IMO supporting Polish national self-determination was a big mistake on Lenin's part. Think about it- the early-mid 20th century was a liberal fetishisation of 'national self-determination'. The ethno-nationalist rise of fascism in Germany would have been offset dramatically if Poland never existed and frustrated the nazi effort to gain power. Moreover, the focus on national politics was used as a distraction from class warfare and the nationalist poles crushed communists. I can't really see Lenin being vindicated in this case.
I also think we see a parallel of this today with Israel/Palestine, and Russia/Ukraine. Obviously Israel is an awful imperialist force, puppet of the US, genocidal freaks etc etc. But that doesn't necessarily mean we have to support 'Palestinian self-determination' as a goal in itself; in fact we may be playing into the hands of puerile nationalists. The same is true of Ukraine *and* of Russia, who both use hatred of the other country to distract from class war and the problems that they have as countries.
if the bolsheviks had not supported national self-determination the fault lines & conflicts that happened historically would be far wider and far bloodier. look at the behavior of the white army during the civil war. without an active, affirmative policy of the rights & autonomy of different ethnic groups, there is rapid disintegration into genocide and pogroms on one hand & fracturous attempts to assert autonomy on the other. youre not going to just make people forget and ignore differences in language, family ties & social organization overnight. the average polish peasant or kazakh herdsman did not know or care what communism was and they were not going to be convinced by explaining they just needed to subject themselves to the movement on an abstract principle, let alone one they were by and large entirely unfamiliar with. LEAST of all when its a command to get along brought by starving, angry soldiers who more often than not arent concerned with the particulars of communism themselves besides the promise of peace, land, & bread. what the average pole & kazakh & kalmyk etc etc WAS familiar with was the russian empire & how they had been immiserated & degraded by it. any revolution, especially a brutal & prolonged revolutionary war in an extremely undeveloped region fed & populated mostly by immiserated peasantry, is going to have to demand a painful amount from the general population. the leninist policy was to say: we need your loyalty & we need to be fed, but we dont need you to prostrate & demean yourself. speak your own language, keep your own customs, this is your land as much as ours, and we're fighting for everyone. that is not only a pragmatic way to win cooperation in the short term, it is also demonstrating to those populations the liberatory nature of the revolutionary project in a way that is immediately far more comprehensible and far more convincing.
rosas arguments make perfect sense in the abstract & its easy in hindsight to see the nationalism that fractured the late USSR and think lenins national policy was misguided. i dont think thats the case at all, i think rosa was being impractical and didnt fully understand just how salient ethnolinguistic divisions can be, and the fact that ethnicity/nation is the default position to retreat to in times of crisis is EXACTLY why lenin was right to let people huddle where they were comfortable instead of backing them even further into a corner in a time thats already desperate
>>2390731yes?
"Bolsheviks’ language policy was reflected in a 1918
article by J. V. Stalin, then the People's Commissar of Nationalities of the RSFSR: "Each region shall select the language or languages that correspond to the ethnic composition of its population, and there will be complete equality of languages of both minorities and majorities in all social and political institutions", as cited in [1]. The Russian language did not have the state or official status in the USSR, and the term "language of interethnic communication", which entered into use in the 1970s, was never fixed as a legislation.
The 1920s saw an all-through campaign for the
indigenization ("putting down roots", “korenization”) of administration, party structures, law, clerical work,
education, culture, literature, theatre, etc. making local ethnic languages functionally leading in different republics and regions. The government counted on the broad involvement of local populations in administrative activities. Clerical work was to be conducted in ethnic languages. The Russian population of national republics was supposed to master local languages gradually, party-state functionaries were obliged to learn them.
At the 12 th Congress of the RCP(B) (April 1923) Stalin said: "It is necessary that the power of the proletariat should be as dear to ethnically non-Russian peasants, as to Russian ones, that its policy should be clear to them, that it should function in their native language, that schools and authorities should be staffed with local people who know local languages, customs, traditions, ways of life. Only then, and only thereby will the Soviet government, which until recently has been the Russian government, become the power not only Russian, but also international; when institutions and authorities in the republics of these countries speak and function in their native language", as cited in [6]. The Congress resolved to issue special laws that would ensure the use of native languages in all institutions catering for non-Russian populations."
pic repeated is the source
>>2390876>The Russian population of national republics was supposed to master local languages gradually, party-state functionaries were obliged to learn them. Nah, because
>Each region shall select the language or languages that correspond to the ethnic composition of its population, and there will be complete equality of languages of both minorities and majorities in all social and political institutions>and there will be complete equality of languages of both minorities and majorities in all social and political institutionsTherefore primacy of russian language
>>2390931there are still far more actively used traditional languages spoken in the former soviet union compared to any country with nearly the same level of industrialization and development. it absolutely happened
>>2390929yes, if you read the article i posted she explains that there was a consolidation around russian being the language of the state and the practical necessity/opportunity for social mobility means there is a strong self-selecting element to learn the more prominent and practical language. not only does that not contradict lenins position on national self-determination, i am arguing its exactly this process of self-determination -> self-selecting integration that affirms his position. obviously it is not a flawless and uncomplicated process, but the level of ethnic tension in the USSR was remarkably low considering its exceptional diversity of peoples. and i feel like it needs to be emphasized here that during the dissolution of the USSR, even though the baltic republics started the fire, it was the RUSSIAN republic and RUSSIAN nationalists that were the powderkeg that exploded the state. its not as if the central asian and caucaus and siberian sfsr's and assr's were "insufficiently integrated" or "ungrateful", that was exactly the kind of quasi-colonial chauvinism the russian nationalists like yeltsin and later navalny believed
>>2391002>>2391106yes, exactly. its a bit of both as far as the "principle" of self-determination is that people do not like being forceably integrated, which is why its tactically far more reasonable to allow for whatever level of autonomy is practical within the framework of a broader socialist project/DotP/etc, because if youre doing the rest of it halfway competently, people will realize on their own through their own actions and experience that integration of language and culture is much more amenable to their interests than idealizing of tradition.
obviously thats not to say that counter-revolutionary action inspired by ethnolinguistic sentiments is somehow any more tolerable than any other kind of counter-revolutionary activity, and lenin and the bolsheviks were right to recognize that and not tolerate it. so yes it is ultimately a tactical consideration not an ideal in itself. but for that matter cultural & linguistic integration is also a tactical consideration – its the practical concerns of cooperation and communication that make it necessary in the first place. if youre going to cooperate and communicate with people, it is obviously necessary to speak the same language and have compatible expectations and goals. but its self-defeating if by forcing people to adopt your means of communication they resist & consider you an enemy before they even have a good sense of the goals you want to cooperate towards
>>2393947polish people would never integrate into a soviet society because poles perceive people of the east as lesser men.
there have been russianisation efforts during imperial occupation and they were met with uprisings
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