, there is nothing in the position of Lenin and Marxism that supports national self-determination. On the contrary, we are opponents of it, because we want to build the largest possible states, because that is what a rational development even of capital requires, and what Socialism is impossible without. Indeed, we do not even favour the loosening of the existing unitary nature of states, in favour of federations, or “devolution”. We are, as Lenin says, not advocates of national self-determination, but the self-determination of the working class, irrespective of national boundaries.
“As the party of the proletariat, the Social-Democratic Party considers it to be its positive and principal task to further the self-determination of the proletariat in each nationality rather than that of peoples or nations. We must always and unreservedly work for the very closest unity of the proletariat of all nationalities, and it is only in isolated and exceptional cases that we can advance and actively support demands conducive to the establishment of a new class state or to the substitution of a looser federal unity, etc., for the complete political unity of a state.”
Indeed, for the reasons described previously, Marx and Engels, not only opposed calling for national self-determination, but, in the case of the small European nations, even opposed supporting their right to national self-determination if they demanded it, because it could only lead to a reliance on – at that time – the Tsarist Empire, just as today, reactionary nationalist forces tend to look to US imperialism to solve their historical tasks for them. Similarly, although Lenin, as a tactic to win support from the oppressed nations argued that, although they did not advocate national self-determination, they could defend the right to free secession, where a nation voted for it, he also made clear that no such defence could be given unconditionally or in every case, because any such demand could merely disguise these behind the scenes wider intrigues of larger imperial powers, or might simply be a ruse for the old landlord class and clergy to re-establish themselves, or else, any such struggle might result in a war between larger powers, which would be against the overall interests of the global working-class drawn into it.
“The bourgeoisie always places its national demands in the forefront, and does so in categorical fashion. With the proletariat, however, these demands are subordinated to the interests of the class struggle. Theoretically, you cannot say in advance whether the bourgeois-democratic revolution will end in a given nation seceding from another nation, or in its equality with the latter; in either case, the important thing for the proletariat is to ensure the development of its class. For the bourgeoisie it is important to hamper this development by pushing the aims of its “own” nation before those of the proletariat. That is why the proletariat confines itself, so to speak, to the negative demand for recognition of the right to self-determination, without giving guarantees to any nation, and without undertaking to give anything at the expense of another nation.”
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