Lenin CW-Vol. 23.pdf - From Marx to Mao

A CARICATURE OF MARXISM39theses—and it cannot be refuted because it is correct hisdisquisitions about the “era” resemble a man brandishinghis sword but striking no blows.“In contrast to V. Ilyin’s opinion,” he writes at the end ofhis article, “we assume that for the majority [!] of Western[!] countries the national problem has not been settled....”And so, the national movements of the French, Spaniards,English, Dutch, Germans and Italians were not consummatedin the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,and earlier? At the beginning of the article the concept “eraof imperialism” is distorted to make it appear that the nationalmovement has been consummated in general, and notonly in the advanced Western countries. At the end of thesame article the “national problem” is declared “not settled”in precisely the Western countries!! Is that not a muddle?In the Western countries the national movement is athing of the distant past. In England, France, Germany,etc., the “fatherland” is a dead letter, it has played its historicalrole, i.e., the national movement cannot yield hereanything progressive, anything that will elevate new massesto a new economic and political life. History’s next step hereis not transition from feudalism or from patriarchal savageryto national progress, to a cultured and politically freefatherland, but transition from a “fatherland” that has outlivedits day, that is capitalistically overripe, to socialism.The position is different in Eastern Europe. As far as theUkrainians and Byelorussians, for instance, are concerned,only a Martian dreamer could deny that the national movementhas not yet been consummated there, that the awakeningof the masses to the full use of their mother tongueand literature (and this is an absolute condition and concomitantof the full development of capitalism, of the fullpenetration of exchange to the very last peasant family)is still going on there. The “fatherland” is historically notyet quite a dead letter there. There the “defence of thefatherland” can still be defence of democracy, of one’s nativelanguage, of political liberty against oppressor nations,against medievalism, whereas the English, French, Germansand Italians lie when they speak of defending their fatherlandin the present war, because actually what they are defendingis not their native language, not their right to nation-