Early Soviet
documents on the
national question
• Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia This declaration was adopted by the Soviet government a few days after the revolutionary victory. It was published in Pravda on November 16, 1917.
THE OCTOBER workers' and peasants' revolution began under the common flag of emancipation.
The peasants are emancipated from the yoke of the big landowners, because private property on the land no longer exists, it is abolished.
The soldiers and sailors are emancipated from the power of autocratic generals; in future, generals will be elected and subject to recall. The workers are emancipated from the whims and arbitrariness of the capitalists, because, starting from today, the workers will establish control over the factories and workplaces.
There remain only the peoples of Russia, who have waited patiently under the yoke and the arbitrariness, and who must immediately take charge of their emancipation and liberation.
In the epoch of Tsarism, the Russian peoples were incited one against the other. The results of this policy are known: massacres and pogroms on the one hand, slavery of peoples on the other.
There can be no return to this shameful policy. Today, it must be replaced by a voluntary and honest policy of unity of the Russian peoples.
During the epoch of imperialism, after the February Revolution, when power passed into the hands of the Cadet bourgeoisie, the policy of incitement was replaced by a cowardly policy of distrust towards the Russian peoples, a policy of bickering and of provocations wrapped up in the words of
"liberty" and "equality" of the peoples. The results of this policy are known:
increasing antagonism between the nationalities, a lack of mutual
This shameful policy of lies and distrust, of bickering and provocation, must be put to an end. It must be replaced today by an open and honest policy leading to complete mutual confidence of the Russian peoples.
It is only through such unity that the Russian workers and peasants can forge a revolutionary force capable of defending itself against all attacks
Starting from this principle, the First Congress of Councils in June this year proclaimed the right of the Russian peoples to self-determination.
The Second Congress of Soviets last October confirmed this right in a more
Carrying out the will of these councils, the Council of Peoples Commissars has resolved to base its approach on the following principles concerning the
2) The right of the Russian peoples to self-determination, as far as separa-
3) Suppression of all privileges and restrictions, national or religious;
4) Free development of national minorities and ethnic groups living on
These decrees will be drawn up immediately after the setting up of a comthe People's Commissar for Nationalities — Yussef Dugashvili Stalin;
the President of the Council of People's Commissars — V. Ulyanov
44 International Marxist Review confidence.
decisive and precise manner.
question of nationalities:
tion and the constitution of an independent state;
Russian territory;
mission on the nationalities.
from the imperialist and annexationist bourgeoisie.
1) Equality and sovereignty of the Russian peoples;
In the name of the Russian republic,
(Lenin).
Early Soviet documents on the national question 45 • The 1919 Programme The following are extracts from the Bolshevik Party's 1919 programme concerning the national question.
1. The corner-stone is the policy aiming to unite the proletariat and semiproletariat of different nationalities with the goal of leading a common revolutionary battle to overthrow the landowners and the bourgeoisie.
2. With the goal of overcoming the distrust of the working masses in the oppressed countries in relation to the proletariat of the states that oppress these countries, it is necessary to suppress all privileges of all national groups, to establish total equality of rights for all nationalities, and to recognize the right to secession of the colonies and non-sovereign nations.
3. With the same goal, the party proposes as one of the transitional forms towards total unity; a federal union of states organized on the Soviet model.
4. Concerning the question of who will express the will of a nation to separate itself, the Russian Communist Party adopts the classic point of view by taking into account the historic stage of development of a given nation: is it a nation evolved from the Middle Ages to bourgeois democracy or from bourgeois democracy to Soviet or proletarian democracy, etc.?
In all cases, the proletariat of nations that have oppressed other nations must be particularly prudent and give special attention to the remnants of national sentiment among the working masses of the oppressed or nonsovereign nations. Only such a policy can allow the conditions to be created for a truly lasting and voluntary unity between the nationally differentiated elements of the international proletariat, as proved by the experience of the unity of a series of national Soviet republics around Soviet Russia.