Self-determination of the Ukraine

First All-Ukraine Congress of Soviets, Resolution on Self-determination of the Ukraine . December 12, 1917

 

Excerpts.

Original Source: S’ezdy sovetov Soiuza SSR, soiuznykh i avtonomnykh sovetskikh sotsialisticheskikh respublik; sbornik dokumentov (Moscow: Institut prava, Akademiia nauk SSSR, 1960), Vol. 2, p. 16.

The principle of the right of nations to self-determination, proclaimed by the February Revolution, could only be implemented by the October Revolution which has paved the way for the establishment of the Worker-Peasant Government-the Council of People’s Commissars.

Therefore, the First All-Ukraine Congress of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies, recognizing the Ukrainian Republic as a federal part of the Russian Republic, declares an implacable struggle against the policy of the Central Rada which is fatal for the workers and peasants, and is intent upon exposing its bourgeois, counter-revolutionary nature.

The Congress is to fight for self-determination of the Ukraine in the interests of the workers and peasants, for their supremacy, for removing all national restrictions, all national enmity and hatred, for a Ukrainian Worker-Peasant Republic based on close solidarity between the working people of the Ukraine, irrespective of their national affiliation, and the working people of all Russia.

Source: USSR, Sixty Years of the Union, 1922-1982 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1982), p. 48.

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