From Self-determination to Secession? The Bolsheviks and National Self-determination, 1914–1924

Abstract

This article argues that between 1914 and 1924 the Bolsheviks’ conception and propagation of self-determination underwent a significant transition from already-contested beginnings. Initially, despite resistance from both within and beyond the party, Vladimir Lenin’s advocacy of national self-determination – including the right to secession – won out. However, though this was to some extent realized in practice after their seizure of power (after significant armed conflict about such matters), the upper echelons of the party, and Joseph Stalin in particular, sought to later decouple self-determination from the formation of the USSR. Partly the legacy of the turbulence of Russia’s Civil War and related documents of international law such as the Treaty of Tartu, by mid-1921 the right to self-determination was confusingly replaced by the right to secession in Bolshevik discourse, and for the colonized peoples of the world in particular – on paper, at least. This replacement was reaffirmed in 1922 with the founding of the USSR and again in its constitution of 1924. The article concludes by stating the consequences of this for intellectual and/or conceptual historians, as well as for legal scholars intrigued by the sudden absence of self-determination in Soviet legal texts from an initial position of such prominence.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful and constructive comments on the manuscript first submitted to Revolutionary Russia.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Manela, The Wilsonian Moment; Mazower, Dark Continent, 41–76.

2 Mazower, Dark Continent, 41–76; Fisch, The Right of Self-Determination; and Wolff, Woodrow Wilson, 7.

3 On Wilson, see Throntveit, “The Fable of the Fourteen Points,” 445–81. On Lenin, see Mälksoo, “The Soviet Approach,” 200–18.

4 Fisch, The Right of Self-Determination; Herman, 1917; and Mayer, Wilson vs. Lenin.

5 Ibid.

6 Chernev, “The Brest-Litovsk Moment,” 369–87.

7 Mark, “National Self-determination,” 21–39

8 Mälksoo, “The Soviet Approach,” 200–18.

9 Beissinger, “Self-determination,” 479–87.

10 Riga, The Bolsheviks.

11 Hirsch, Empire of Nations; Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire; Pipes, The Formation of the Soviet Union; and Suny, The Revenge of the Past.

12 Gerasimov, Glebov, and Mogilner, “The Postimperial Meets the Postcolonial”; van Ree, Boundaries of Utopia; and van Ree, “Lenin’s Conception of Socialism in One Country.”

13 Gerasimov, Glebov, and Mogilner, “The Postimperial Meets the Postcolonial,” 107.

14 van Ree, Boundaries of Utopia; van Ree, “Lenin’s Conception of Socialism in One Country”; and van Ree, “‘Socialism in One Country’ before Stalin: German Origins.”

15 van Ree, Boundaries of Utopia; and van Ree, “Lenin’s Conception of Socialism in One Country.”

16 van Ree, Boundaries of Utopia.

17 In this particular case, the word ‘reaction’ is more apt given that Lenin did not come up with the term self-determination himself.

18 Smith, The Bolsheviks and the National Question.

19 Some accounts state that it was Lenin that assisted Stalin in writing his most famous work, others make the case for Bukharin and some even suggest the latter on the request of Lenin.

20 Lenin, “The Right of Nations to Self-Determination,” 412–14. Great Russians is an irredentist term that refers to ethnic Russians, as opposed to Little Russians (Ukrainians) and White Russians (Belarusians). One could argue that the dominance referred to here is also inherent to the concept of Great Russians, something that Lenin seems to have not reflected upon.

21 Mark, “National Self-determination,” 26.

22 Lenin, “The Right of Nations to Self-Determination,” 432.

23 Ibid, 412. The Black Hundreds were a reactionary ultranationalist and monarchist group that had the hallmarks of proto-fascism. In this instance, Lenin is referring to their negative attitude towards any non-Russian national group (including Ukrainians and Belarusians).

24 Lenin, “The Right of Nations to Self-Determination,” 411.

25 Stalin, “The Social-Democratic View.”

26 Ibid, 44. Regarding his awareness of the need to place limits on self-determination, see the transcript of the speech he later gave in January 1918 to the Congress of Soviets on the National Question, available in Stalin, Works, Vol. 4, 31–8.

27 Lenin, “The Socialist Revolution,” 146.

28 Ibid.

29 Lenin, “The Socialist Revolution,” 146. Marx later adjusted this position once he became aware of the strength of anti-Irish sentiment among British workers, as did Lenin, but both still used the case as an example of the historical development of nations that created beneficial economic conditions for larger states.

30 Lenin, “The Revolutionary Proletariat,” 413–14.

31 Also consider that many of these now-canonical works were not even published until after the October Revolution or, if they were, had a minimal audience in revolutionary and/or exile circles rather than the general public.

32 Mark, “National Self-determination,” 21.

33 Renner, Das Selbstbestimmungsrecht der Nationen; and Bauer, Die Nationalitätenfrage und die Sozialdemokratie.

34 Ibid. Theoretical at the time of their writing; that is, national cultural autonomy became official policy in the Ukrainian People’s Republic (1917–1920) during the Russian Civil War and in newly independent Estonia in 1925, as well as elsewhere across the former imperial spaces of Europe and the world in the following decades.

35 Renner, Das Selbstbestimmungsrecht der Nationen, 9.

36 Lenin, “The Right of Nations to Self-Determination”; and Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question.”

37 Russian is used here as a shorthand, rather than implying that all ‘Russian’ revolutionaries were ethnically/nationally Russian or considered themselves as such.

38 Piatakov, Bosh, and Bukharin, “Theses on the Right of Nations to Self-determination.”

39 Valentinov, Novaia ekonomicheskaia politika, 158.

40 Lenin, “Resolution on the National Question.”

41 Ibid.

42 Ibid.

43 Hirsch, Empire of Nations.

44 Announcement of the First Provisional Government, 3 March 1917 (published in Izvestiia).

45 Ibid.

46 Lenin, “Resolution on the National Question.”

47 Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia.

48 Ibid.

49 Ibid.

50 Lenin, “Resolution on the National Question.”

51 Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question,” 307.

52 Beissinger, “Self-determination,” 482.

53 One of many names the party went through during this period. I state it here purely as the formal name of the event, but of course refer to the Bolsheviks throughout for the same group, a more convenient and readable shorthand.

54 Report of the Eighth Congress of the RCP(B), 167–225.

55 Vos’moi s”ezd RKP(b) mart 1919 goda, 80–1.

56 Report of the Eighth Congress of the RCP(B), 186–96.

57 Ibid.

58 Report of the Eighth Congress of the RCP(B).

59 Mälksoo, “The Soviet Approach”; and Treaty of Tartu, 1920, 30–1. It is also interesting to note that when the treaty was translated into French and English for its entry into the League of Nations Treaty Series, neither used the exact term self-determination. The French version refers to the right of all peoples to secede from the state of which they formerly formed a part of, while the English version refers to the right of all peoples to freely decide their own destinies.

60 Treaty of Tartu, 1920, 30–1.

61 Ibid.

62 Kalmo, “Tartu rahulepingu artikkel,” II, 187.

63 von Rauch, The Baltic States, 73.

64 Kalmo, “Enesemääramise paleus ja pragmaatika,” 243–301.

65 Manifesto to the Peoples of Estonia, 1918.

66 Tuskenis, ed., Lithuania in European Politics, 67–70.

67 Raun, Estonia and the Estonians, 15.

68 Of course, this requires significant qualification, but here I mean simply that by this time it was unlikely that the Bolsheviks could be removed from the areas they currently inhabited, not that the Russian Civil War as a whole had come to an end.

69 Report of the Eighth Congress of the RCP(B).

70 Stalin, “Concerning the Presentation of the National Question,” 54.

71 Ibid, 51–60.

72 Ibid, 59.

73 Ibid, 59–60.

74 Mark, “National Self-determination,” 28–38.

75 Declaration and Treaty on the Formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

76 Ibid, 1.

77 Ibid.

78 Constitution of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, 1918; and Ponomaryov, Gromyko, and Khvostov, History of Soviet Foreign Policy, 39–44; 142–50.

79 It should not go unmentioned that Stalin himself was largely responsible for the organizational work behind the Declaration and Treaty.

80 Lewin, Lenin’s Last Struggles.

81 Constitution of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, 1924. The 1977 constitution then does use the term self-determination, suggesting again this post-war revisionism in line with global trends towards the language of decolonisation and human rights.

82 Constitution of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, 1924.

83 Henderson, The Constitution, 39.

84 Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire.

85 Mälksoo, “The Soviet Approach”; and Beissinger, “Self-determination.”

86 Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question,” 364; This was especially the case in the Russian SFSR, which featured a significant number of distinct and less developed national groups that the Bolsheviks considered backward.

87 Ponomaryov, Gromyko, and Khvostov, History of Soviet Foreign Policy, 39–44.

88 Vos’moi s”ezd RKP(b) mart 1919 goda, 80–1.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Estonian Research Council grant PUT PRG942, ‘Self-Determination of Peoples in Historical Perspective’.

Notes on contributors

Oliver Rowe

Oliver Rowe is a Junior Research Fellow and doctoral student in Political Science at the Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies, University of Tartu.