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

70V. I. LENINdemocracy, to some variety of the dictatorship of the proletariat,to the varying rate of socialist transformations inthe different aspects of social life. There is nothing more primitivefrom the viewpoint of theory, or more ridiculous fromthat of practice, than to paint, “in the name of historicalmaterialism”, this aspect of the future in a monotonous grey.The result will be nothing more than Suzdal daubing. Andeven if reality were to show that prior to the first victory of thesocialist proletariat only 1/500 of the nations now oppressedwill win emancipation and secede, that prior to the finalvictory of the socialist proletariat the world over (i.e., duringall the vicissitudes of the socialist revolution) also only 1/500of the oppressed nations will secede for a very short time—even in that event we would be correct, both from the theoreticaland practical political standpoint, in advising the workers,already now, not to permit into their Social-Democraticparties those socialists of the oppressor nations who do notrecognise and do not advocate freedom of secession for alloppressed nations. For the fact is that we do not know, andcannot know, how many of the oppressed nations will inpractice require secession in order to contribute something oftheir own to the different forms of democracy, the differentforms of transition to socialism. And that the negation offreedom of secession now is theoretically false from beginningto end and in practice amounts to servility to the chauvinistsof the oppressing nations—this we know, see and feeldaily.“We emphasise,” P. Kievsky writes in a footnote to thepassage quoted above, “that we fully support the demand‘against forcible annexation’....”But he makes no reply, not even by a single word, to ourperfectly clear statement that this “demand” is tantamountto recognising self-determination, that there can be nocorrect definition of the concept “annexation” unless it isseen in context with self-determination. Presumably Kievskybelieves that in a discussion it is enough to present one’sarguments and demands without any supporting evidence!He continues: “...We fully accept, in their negative formulation,a number of demands that tend to sharpen proletarianconsciousness against imperialism, but there is absolutelyno possibility of working out corresponding positive