Learning with Lenin by Lenin Vladimir Ilich;Ford Derek;Malott Curry;

Author:Lenin, Vladimir Ilich;Ford, Derek;Malott, Curry;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Information Age Publishing
Published: 2019-01-05T02:33:12+00:00

9. The 1903 Programme and its Liquidators

The Minutes of the 1903 Congress, at which the Programme of the Russian Marxists was adopted, have become a great rarity, and the vast majority of the active members of the working-class movement today are unacquainted with the motives underlying the various points (the more so since not all the literature relating to it enjoys the blessings of legality . . . ). It is therefore necessary to analyse the debate that took place at the 1903 Congress on the question under discussion.

Let us state first of all that however meagre the Russian Social-Democratic literature on the “right of nations to self-determination” may be, it nevertheless shows clearly that this right has always been understood to mean the right to secession. The Semkovskys, Liebmans and Yurkeviches who doubt this and declare that §9 is “vague,” etc., do so only because of their sheer ignorance or carelessness. As far back as 1902, Plekhanov, in Zarya, defended “the right to self-determination” in the draft programme, and wrote that this demand, while not obligatory upon bourgeois democrats, was “obligatory upon Social-Democrats.” “If we were to for got it or hesitate, to advance it,” Plekhanov wrote, “for fear of offending the national prejudices of our fellow-countrymen of Great-Russian nationality, the call . . . ‘workers of all countries, unite!’ would be a shameful lie on our lips. . . .”3

This is a very apt description of the fundamental argument in favour of the point under consideration; so apt that it is not surprising that the “anythingarian” critics of our programme have been timidly avoiding it. The abandonment of this point, no matter for what motives, is actually a “shameful” concession to Great-Russian nationalism. But why Great-Russian, when it is a question of the right of all nations to self-determination? Because it refers to secession from the Great Russians. The interests of the unity of the proletarians, the interests of their class solidarity call for recognition of the right of nations to secede—that is what Plekhanov admitted twelve years ago in the words quoted above. Had our opportunists given thought to this they would probably not have talked so much nonsense about self-determination.

At the 1903 Congress, which adopted the draft programme that Plekhanov advocated, the main work was done by the Programme Commission. Unfortunately no Minutes of its proceedings were kept; they would have been particularly interesting on this point, for it was only in the Commission that the representatives of the Polish Social-Democrats, Warszawski and Hanecki, tried to defend their views and to dispute “recognition of the right to self-determination.” Any reader who goes to the trouble of comparing their arguments (set forth in the speech by Warszawski and the statement by him and Hanecki, pp. 134–36 and 388–90 of the Congress Minutes) with those which Rosa Luxemburg advanced in her Polish article, which we have analysed, will find them identical.

How were these arguments treated by the Programme Commission of the Second Congress, where Plekhanov, more than anyone

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