Communique

Lenin’s Legacy 100 years on

An online conference organized by International Socialist Center Christian Rakovsky andRedMed web network

On January 21, 2024, exactly a hundred years from Lenin’s death, an online international Conference dedicated to his legacy successfully took place, organized by the International Socialist Center “Christian Rakovsky” and the RedMed web network.

Many participants from all Continents, from the Americas to the Antipodes, Australia, from all parts of Europe and Russia to Africa, the Middle East and Asia have joined this collective and open Marxist rethinking on the historical role, contribution and actuality of the legacy of Vladimir I. Lenin, the Bolshevik leader and architect of the victory of the October 1917 Socialist Revolution.

Representatives of revolutionary parties, organizations, movements, independent militants and theoreticians from 20 countries were present. Speakers took the floor or sent thoughtful messages that were read, in a Marathon of more than eight hours: from Russia, Ukraine, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Cuba, South Africa, Finland, Catalonia/Spain, Sardinia/Italy, Britain, France, Hungary, Greece, Turkey, Lebanon, Palestine, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan, and Australia.

The Conference started with opening remarks by Sungur Savran (DIP, Turkey), and it was structured at the following sessions:

1. An Introductory Session, stating with opening speeches by the organizers: on behalf of the International Socialist Center “Christian Rakovsky” Savvas Mikhail -Matsas (EEK, Greece) spoke on Lenin For the Future, and, on behalf of the RedMed web network, Sungur Savran spoke on Lenin’s strategic vision of the unification of all post-revolutionary socialist states in a federation, the exact opposite of national-communism.

They were followed by two guest speakers: Osvaldo Coggiola, well known Trotskyist militant from Argentina and Professor of History in the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil with the presentation From Lenin to “Leninism”, and Tamás Kráusz, Professor of Russian History at the Eötvös University of Budapest, director of the Hungarian Marxist journal Eszmélet, author of “Reconstructing Lenin, an intellectual biography” (2016 Isaac Deutscher Prize) who spoke on Lenin’s Legacy-An Alternative to Capitalism.

2. A session on Lenin as Leader of the Soviet Union, with speakers from the “Land of October“:

Iosif Abramson (Russian Party of Communists- RPK), Darya Mitina (Unified Communist Party-OKP), Mikhail Konashev (Association “Soviet Union”), Tatiana Filomonova (Russian National Library Plekhanov House), David Epshtein (Professor of Economics, Chief Research Fellow, Saint Petersburg Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences), Lyudmila Bulavka-Buzgalina (Professor of Philosophy at the Lomonosov Moscow State University, director of the Center of Modern Marxist Studies, movement/journal Alternatives), Andrei Kolganov (Professor of Political Economy at the Lomonosov Moscow State University, editor in Chief of the journal Questions of Political Economy), Yuri Shakhin, former Professor at the University inOdessa, Ukraine, now in Sevastopol.

3. A session with The view of Latin America:

Luis Bernardo Murtinho Pericás (Professor of History at the University of Sao Paulo-USP, Brazil), Flo |Menezes (Composer, Professor at the Universidad Estadual Paulista- Unesp, Sao Paulo, Brazil, organizer of the Trotsky’s International Encounters in Cuba and Brazil)), Arlene Clemesha (Historian, Brazil), Edgardo Loguercio (Boletin Classista, Brazil), Frank Garcia Hernandez (Comunistas, Cuba), José Capitán (Opción Obrera, Venezuela)

4. A session with Members and Friends of the Rakovsky Center:

Speakers: Alex Mitchel – Judith White (Australia, Alex Mitchel was a former leader of Britain’s Workers Revolutionary Party and its global affiliate, the International Committee of the Fourth International. A former journalist, Mitchell now lives in Australia where he is an acclaimed author. Judith White, his partner-wife, writes books on culture and art history), Dimitris Mizaras (Marxist Workers League-MTL, Finland) G. Bêgéneix, (Renaissance Ouvirère Révolutioannaire-ROR, France), Latief Parker (Critique, a Journal of Socialist Theory, South Africa), Gian

Franco Camboni (Sardegna Rossa, Sardinia / Italy), Toni Marcó (Red Roja, Catalonia/Spain), Levent Dölek (DIP, Turkey), Ernesto Agelis//Mitrofanis Patsouras (EEK, Greece)

5. Finally, a Special Session was devoted on Palestine, after the dramatic events of the October 7, 2023 Palestinian Operation Al Quds Flood led by Hamas and the on-going genocidal war launched by the Zionist State in Gaza. In solidarity to the Palestinian people and the Resistance the following speakers took the floor:

Campagne unitaire pour la liberation de Georges Abdallah,(Lebanon), Jeremy Lester(Britain/Italy, reporting from the West Bank, Occupied Palestine), Savvas Mikhail Matsas (EEK, Greece), Burak Saygan (DIP-Turkey), and Kutlu Dâne (Friends of Palestine, Turkey)

The Conference finished with the song of the Internationale.

Between the sessions were projected two films by the contemporary Russian film director Victor Tkachev Chto takoe Vozhdism? (“What is a Leader’s Cult?”) and Pamiat ( Memory). The organizers thank Comrade Tkachev for his contribution!

For more information:

The Lenin Conference of the “Christian Rakovsky” Center / Red Med web network is available on YouTube

See also the article by Burak Saygan, January 23, 2024, at redmed.org: http://redmed.org/article/kicking-lenin-year-rakovsky-redmed-international-conference-legacy-lenin-his-centenary

International Socialist Center “Christian Rakovsky” RedMed web network

Savvas Mikhail Matsas

Lenin For the Future

Introductory Session.

Opening speech on behalf of the “Christian Rakovsky” International Socialist Center

1. Dear Comrades, товарищи, compañeros y compañeras, camarades, compagni e compagne, yodlasar, σύντροφοι και συντρόφισσες

Welcome to the International Conference on Lenin’s Legacy 100 Years On organized by the International Socialist Center “Christian Rakovsky” and the RedMed web network!

Our deliberations today, January 21, 2024, exactly 100 years from the day when Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, the leader of the Great October 1917 Socialist Revolution passed away to eternity, marks the beginning of a much needed, fresh, collective reflection on his revolutionary legacy. It is not a formal celebration of a “harmless icon”, of a legacy reduced into a fossilized, dead dogma. We need a new dialectical-critical turn to a historical source, which is not at all dried up. It remains an indispensable source of inspiration and creativity for revolutionary theory and practice for all those who today fight for the self-emancipation of the working class, for the liberation of the exploited and oppressed humanity. With this spirit, we want to declare this year 2024 as the Year Lenin!

Vladimir Lenin, the architect of the victory of the Red October, the October Revolution itself as well as the epic and tragic trajectory of the Soviet Union are not a relic of the past but a necessary preparation for the future!

2. By opening our Conference, we want to pay tribute to all those who heroically defended against all its gravediggers and creatively developed Lenin’s legacy the last 100 years both, in the Soviet Union and all over the world.

Particularly, today, in this Conference, we want to pay tribute to our Comrade Alexander Vladimirovitch Buzgalin, an internationally well known Marxist, Professor of Political Economy and of Marxist Studies in Lomonosov Moscow State University, a founder of the Alternativyi movement and journal, author of many important theoretical books and articles, organizer of many successful scientific, cultural and political events, in Russia and internationally.

He dedicated all his life of theoretical research and political struggle, specially in the tragic period following the collapse of the Soviet Union, to defend communism against bureaucratic deformations and bourgeois slanders, to promote internationalism in action, to develop Lenin’s heritage, to renew a creative Marxism, to educate a new young generation for the paths of emancipation, towards a Homo Novus Creator.

3. Why to return to Lenin today? Why we need to rediscover his theoretical and political revolutionary contribution now, in our turbulent times?

At the Centenary of Marx’s birth, in 2018, we had noticed¹ the reactions of well known spokesmen of the capitalist class and of the mainstream bourgeois Press: the respectful bourgeois American newspaper New York Times, on April 30, 2018, has published an article, with the cheerful title: Happy Birthday, Karl Marx, You Were Right! ² Soon after, on May 4, 2018, the voice of the City of London, the equally respectful and bourgeois Financial Times hosted a book review by the economic historian Adam Tooze under the impressive headlines “Why Karl Marx is more relevant than ever”³.

Nothing similar could be noticed today, at the Centenary of Lenin’s death. Why?

The belated, after the event, recognition of Marx by his opponents is caused by the eruption, in 2008 , of an explosive, unexpected by them, on-going global capitalist crisis, which is spiraling without solution up to now. They have to turn back to Marx, with horror, because of the total inability of bourgeois economics to explain the crisis . They have to admit that it “cannot explain the past– the lack of prognosis of the 2007 global crisis and the lack of understanding of its deepest causes; also it cannot understand the present – why the crisis renmains unresolved despite the extraordinary, heterodox measures of gigantic stimulus packages, quantitative easing, and nearly zero interest rates, taken by central banks and governments; and, last but not at all least, it cannot forsee the future although sinister signs appear already in the horizon.”⁴ As one of them , Chris Giles wrote: “The future is uncertain. The present is uncertain. The past is uncertain ”⁵

In these conditions of theoretical bankruptcy, epistemological impasse and generalized disorientation, liberal economists like Nouriel Roubini can “ agree that Marx’s conviction that capitalism has an inbuilt tendency to destroy itself remains as prescient as ever”⁶

The ruling class, its think tanks, analysts and apologists can agree that a destruction of capitalism, even an end of the world is possible –but never a victorious socialist revolution! And Lenin is insolubly connected precisely with the victorious October Revolution.

To add insult to the injury, the Bolshevik leader himself charcterized this event as the beginning of a world socialist revolution, a historical prospect and a horrifying future for all rulers in the present world!

The vast majority of them try to console themselves thinking that Lenin is burried for ever in 1991 under the ruins of the disintegration of the Soviet Union,. They conclude, consequently, that, together with Lenin, was burried the threat , which s emerged in 1917 of a revolutionary ovethrow of world capitalism .

This dominant wishful thinking proved to be an illusion. It ended together with Fukuyama’s falacy of the “end of History”, of the “final and complete victory of liberal capitalism”, and of the delusion of a “monopolar moment” of an American ruled “world Empire”. Contrary to bourgeois expectations, History has accelerated its march, liberal capitalism plunged into a protracted and escalating global crisis, the decline of American capitalism and of its world hegemony are manifest in more and more brutal forms, intensifying its imperialist war drive. War is the continuation and extension, with other means. of a desperate policy to counteract the decline and fall of a historically outdated social system

If everything was historically settled for US and global capitalism with the catastrophe of the USSR why they need to complete the 1991 disaster by a NATO proxy war to fragment, colonize and rule under puppet regimes the former Soviet space, the post-Soviet Russia and, on this war path, China?

Is it accidental that US/NATO imperialism considers as primary strategic targets and urgent need to attack Russia and China, two countries where the greatest social revolutions of the 20^th century took place? Why their absorption in a decaying global capitalism produces and needs the drive towards a catastrophic world war?

They are simply afraid from competition by another belated rival within the limits of their decling world system or they are terrified by the possibility of a reversal of the 1991 disaster?

With wars at the heart of Europe and in the Middle East, and dozens other military conflicts in the Global South, declining US and global capitalism, imperialism as Lenin has profoundly analyzed its nature, brings humanity at the brink of the abyss of a nuclear holocaust.

Are they afraid less from an end of the world than from a new “Lenin moment”?

4 In today’s conditions of an insoluble global capitalist crisis escalating into an impeding imperialist world war catastrophe, Lenin’s theoretical work on imperialism acquires a burning actuality.

After the eruption of the First World War, the unfolding barbarism in Europe and the collapse of the international socialist Left, Lenin’s struggle, often in solitude or within a small minority, represents the most dramatic but also the most creative period of his revolutionary life. It was absolutely vital for preparing, politically re-arming and leading, Lenin together with Trotsky, the Bolshevik Party at the head of the masses organized in Soviets to the triumph of the 1917 October Revolution.

The rise of a new revolutionary subjectivity was a process neither automatic nor linear at all. The road to Soviet power was full of obstacles, traps, conflicts, splits, mortal counter-revolutionary dangers, repression of the vanguard of the working class, realignment and re-orientation of revolutionary forces within and beyond the Bolsheviks. Without a leap in revolutionary theory, no such a tremendous leap in revolutionary practice could be possible.

Trotsky had made, in his autobiography the following profound assessment meditating on the victory of Soviet power in 1917:

“Marxism considers itself the conscious expression of the unconscious historical process. But the “unconscious” process, in the historic – philosophical sense of the term not in the psychological, coincides with its conscious expression only at its highest point, when the masses, by sheer elemental pressure, break through the social routine and give victorious expression to the deepest needs of historical development. And at such moments the highest theoretical consciousness of the epoch merges with the immediate action of those oppressed masses who are farthest away from theory. The creative union of the conscious with the unconscious is what one usually calls “inspiration.” Revolution is the inspired frenzy of history.”⁷

From the eruption of the Great War and the capitulation of the Second International, Lenin had to grasp the specific historical nature of imperialism. On this scientific, historical -dialectical materialist understanding, he clearly conceived the entire field of forces on the world historical scene. The imperialist war was not only a clash between solely the Great Powers, a military conflict between State. It involved also popular masses, class forces in objectively irreconcilable interests in conflict, in class struggle.

On this basis, Lenin developed the line of transformation of the imperialist world war into an international socialist revolution,. Finally, with this internationalist line as a compass, he succeeded to make the Bolsheviks and the Soviets of workers, peasants and soldiers able to transform a war catastrophe into the triumph of socialist revolution in Russia.

The revolutionary program was not an already given, fixed list of demands but a theoretically elaborated guide for action from the standpoint of the highest quantitative and qualitative analysis of the changing reality. Without historical materialist dialectics, there is no revolutionary program of a combat proletarian Party

After the initial shock in 1914, the first crucial step of Lenin was a decisive, original and deep re-working of materialist dialectics by a detailed study of Hegel’s Science of Logic as well as a vast philosophical field from Antiquity and Aristotle to the philosophers of the Modern Times and early 20th century. Lenin’s Philosophical Notebooks is a unique testimony on his theoretical laboratory and a vital document of his methodological break with the so-called “orthodox Marxism” of the Second International, the theoretical foundations of its reformist opportunism..

Lenin’s intense philosophical-methodological work and break from mechanical thinking and linear gradualism penetrates and marks all his writings on imperialism, the political center of gravity of his research and activity during the Great War. His small book Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism with the modest subtitle A Popular Outline, presents, under conditions of censorship, in a condensed form, the main results of an immense theoretical labor. It is based on a mountain of empirical facts and a critical study of the main debates on imperialism of that period, particularly from the works of Robson and Pilfering. This tireless critical labor can be seen in his voluminous Notebooks on Imperialism.

In these Notebooks is not absent the evidence of his continuous attention to philosophy, with constant references to dialectics, its categories and concepts, even a note of interest to Hegel’s Phenomenology of the Spirit.

The booklet on Imperialism, Higher Stage of Capitalism has to be carefully studied in connection and within this broader epistemological framework. Any eclectic separation of a particular quotation from the entire context of dialectical – historical materialist inquiry and exposition has disastrous political implications.

5. A typical example, repeated ad nauseam, is the misuse of Lenin’s definition of imperialism by most often quoted than understood five basic economic features

(1) the concentration of production and capital has developed to such a high stage that it has created monopolies which play a decisive role in economic life; (2) the merging of bank capital with industrial capital, and the creation, on the basis of this “finance capital,” of a financial oligarchy; (3) the export of capital as distinguished from the export of commodities acquires exceptional importance; (4) the formation of international monopolist capitalist associations which share the world among themselves and (5) the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers is completed. Imperialism is capitalism at that stage of development at which the dominance of monopolies and finance capital is established; in which the export of capital has acquired pronounced importance; in which the division of the world among the international trusts has begun, in which the division of all territories of the globe among the biggest capitalist powers has been completed. ⁸

This definition is taken out of context and reduced into an abstract, dead formula, to be artificially imposed upon every concrete, living, specific social formation in uneven and combined world historical development. The dialectic between the universal, the particular and the singular disappears.

In this distorting way, the warnings of Lenin himself are ignored. Just before the definition in five basic features, he warns about “the conditional and relative value of all definitions in general, which can never embrace all the concatenations of a phenomenon in its full development”. Immediately after the definition, Lenin points out:“…imperialism can and must be defined differently if we bear in mind not only the basic, purely economic concepts- to which the above definition is limited- but also the historical place of this stage of capitalism in relation to capitalism in general, or the relation between imperialism and the two main trends in the working class movement”⁹– namely the opportunist and the revolutionary trend.

The opportunist trend in our days, sometimes claiming to be even “Leninist”, arbitrarily applies the 5 points definition to declare Russia and China as imperialist countries to legitimize their “equidistant” position in the US/NATO proxy war in Ukraine or in the US imperialist aggressive antagonism against China..

In other versions, the same method of formal justification of a reactionary policy of “keeping equal distances”, while paying lip service to Lenin against Lenin, uses the pseudo-concept of “sub-imperialism” or of “peripheral imperialism” or of “capitalism in transition to imperialism” to describe conflicts between the Global North and the Global South..

These pseudo-concepts totally ignore and/or reject Lenin’s central approach to the historical nature of imperialism: its analysis and recognition as an epoch of transition from a “decaying”, “parasitic”, “rotten”, “agonizing” capitalism – the adjectives are Lenin’s- to Socialism.

This transition to a higher social mode of production beyond capitalism, to a new higher form of social life beyond capital’s fetishist form [‘ Die Gestalt des gesellschaftlichen Lebensprozesses’-Marx¹⁰] can begin from one or several countries but it can be completed only on a world scale. There is an objective necessity for a permanent world revolution arising precisely from the nature of the transitional epoch of imperialism itself, which prevents a completion of a world transition to be fulfilled isolated in a single country. I

6. In Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, two concluding chapters, chapter VII (Imperialism as a special stage of capitalism)and Chapter VIII (Parasitism and Decay of Capitalism) make crystal clear the nature of the imperialist epoch. This is why these two particular chapters either are ignored or rejected as “wrong” or ‘obsolete”.

Always, ‘new”, ever “higher” stages of a permanently renovated capitalism are discovered by apologists of the status quo. Plus ça change plus c’ est la même chose.. There can be only an Eternal Return of the same immortal capitalism in different forms,

The political implications of such impressionistic assumptions are immense for the present and the future. “The past is uncertain. The present is uncertain. The future is uncertain” as the mainstream bourgeois ideology admits. No orientation is possible, or even necessary The only permitted conclusion nothing else than the old Thatcher’s sophism: There I No Alternative-TINA.

Undoubtedly, many and great changes took place during the 100 years from Lenin’s death. An epoch of transition is precisely a historical process of constant and brusque changes. NOT a smooth evolution of gradual progress “of decrease and increase” but, of “struggle of opposites”¹¹, of unfolding contradictions and transformation to the opposite, leaps forward and regressions, unexpected turns from long sequences of calm and stagnation to volcanic explosions, of wars, revolutions and counterrevolutions.

An epoch of historical decline, Hegel had pointed out¹² is the negative expression of the emergence of a higher principle of social organization In the current epoch, declining Capitalism is its special historical stage “when”, Lenin writes,“the features of the epoch of transition from capitalism to a higher social and economic system had taken shape and revealed themselves in all spheres”¹³ This is the essential point of Lenin’s analysis: imperialism is not an expansionary policy but the historical stage of a parasitic, decaying, agonizing capitalism. It is an epoch of transition to the higher socialist reorganization of society; a non linear process of transformation into a communist society, the realm of freedom. This is the central point ignored and/or rejected by all inventors of new “post- imperialist stages”.

7. Together with this essential point is interconnected another one: the transition beyond capitalism is not, as in the past, a transition from one form of class society to another form of class society. It is an entire historical epoch of transition from class to a classless society, world communism. It is not an automatic linear evolution but it needs a world socialist revolution.

The role of revolutionary subjectivity becomes immense, preponderant., To lead the transition forward, it is needed the conscious participation of the working class as a universal class, which cannot emancipate itself without leading a universal human emancipation from all forms of exploitation and oppressionTo fulfill its historical task the working class has to be organized into its own independent organs of mass struggle and political power, first of all to be organized into revolutionary combat parties of a revolutionary International.

Here, at this central point. palpitates the living heart of Lenin’s legacy.

It belongs not to a remote past but to an open and necessary future. The future is open, not predetermined. Its outcome depends from the living struggle of living forces on national and international levels. It isnecessary because it arises out of objective contradictions and tendencies.

The historical dilemma posed today to a humanity struggling amid the current global capitalist crisis, producing conditions of unprecedented social destruction, climate catastrophe, world war, including a nuclear holocaust, is not limited, as in the past to the alternative ‘Socialism or barbarism”. It is Socialism or no future

January 21, 2024

1See Savvas Matsas(2019) Karl Marx and he Future, Critique 47:1 63-69

2Jason Barker, Happy Birthday, Karl Marx, You Were Right! New York Times, April 30, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/30/opinion/karl-marx-at-200-influence.html, assessed on 05/01/2018

3Adam Tooze, Why Karl Marx is more relevant than ever, Financial Times, May 4, 2018, https://www.ft.com/content/cf6532dc-4c67-11e8-97e4-13afc22d86d4?segmentld=a7371401-027d-d8bf-8a7f-2a746e767d56, assessed on May 4, 2018

4Savvas Matsas op.cit.

5Chris Giles, Has Economics Failed? Financial Times April 23, 2018

6Jason Barker, Happy Birthday, Karl Marx, You Were Right! New York Times, April 30, 2018,

7Leon Trotsky, My Life, chapter XX In Power

https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1930/mylife/ch29.htm

8V. I. Lenin, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, Chapter VII. “Imperialism as a special stage of Capitalism” https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/

9op. cit.

10Karl Marx, Das Kapital I, Dietzverlag Berlin 1972 p.94

11Lenin, Philosophical Notebooks, Completed Works Progress: Moscow 1972 vol. 38 p360

12Hegel, Principles of Philosophy of the Right and State, paragraph # 347

13Lenin, Imperialism… op. cit. chapter VII

Sungur Savran

Lenin’s Legacy Denied

We are gathered here from five continents on the centenary of Lenin’s death in order to discuss his legacy, because we are interested more in the future than in the past or, rather, we are interested in this past to the extent that it teaches us about the future. That is why Lenin’s legacy means so much to us and we wish to discuss it.

And yet this legacy is ingenuously misunderstood or deliberately denied or surreptitiously rejected. By this I do not mean the overall immense contribution he made to the Marxist programme, strategy, method of organisation, in particular of the revolutionary party, and theory. Lenin’s revolutionary practice from the Great War on, that is during his last decade (1914-1924), gave rise to an entirely original programmatic and strategic vision for the advance of world revolution. It is this strategic vision that has been ignored or denied for the last one hundred years.

Today I am going to dwell on a single area, the apex of his internationalist vision. I call this the “question of nations”, not the “national question”, as this area of Lenin’s thinking and practice is commonly called. I do this purposely and it will become clear in the course of my speech why I make this special choice.

Why do I dwell on this alone? For several reasons. First, it is an area which has been underestimated immensely. Remember, when I say this, I am not talking of the “national question”. That has been discussed widely. But not the “question of nations” that I will be taking up in this speech.

The second reason is this: This is the area in which Lenin stands out as the major spokesperson of world revolution in the 20^th century, as opposed to national-communism. And because the major reason of the collapse of the experiment of socialist construction and of the workers’ states in the 20^th century is the failure of communism to address the question of world revolution in the proper manner, because international communism was betrayed by many in the movement, starting with the Soviet bureaucracy, this polarisation between world revolution and internationalism, on the one hand, and socialism in one country and national- communism on the other, is the most vital problem to be overcome for future socialism, socialism in the 21^st century. And, for a second time, Lenin has the answers to what is to be done. Lenin’s legacy provides a program, a strategy, and a method, in addition to the conception of the party and the International, for future socialism.

Third, this vision is not understood, not grasped by even Lenin’s most loyal followers and the best elements of the revolutionary Marxist movement worldwide. Neither Lenin’s practical

struggle to shape the Soviet Union in the way that it finally took form nor Lenin’s practice in winning the entire Russian East, in particular the Muslim peoples of the Tsarist empire, nor yet his vision for the future World Socialist Republic have been really appreciated to the full up until today.

The “question of nations”

What, then, is the “question of nations” that I am talking about? This question is not co-extensive with the “national question” that has been debated endlessly. It includes but cannot be reduced to that question. The famous “national question” that everyone recognizes was an integral part of the Bolsheviks’ programme thanks to Lenin’s interminable efforts is only one element in the much larger “question of nations” that I wish to speak on.

To compare and contrast the two, i.e. the “national question” and the “question of nations”.

The first is predominantly, but not exclusively, related to the policies communists need to pursue with regard to the relations between an oppressor nation and an oppressed nation. This question is usually associated with the right of nations to self-determination. And it is very commonly presented as a “democratic question”, that is to say, one that is not related to socialism or communism, but simply with a “democratic right”. In this sense, its status in Marxist thinking can be compared to the status of political and civil rights or the right to the freedom of association of the working class in unions and the right to strike.

The “question of nations” is something much more extensive and is definitely not a “democratic question” but one that is directly related to socialism and communism. Its import is not limited to the tactical question of how to handle relations between nations in a democratic manner until the socialist revolution comes along and solves the national question.

On the contrary, after the 1914 watershed of World War I and the utter betrayal of the Kautskys and the Eberts, of the Longuets and the Plekhanovs, Lenin now reflects on the set of questions posed by the multitude of nations in the world as a problem for the construction of socialism and a barrier to be handled attentively and tactfully on the road to communism.

Lenin now poses an entirely new question in the history of the communist movement. For Marx and Engels, the necessity of Irish liberation was a condition of the socialist revolution. As long as the Irish nation was subordinated to the English, the working class would remain divided along national lines. This was also the basis of Lenin’s persistent emphasis of the “national question” until 1914, fighting as the Bolshevik Party was in a notorious “prison of nations” that Tsarist Russia was. But now, after 1914, Lenin is reflecting on a totally different question: in a world divided into nations with contradictory, even hostile interests, how will the dictatorship of the proletariat overcome and transcend the contradictions between this multitude of nations?

This, then, is the question of nations. This question is not related to a “democratic right” but to the construction of socialism in the period of transition between capitalist society and classless society. Furthermore, it is not a tactical question that may be solved through different methods in different national contexts. It is a strategic question that the entire communist programme is predicated upon.

This is the question that I will discuss. Since our time is limited, let us now immediately pass on to the answers that Lenin brought to this very complex and burdensome question.

I. Political programme to solve the “national question”

The political programme that Lenin formulated for the solution of the traditional “national question” continues to be part of this new strategic vision. The programme in question can be summarised under three headings:

• The right of nations to self-determination: This is a continuation of the earlier democratic and tactical measure of unifying the working class of each country or region or wider geography. This right provides for oppressed nations the guarantee that the proletariat of what was earlier the oppressor nation, i.e. the Russians after 1917, the Serbs after 1944, the Han nationality after 1949, etc. does not intend to carry on the oppression implemented by its bourgeoisie against oppressed nations so that the 0united effort of the proletariat of the oppressor nation and of the oppressed nations and nationalities is worthwhile pursuing for the oppressed nations as well in trying to reach together a classless society.

• The federal principle: Lenin was, until the very end, a fervent partisan of economic unification at the highest level possible. That is why before the revolution he was against federalism. However, having experienced the persisting chauvinism of the oppressor nation even in the ranks of the proletariat and its vanguard, he quickly turned towards federalism, all the while insisting on economic centralism. The federal principle was also buttressed by and integrated with the right to self-determination.

• Real equality between nations, beyond formale quality: Lenin insisted that formal equality between oppressor and oppressed nations was at best a petty-bourgeois perspective that would, in the final analysis, sink to the level of a bourgeois position, just as formal equality before the law was a bourgeois principle that could co-exist with gigantic socio-economic inequality between classes. So, he defended what is today dubbed “positive discrimination” (British) or “affirmative action” (US) in favour of the oppressed nations.

II. Strategy and tactics in revolutionary practice

The strategy that Lenin pursued in his practice within the land of the soviets, a strategy that he defended in the face of resistance from very different quarters within the Bolshevik Party, but with the full support of Trotsky, was in complete harmony with this programmatic orientation.

• Peaceable granting to five nations of the right to self-determination: Finland, the three Baltic states (Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia) and somewhat more controversially Poland were granted independence as a practical sign and confirmation of the new Soviet government’s commitment to the right to self-determination.

• Extreme respect toward the specific national and religious sensibilities of the Eastern peoples within the former Tsarist empire: This was instrumental for winning them over to the Soviet regime, despite the fact that only a handful of these peoples possessed a modicum of the modern proletariat in their class structure.

• The foundation of the Soviet Union on egalitarian bases: This means fundamentally equal terms for the major nations and an honourably autonomous basis for the smaller nations and no privileges for the Russian dominant nation. As Lenin was struggling against a deteriorating health condition, Stalin and his co-thinkers in the Commissariat of National Issues were developing a project for unifying the existing Soviet governments in different corners of former Tsarist Russia (e.g. Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan etc.) on the basis of a project called “autonomisation”. This meant that all other nations would join the already established Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (RSFSR) as autonomous republics, on a par with, for instance, Bashkordistan or Daghestan, these being smaller nations that were sub-units of the Russian heartland. Lenin fought tooth and nail against this and had his own project of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics win the day, which established equality between the larger national groups in Soviet territory. It is in this context that Lenin dictated to his secretaries the “Question of Nationalities or ‘Autonomisation’”, written against Stalin and his cohort, the most powerful of his texts defending real equality between nations as opposed to formal inequality and therefore advocated “positive discrimination”.

• “Korenizatsiya”: Not only these major nations of what was earlier Tsarist Russia, but also down to the smallest nations and nationalities of Russia proper were granted the right of ruling their own federative unit within the federal republic on the active participation of their people, learning and using their own language alongside Russian, the federal language of communication, and mobilising their people’s forces in order to create a national renaissance after decades, sometimes centuries, of servitude under the Tsarist regime.

This is the solid bedrock on which rose the amazing national structure of the Soviet Union, one that not even the national-communism and the creeping Russian nationalism that the bureaucracy fanned over the decades could undo totally. This is the precedent also for decades of successful implementation of an egalitarian national policy in other multinational socialist countries such as Yugoslavia.

III. Unique national character of the USSR

The result of Lenin’s single-minded insistence on the freedom of nations to secede and on the importance of real equality, rather than formal, was the creation of a state that was unlike any others in the modern age. The USSR stands out as a unique case of a state in the annals of state-building in the entire modern age.

Perhaps many of you have noticed the use of an unusual term “state-building” rather than the usual “nation-building” utilised by US official and intellectual circles. This is obviously on purpose. For, to pose the matter in its most naked form, let us put forth the following question: in the age of nation-states, which nation does this state belong to? What is the answer to this question? Total silence. There is no nation involved here! For the first time in modern history, we have a state which does not carry in its appellation the name of a nation or even of a geographic space, such as the United States of America. (Let us not forget, by the way, that “America” has become veritably the name of a nation.) The USSR is a nationless state. If, then, as Lenin believed, the period of transition to socialism must overcome and leave behind all national divisions, the USSR, in form, but not yet in substance, has already started the trajectory towards that supersession, that aufhebung of nations.

At the antipode of this nationless political entity lie the federative units, the autonomous regions and the autonomous republics and the Soviet republics of the self-same state structure. These are units that give life to the earlier dying nationalities, languages, and cultures of Tsarist Russia, which, now, find the best of conditions to revive those nations and nationalities.

What is this contradiction at the heart of the Leninist conception of the transitional state? Why a nationless state with sub-units that are filled with nation-building zeal and korenizatsiya?

This contradiction is a dialectical one in the best sense of the word. The national revival and korenizatsiya policy, at the extreme opposite of the nationless federal state, is in fact exactly the embodiment of the principle of real equality as opposed to formal equality that Lenin defends. For nations to be equal not only formally but in real terms, what is needed, we have already seen, is “positive discrimination”. Well, here is a situation where one nation, the historically oppressor nation, the Russian nation, in other words, is, so to speak, arrested in its development, while all the others are given the green light to advance their national revival and awareness as well as self-rule. Can one think of any better way to fight not for formal, but for real equality?

IV Strategic vision for the international arena

Up until this point we have established two major points: First, Lenin’s approach to the relations between nations in the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat imputed an entirely new meaning to this question never before discussed by Marxists (Section I above). Second, this new perspective was translated into his revolutionary practice in very different ways in relation to the construction of the new Soviet state (Parts II and III). Now we are going to complete the picture by projecting Lenin’s approach from the domestic “question of nations” within the Soviet Union onto the international arena. Out of many different aspects, we will highlight four points in this area.

• The Comintern and the internationalisation of Bolshevism on the national question: The Communist International (Comintern) was the environment in which the revolutionary organisational and political outlook of the Bolshevik Party was transmitted gradually to the new communist parties in other countries. (Towards the end of his life, Lenin thought this was overdone, but that is for another occasion.) Concerning the “question of nations”, Condition # 8 among the “21 Conditions” for joining the Communist International is of paramount importance. Social democratic parties, members of the Second International, were soft on imperialist colonialism, some wings even defending imperialism on the excuse that it brought civilisation and progress to “primitive” peoples. So, Condition # 8 set a strict principle for the Communist Parties of imperialist countries: they were duty-bound to fight the imperialist policies of their own state and military and stand in solidarity with the oppressed nations of colonies in deeds, not only in words.

• Unity between anti-imperialistem ancipation and socialist revolution: The obverse side of the duties of Communist Parties of imperialist countries is the orientation Lenin advocates for peasant countries. On the basis of the revolutionary struggles in the Middle East and China before and after the Great War, Lenin came to believe that peasant countries may directly move towards sovietisation under the hegemony of the dictatorship of the proletariat established in Russia. Despite all that later occurred in the Soviet Union, this is indeed how revolution advanced in the 20^th century.

• The strategic vision regarding transition towards a World Socialist Republic: The vision that towers over all the other policies implemented, but unfortunately has remained in the shadow up until now is the strategy devised by Lenin for the transition from dictatorship of the proletariat in one or several countries toward a World Socialist Republic. Lenin would probably have condemned as national-communism the establishment of socialist governments on a national basis in each country that achieved revolutionary victory, the road taken universally after World War II. His strategic vision is embodied in the rightly famous “Theses on the National and Colonial Questions”, drafted by him, reviewed in the relevant commission twice, and voted almost unanimously, with three abstentions, by the general assembly of the Second Congress of the Communist International in 1920. In its theses # 6 to 8, this resolution stipulates the unification of new socialist states with the Soviet Union under the transitional form of a federation with, among others, the aim “to create a unified world economy according to a common plan regulated by the proletariat of all nations.”

• The sovietisation of peasant countries and their joining the federation: This is not only true for countries with a developed capitalist class structure, but also peasant countries. Of course, Lenin warns that each case should be assessed on the basis of its merits, but insists that no former colony can hope to develop in a manner that will liberate its economy from the reign of imperialism. He castigates the imperialist bourgeoisie because “under the mask of politically independents states, they bring into being state structures that are economically, financially and militarily completely dependent on them.” So, the objective should be “wherever possible to organize the peasants and all victims of exploitation in soviets and thus bring about as close a link as possible between the Western European Communist proletariat and the revolutionary movement of peasants in the East, in the colonies and in the backward countries.”

Conclusion

In the light of what has already been said, we can conclude without any hesitation that the programme and the strategic vision advanced by Lenin in the last years of his life defined a path for communism entirely different from, indeed diametrically opposite to, that taken by the leaderships of the communist parties that took power in and after World War II. Lenin’s vision is entirely different from the later leaderships in that it is internationalist through and through.

What can we conclude about the later leaderships then? I am not going to go into a detailed analysis of why the 20^th century experience of socialist construction failed so miserably nor pass a judgment on the post-Lenin leadership of the Soviet Union or the leaderships of other countries that experienced revolutions later. The only thing I will say is this: it is on the rocks of national-communism and socialism in one country that the 20^th century experience shipwrecked.

Imagine for a moment: If Stalin and Mao, Ho Chi-Minh and Tito and all the others had been loyal disciples of Lenin, one single socialist federation could have been formed by the early 1950s extending from Central Europe in the west to the East China Sea and the Yellow Sea in the east and from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Mediterranean and the Pacific Ocean in the south. Can you imagine one single socialist federation including the country with the largest territory on earth (the USSR) and the country with the highest population in the world (China)? What opportunities would that have created with respect to economies of scale and judicious and equitable division of labour and scientific and technical cooperation and how fast a growth plus industrialisation pace would have been achieved! And how strong, militarily speaking, such a state would have become vis-à-vis imperialism! And on top of that, given what Lenin envisaged with respect to peasant societies becoming sovietised, imagine additionally, for the sake of argument, that India joined this socialist commonwealth even if after the Partition. Then the second country with the highest population in the world would have become part of this federation also and the boundaries of the socialist commonwealth would have reached the Indian Ocean as well. Capitalist restoration would probably have been postponed by many decades.

Lenin, then, is the alternative of the future, the one not yet tried.