Com.Joseph Stalin on Natiinalty question
Com.Joseph Stalin
on
Nationality question
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1913/03a.htm
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Some excerpts
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1
A nation is primarily a community, a definite community of people.
This community is not racial, nor is it tribal.
The modern Italian nation was formed from Romans, Teutons, Etruscans, Greeks, Arabs, and so forth.
The French nation was formed from Gauls, Romans, Britons, Teutons, and so on.
The same must be said of the British, the Germans and others, who were formed into nations from people of diverse races and tribes.
Thus, a nation is not a racial or tribal, but a historically constituted community of people.
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Thus, a common language is one of the characteristic features of a nation.
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But why, for instance, do the English and the Americans not constitute one nation in spite of their common language?
Firstly, because they do not live together, but inhabit different territories. A nation is formed only as a result of lengthy and systematic intercourse, as a result of people living together generation after generation.
But people cannot live together, for lengthy periods unless they have a common territory. Englishmen and Americans originally inhabited the same territory, England, and constituted one nation. Later, one section of the English emigrated from England to a new territory, America, and there, in the new territory, in the course of time, came to form the new American nation.
Difference of territory led to the formation of different nations.
Thus, a common territory is one of the characteristic features of a nation.
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But this is not all. Common territory does not by itself create a nation.
This requires, in addition, an internal economic bond to weld the various parts of the nation into a single whole.
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Nations differ not only in their conditions of life, but also in spiritual complexion, which manifests itself in peculiarities of national culture.
If England, America and Ireland, which speak one language, nevertheless constitute three distinct nations, it is in no small measure due to the peculiar psychological make-up which they developed from generation to generation as a result of dissimilar conditions of existence.
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Thus, a common psychological make-up, which manifests itself in a common culture, is one of the characteristic features of a nation.
We have now exhausted the characteristic features of a nation.
A nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.
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It is therefore clear that there is in fact no single distinguishing characteristic of a nation.
There is only a sum total of characteristics, of which, when nations are compared, sometimes one characteristic (national character),
sometimes another (language), or sometimes a third (territory, economic conditions), stands out in sharper relief. A nation constitutes the combination of all these characteristics taken together.
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A nation is not merely a historical category but a historical category belonging to a definite epoch, the epoch of rising capitalism.
The process of elimination of feudalism and development of capitalism is at the same time a process of the constitution of people into nations.
Such, for instance, was the case in Western Europe.
The British, French, Germans, Italians and others were formed into nations at the time of the victorious advance of capitalism and its triumph over feudal disunity.
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Whereas in the West nations developed into states, in the East multi-national states were formed, states consisting of several nationalities.
Such are Austria-Hungary and Russia.
In Austria, the Germans proved to be politically the most developed, and they took it upon themselves to unite the Austrian nationalities into a state.
In Hungary, the most adapted for state organization were the Magyars – the core of the Hungarian nationalities – and it was they who united Hungary.
In Russia, the uniting of the nationalities was undertaken by the Great Russians, who were headed by a historically formed, powerful and well-organized aristocratic military bureaucracy.
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This special method of formation of states could take place only where feudalism had not yet been eliminated, where capitalism was feebly' developed, where the nationalities which had been forced into the background had not yet been able to consolidate themselves economically into integral nations.
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But capitalism also began to develop in the Eastern states. Trade and means of communication were developing. Large towns were springing up. The nations were becoming economically consolidated. Capitalism, erupting into the tranquil life of the nationalities which had been pushed into the background, was arousing them and stirring them into action. The development of the press and the theatre, the activity of the Reichsrat (Austria) and of the Duma (Russia) were helping to strengthen "national sentiments." The intelligentsia that had arisen was being imbued with "the national idea" and was acting in the same direction....
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class interests of the proletariat and for the intellectual enslavement of the workers.
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This creates a serious obstacle to the cause of uniting the workers of all nationalities. If a considerable proportion of the Polish workers are still in intellectual bondage to the bourgeois nationalists, if they still stand aloof from the international labour movement, it is chiefly because the age-old anti-Polish policy of the "powers that be" creates the soil for this bondage and hinders the emancipation of the workers from it.
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But the policy of persecution does not stop there. It not infrequently passes from a "system" of oppression to a "system" of inciting nations against each other, to a "system" of massacres and pogroms. Of course, the latter system is not everywhere and always possible, but where it is possible – in the absence of elementary civil rights – it frequently assumes horrifying proportions and threatens to drown the cause of unity of the workers in blood and tears.
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This, of course, does not mean that Social-Democracy will support every demand of a nation. A nation has the right even to return to the old order of things; but this does not mean that Social-Democracy will subscribe to such a decision if taken by some institution of a particular nation. The obligations of Social-Democracy, which defends the interests of the proletariat, and the rights of a nation, which consists of various classes, are two different things.
In fighting for the right of nations to self-determination, the aim of Social-Democracy is to put an end to the policy of national oppression, to render it impossible, and thereby to remove the grounds of strife between nations, to take the edge off that strife and reduce it to a minimum.
This is what essentially distinguishes the policy of the class-conscious proletariat from the policy of the bourgeoisie, which attempts to aggravate and fan the national struggle and to prolong and sharpen the national movement.
And that is why the class-conscious proletariat cannot rally under the "national" flag of the bourgeoisie.
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The fate of a national movement, which is essentially a bourgeois movement, is naturally bound up with the fate of the bourgeoisie. The -final disappearance of a national movement is possible only with the downfall of the bourgeoisie. Only under the reign of socialism can peace be fully established. But even within the framework of capitalism it is possible to reduce the national struggle to a minimum, to undermine it at the root, to render it as harmless as possible to the proletariat. This is borne out, for example, by Switzerland and America. It requires that the country should be democratized and the nations be given the opportunity of free development.
