The National Question

Later on we shall see still other reasons why it would be wrong to interpret the right to self-determination as meaning anything but the right to existence as a separate state. [my emphasis]

…self-determination of nations” in the Marxists’ Programme cannot, from a historico-economic point of view, have any other meaning than political self-determination, state independence, and the formation of a national state. [my emphasis][56]

…Self-determination of nations has been understood to mean precisely political self-determination, the right to form an independent national state…

To accuse those who support freedom of self-determination, i.e., freedom to secede, of encouraging separatism, is as foolish and hypocritical as accusing those who advocate freedom of divorce of encouraging the destruction of family ties. [my emphasis] Just as in bourgeois society, the defenders of privilege and corruption, on which bourgeois marriage rests, oppose freedom of divorce, so, in the capitalist state, repudiation of the right to self-determination, i.e., the right of nations to secede, means nothing more than defense of the privileges of the dominant nation and police methods of administration, to the detriment of democratic methods. [my emphasis]

Social Democrats would be deviating from proletarian policy and subordinating the workers to the policy of the bourgeoisie if they were to repudiate the right of nations to self-determination, i.e., the right of an oppressed nation to secede…[57]

Let us state first of all that however meager 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. [my emphasis]

The reader will see that at the Second Congress of the Party, which adopted the program, it was unanimously understood that self-determination meant “only” the right to secession. [my emphasis][58]

As far as the theory of Marxism in general is concerned, the question of the right to self-determination presents no difficulty. No one can seriously question the London resolution of 1896, or the fact that self-determination implies only the right to secede… [my emphasis]

…To combat nationalism of every kind, above all. Great Russian nationalism to recognize, not only fully equal rights, for all nations in general, but also equality of rights as regards policy, i.e., the right of nations to self-determination, to secession… [my emphasis]