Lenin on the National and Colonial Questions: Three Articles

by Vladimir Lenin

Contents: The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination (Theses); Preliminary Draft of Theses on the National and Colonial Questions (for the Second Congress of the Communist International); The Report of the Commission on the National and Colonial Questions (July 20, 1920); Notes.

Genres: History, Politics

40 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1967

About the author

Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Vladimir Lenin, was a Russian revolutionary, leader of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks), statesman and political theorist. After the October Revolution he served as the first and founding head of government of Soviet Russia from 1917 until his death in 1924 and of the Soviet Union from 1922 until his death in 1924.

Reviews

[Σταμάτης Καρασαββίδης · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honestly it's amazing how Lenin predicted many 'arguments' that the absolute majority of western 'communists' use today. It's honestly surprising that Lenin replying to Kautskyite opportunism and chauvinism in 1916 would be so relevant against the western 'communists' of 2022.

Lenin's opinion on the national question and national independence is very clear. All nations should be free of oppression. Workers of oppressor nations should without any remorse side with the nations that their nations is occupying and fight for their liberation and NOT hide between empty phrases and excuses that "these are demands that cant happen under capitalism/imperialism" or that "these demands are not 'possible to achieve' and that 'we need to establish socialism first and then care for the national question'. Lenin extends this for all democratic rights and not just the right of self determination. In the same sense what Lenin says can be expanded into the question of queer liberation. Lenin makes specific mentions that democratic rights are always 'claimed' by imperialists and the big bourgeois and 'great powers' but this is always to deceive the proletariat. We must instead fight independently for democratic rights because it is socialist struggle that can truly guarantee democratic rights, either these are women's emancipation, LGBTQ+ liberation and emancipation, the self determination of occupied nations and colonies etc.

Another important point he makes is his mention of annexations. Annexations are not something inherently positive or negative but it depends on the circumstances, imperialism and the nature of violence. Annexations can be either revolutionary through a popular violence through a rightful struggle for independence or federation, or it can be counter revolutionary and occupationary through a colonial subjugation. Thus we see today western 'communists' speak against the referendums conducted by the People's Republics of Novorossiya, calling it 'imperialist annexation' instead despite the 8 year popular struggle and people's violence for liberation from the nazi Kiev regime.

In the same sense, the only natural conclusion in terms of Greece and its role in occupation, even though Greece was from its beginning established as a colony of the West since 1830, its foundations still lay on the blood, genocide and occupation of other nations such as the Macedonians and as long as Macedonia is not free and united, communists can not ignore this matter. The same exact thing goes for queer liberation which communists either choose to ignore or go against as they call it a "bourgeois decandance and individualism".

The most important article in my opinion is the first one. The others are short and not as condensed as the first. The second one has some points that are later corrected and revised in the third article that analysis the concept and nature of bourgeois-democratic revolution, or as it is corrected in the third article, the national revolutionary revolution and that the backward states do not need to pass through a capitalist period of development to achieve socialism and communism.

I will quote lastly some very important parts of the book that I consider really enlightening that really show how relevant Lenin's works are to this very day:

"The proletariat of the oppressing nations cannot confine itself to the general hackneyed phrases against annexations and for the equal rights of nations in general, that may be repeated by any pacifist bourgeois. The proletariat cannot evade the question that is particularly “unpleasant” for the imperialist bourgeoisie, namely, the question of the frontiers of a state that is based on national oppression. The proletariat cannot but fight against the forcible retention of the oppressed nations within the boundaries of a given state, and this is exactly what the struggle for the right of self-determination means. The proletariat must demand the right of political secession for the colonies and for the nations that “its own” nation oppresses. Unless it does this, proletarian internationalism will remain a meaningless phrase; mutual confidence and class solidarity between the workers of the oppressing and oppressed nations will be impossible; the hypocrisy of the reformist and Kautskyan advocates of self-determination who maintain silence about the nations which are op-pressed by “their” nation and forcibly retained within “their” state will remain unexposed. "

"The aim of socialism is not only to abolish the present division of mankind into small states and all national isolation; not only to bring the nations closer to each other, but also to merge them. And in order to achieve this aim, we must demand the liberation of the oppressed nations, not only in general, nebulous phrases, not in empty declamations, not by “postponing” the question until socialism is established, but in a clearly and pre-cisely formulated political programme which shall particularly take into account the hypocrisy and cowardice of the Socialists in the op-pressing nations. Just as mankind can achieve the abolition of classes only by passing through the transition period of the dictatorship of the oppressed class, so mankind can achieve the inevitable merging of nations only by passing through the transition period of complete liberation of all the oppressed nations, i.e., their freedom to secede."

"The fact that the struggle for national liberation against one im-perialist power may, under certain circumstances, be utilized by an-other “Great” Power in its equally imperialist interests should have no more weight in inducing Social Democracy to renounce its recog-nition of the right of nations to self-determination than the numerous cases of the bourgeoisie utilizing republican slogans for the purpose of political deception and financial robbery, for example, in the Latin countries, have had in inducing them to renounce republicanism.*"

"It would be a fundamental mistake to suppose that the struggle for democracy can divert the proletariat from the socialist revolution, or obscure, or overshadow it, etc. On the contrary, just as socialism cannot be victorious unless it introduces complete democracy, so the proletariat will be unable to prepare for victory over the bourgeoisie unless it wages a many-sided, consistent and revolutionary struggle for democracy.
It would be no less mistaken to delete any of the points of the democratic programme, for example, the point of self-determination of nations, on the ground that it is “infeasible,” or that it is “illusory” under imperialism. The assertion that the right of nations to self-determination cannot be achieved within the framework of capitalism may be understood either in its absolute, economic sense, or in the conventional, political sense."

"The demand for the immediate liberation of the colonies, as advanced by all revolutionary Social-Democrats, is also “impossible of achievement” under capitalism without a series of revolutions. This does not imply, however, that Social Democracy must refrain from conducting an immediate and most determined struggle for all these demands – to refrain would merely be to the advantage of the bourgeoisie and reaction. On the contrary, it implies that it is necessary to formulate and put forward all these demands, not in a reformist, but in a revolutionary way; not by keeping within the framework of bourgeois legality, but by breaking through it; not by confining one-self to parliamentary speeches and verbal protests, but by drawing the masses into real action, by widening and fomenting the struggle for every kind of fundamental, democratic demand, right up to and in-cluding the direct onslaught of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie, i.e., to the socialist revolution, which will expropriate the bourgeoisie. The socialist revolution may break out not only in consequence of a great strike, a street demonstration, a hunger riot, a mutiny in the forces, or a colonial rebellion, but also in consequence of any political crisis, like the Dreyfus affair, the Zabern incident, or in connection with a referendum on the secession of an oppressed nation, etc."

"There is not a single democratic demand which could not serve, and has not served, under certain conditions, as an instrument of the bourgeoisie for deceiving the workers. To single out one of the demands of political democracy, namely, the self-determination of nations, and to oppose it to all the rest, is fundamentally wrong in theory. In practice, the proletariat will be able to retain its independence only if it subordinates its struggle for all the democratic demands, not excluding the demand for a republic, to its revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie."

"The specific question of annexations has become a particularly urgent one owing to the war. But what is annexation! Clearly, to protest against annexations implies either the recognition of the right of self-determination of nations, or that the protest is based on a pacifist phrase which defends the status quo and opposes all violence including revolutionary violence. Such a phrase is radically wrong, and incompatible with Marxism."

5/5

[emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I find most interesting about these texts is the clear evidence that most MLs fundamentally misunderstand or do not read Lenin. The usual campist framing of one bourgeois nation-state being "anti imperialist" as a counter-hegemonic opposing force because of "dialectics" is a pervasive and deeply troubling line of revisionism baked into ML discourse.

With the ongoing (as of March 2026) inter-imperialist war between Iran and the US and its proxies (UK, Israel, etc), many MLs have committed themselves to "critical support" of the IR. Of course, every Marxist should oppose regime change and deliberate attempts to spread the yoke of one imperialist power over another nation, and Lenin would agree. However, where the split towards revisionism arises is when MLs will argue the IR is "anti-imperialist", and that the class interests of the proletariat ought to be subsumed into the homogenous interests of the state. This is an abberation. As Lenin says: "In practice, the proletariat will be able to retain its independence only if it subordinates its struggle for all the democratic demands, not excluding the demand for a republic, to its revolutionary struggle for the overthrow of the bourgeoisie." In other words, the movement for national liberation must be also a movement for socialism. Furthermore, this national liberation is ALWAYS subordinate to the interests of the global proletariat, and cannot, under any circumstances, take precedence: "...proletarian internationalism demands, first, that the interests of the proletarian struggle in any one country should be subordinated to the interests of that struggle on a world-wide scale, and, second, that a nation which is achieving victory over the bourgeoisie should be able and willing to make the greatest national sacrifices for the overthrow of international capital".

Many MLs will however point to other passages, particularly when Lenin defends bourgeois-democratic revolutions undertaken by the bourgeoisie, as evidence that this syllogism is too simplistic -- but as Lenin also writes, this support is conditional, and historically tempered. The era Lenin was writing in, where the global imperialist stage of capitalism was only in its infancy, was marked by a mixture of, as he writes, nations that could be split roughly into advanced capitalist nations, semi-colonial, and Eastern-European nations. In the imperial core, nationalism is entirely regressive and reactionary; in the semi-colonial nations, it is progressive towards the end of capitalist development; whilst in Eastern-Europe, riddled with national oppression and centuries of ethnic divides, national liberation is also progressive but must be coupled with socialism immediately. What this therefore suggests is that nationalism is, ultimately, defended by Lenin as progressive, and this is partly correct: "...we, as Communists, should and will support bourgeois-liberation movements in the colonies only when they are genuinely revolutionary, and when their exponents do not hinder our work of educating and organising in a revolutionary spirit the peasantry and the masses of the exploited. If these conditions do not exist, the Communists in these countries must combat the reformist bourgeoisie, to whom the heroes of the Second International also belong."

But notice the caveat? "Only when they are genuinely revolutionary", and "if these conditions do not exist, the communists in these countries must combat the reformist bourgeoisie". This is precisely the condition of Iran, Ukraine, Russia, etc. Insofar as the colonial relation as such no longer exists, and all countries are more-or-less capitalist (unlike Lenin's time when 70% of the globe was semi-feudal and semi-colonial) -- but with notable exceptions of course, chief among them being Palestine, -- we as communists must take his advice with the context in which it was written.

For a bourgeois national movement to be historically progressive, it must: Advance the productive forces; Sharpen class divides and increase proletarianisation. For a genuinely revolutionary national movement to be progressive and *anti imperialist* it must be socialist, defined by international solidarity and socialism. Iran meets neither of these criteria. The typical campist dualism adopted by many modern MLs is a deviation from Lenin's actual dialectical method, and a betrayal of proletarian solidarity. It reframes the world into blocs of "Imperialists" and "Anti imperialists", flattening class divisions into national ones and freezing Marxism into a static and unchanging dogma. In an era of global capitalism, no national liberation movements exist that still follow the logic of "developing capitalism", and as such we must entirely reject their logic as an idealistic, conservative, reactionary petit-bourgeois chauvinism.

Another famous quote from Lenin, not in this text, sums this up clearly for a Marxist who seeks to practice historical materialism as an active science and not a dogmatic teleology: "Imperialism is as much our “mortal” enemy as is capitalism. That is so. No Marxist will forget, however, that capitalism is progressive compared with feudalism, and that imperialism is progressive compared with pre-monopoly capitalism. Hence, it is not every struggle against imperialism that we should support. We will not support a struggle of the reactionary classes against imperialism; we will not support an uprising of the reactionary classes against imperialism and capitalism."

5*.

[Ithome · Rating 4 out of 5]

3 short articles on the questions of self-determination and the policy on colonies. Very good short explanation of the ML view on that question. It's strange seeing some "anti-natlib" Leninists exist when he was incredibly in support of national revolutionary movements in the colonial/semi-colonial world.