Iosif Stalin, Speech to the Third All-Russian Congress of Soviets. January 28, 1918
Original Source: Tretii Vserossiiskii s”ezd Sovetov rabochikh, soldatskikh i krestianskikh deputatov (Petrograd, 1919), pp. 72-78.
Stalin: The nationality question … is among those which greatly agitate Russia at the present time. Its seriousness is aggravated by the fact that Great Russians do not form a majority of the total population and are surrounded by a chain of non-sovereign nationalities.
The Tsarist Government … forced Russification on the nationalities by prohibiting the use of the native languages, by encouraging pogroms, and by other persecutions. The coalition government put an end to many of these evils but did not fully settle the question … It is only the Soviet Government that came out openly for self-determination of peoples even to the point of separation from Russia. In this respect the Soviet Government has gone beyond some of the nationalistic leaders. Nevertheless certain conflicts developed between the Sovnarkom and the borderlands. The conflicts are political in their character …
The principle of self-determination should be limited in such a way as to make it applicable only to the toilers and not to the bourgeoisie. Self-determination must be a means of attaining socialism …
Martov: … Each nationality … should be allowed to settle its own affairs … without any outside interference. You Bolsheviks insist … that the nationalities of Russia should have a Soviet form of government and not a democratic one. Why not let each nationality have what it likes? …
Stalin: Preobrazhenskii says that nationalistic movements are historically progressive only when they are directed against imperialism … reaction … and in so far as they assume the character of a revolutionary struggle.
A national movement usually has for its object the creation of a geographically independent state … When the object is attained, the soil … is ready for planting the seeds of class conflict. During the old regime the nationalist movement … was anti-tsarist and … revolutionary … The Bolsheviks supported the Ukrainian nationalist movement [in the time of Kerenskii] … because it was against the bourgeois Provisional Government. But now that the Ukrainian bourgeoisie …, sailing under the flag of socialism, is attempting to use self-determination as a means to fight the Soviet Government, both at home and abroad, a civil war, with a revolutionary object, is inevitable. In general it may be said that in so far as the bourgeoisie gives a chauvinistic and imperialistic interpretation of the principle of self-determination and uses it to mislead the ignorant masses of the border nationalities in order to turn them from class war, to that extent will the Soviet Government do all in its power to prevent this application of the principle of self-determination.
We are being reproached with the fact that by forcing the Soviet form of government on the territorially organized nationalities … we are contradicting our own principles. Comrade Martov wonders why we demand a referendum in Poland, Courland, and Lithuania, et cetera … and at the same time insist that at home (that is to say, in the Ukraine, the Caucasus, Finland, et cetera) … the right to vote should be given to the toilers only … The facts are as stated. But those who see in them duplicity and contradictions … do not take into consideration … other factors. The Ukraine, the Caucasus, et cetera, have passed the political stage of bourgeois parliamentarism; but Poland, Courland, and Lithuania have not yet shaken off the autocratic yoke, have not yet reached the democratic stage.
Each region has to go through two stages of political development. As long as the regions on the western frontier of Russia have not thrown off the chains of monarchical slavery, it is out of the question to ask them to adopt the Soviet organization. They must first go through a purely democratic revolution and get rid of autocracy.
Selivanov said that … the bourgeoisie exploits the principle of self-determination to carry on counter-revolutionary propaganda and build up a White Guard … The nationalist movement threatens the very existence of the Soviet Government … Now that Russia is a Socialist Republic and the champion of the great ideal of freeing the oppressed classes all over the world, there is no longer any reason for separating from Great Russia. Cultural self-determination should be encouraged … but not the old nationalistic point of view …
Source: I. V. Stalin, Works (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1952-1955), Vol. V, pp. 30-32.