The present pamphlet contains only three articles on the national question. The particular selection of articles made by the publisher apparently has the sense that the three chosen articles reflect three of the most important periods in the resolution of the national question within the ranks of our Party, the pamphlet as a whole evidently having as its aim to provide a more or less complete picture of our Party's policy on the national question.

The first article ("Marxism and the National Question," see the journal Prosveshcheniye, 1913) [104] reflects the period of principled discussions on the national question within the ranks of Russian Social-Democracy during the era of landlord-tsarist reaction, a year and a half before the outbreak of the imperialist war, in the era of the growing bourgeois-democratic revolution in Russia. Two theories of the nation were in struggle at that time, and correspondingly two national programmes: the Austrian, supported by the Bund and the Mensheviks, and the Russian, Bolshevik one. A characterisation of both currents will be found in the article. Subsequent events, and in particular the imperialist war and the break-up of Austria-Hungary into separate national states, showed before everyone's eyes on whose side the truth lay. Now, when Springer and Bauer sit before the wreckage of their national programme, one can scarcely doubt that history has condemned the "Austrian school." Even the Bund was compelled to acknowledge that "the demand for national-cultural autonomy (i.e., the Austrian national programme. — J. St.), put forward within the framework of the capitalist order, loses its meaning under conditions of socialist revolution" (see "XII Conference of the Bund," 1920). The Bund does not suspect that in doing so it has acknowledged (inadvertently acknowledged) the fundamental untenable character of the theoretical foundations of the Austrian national programme, the fundamental untenable character of the Austrian theory of the nation.

The second article ("The October Revolution and the National Question," see Zhizn Natsionalnostey, 1918) [105] reflects the period following the October Revolution, when Soviet power, having vanquished the counter-revolution in central Russia, came into conflict with the bourgeois-nationalist governments on the borderlands as hotbeds of counter-revolution; when the Entente, alarmed by the growing influence of Soviet power upon its (the Entente's) colonies, began openly supporting the bourgeois-nationalist governments with the aim of strangling Soviet Russia; when in the course of the victorious struggle against the bourgeois-nationalist governments there arose before us the practical question of the concrete forms of regional Soviet autonomy, of the organisation of autonomous Soviet republics on the borderlands, of spreading the influence of Soviet Russia upon the oppressed countries of the East through the eastern borderlands of Russia, of creating a united revolutionary front of West and East against world imperialism. The article notes the indissoluble connection between the national question and the question of power, and treats national policy as part of the general question of oppressed peoples and colonies — that is, the very thing against which the "Austrian school," the Mensheviks, the reformists, and the Second International were wont to object, and which was subsequently confirmed by the entire course of events.

The third article ("The Policy of Soviet Power on the National Question in Russia," see Zhizn Natsionalnostey, October 1920) [106] pertains to the present period of the as yet uncompleted administrative redivision of Russia on the basis of regional Soviet autonomy, to the period of the organisation on the borderlands of administrative communes and autonomous Soviet republics as constituent parts of the RSFSR. The central point of the article is the question of the actual implementation of Soviet autonomy in practice, i.e., the question of securing the revolutionary alliance between the centre and the borderlands as a guarantee against the interventionist enterprises of imperialism.

It may seem strange that the article decisively rejects the demand for the separation of the borderlands from Russia as a counter-revolutionary scheme. But in substance there is nothing strange in this. We are for the separation of India, Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, and other colonies from the Entente, because separation in that case signifies the liberation of these oppressed countries from imperialism, the weakening of imperialism's positions, the strengthening of revolution's positions. We are against the separation of the borderlands from Russia, because separation in that case would mean imperialist bondage for the borderlands, the weakening of Russia's revolutionary strength, the strengthening of imperialism's positions. It is precisely for this reason that the Entente, fighting against the separation of India, Egypt, Arabia, and other colonies, is at the same time fighting for the separation of the borderlands from Russia. It is precisely for this reason that Communists, fighting for the separation of the colonies from the Entente, cannot at the same time fail to fight against the separation of the borderlands from Russia. Evidently, the question of separation is decided depending on the concrete international conditions, depending on the interests of the revolution.

From the first article it would have been possible to remove certain passages that are now of purely historical interest, but in view of the polemical character of the article it had to be published in its entirety and without changes. The second and third articles are likewise printed without changes.

October 1920

J. Stalin. A Collection of Articles.

Giz, Tula, 1920