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Extra info for The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union: 1917-1991 (Sources in History)

Sample text

25, pp. 316–17, 318–20. 18 Lenin—Socialism and Self- determination Lenin returned to the question in the middle of the war, spurred on by disputes overthe fate ofthe oppressed nations of the Central European empires, above all Poland. The right of nations to self-determination implies exclusively the right to independence in the political sense, the right to free political separation from the oppressor nation. Specifically, this demand for political democracy implies complete freedom to agitate for secession and for a referendum for secession by the seceding nation.

The right of self-determination of nations…is in no way equivalent to a demand for secession, subdivision and the formation of small states…The closer we are to a democratic government and the full freedom of secession, all the rarer and weaker will be the aspiration for secession in practice…The goal of socialism is not only the destruction of the splintering of mankind into small states and the isolation of nations, not only the bringing of nations together but even their fusion. [A later note was even more forceful:] 1 RUSSIA AND THE RISE OF BOLSHEVISM 25 The freedom of separation is the best and only political means against the idiotic system of small states and national isolation, which, fortunately for mankind, are inevitably destroyed through the entire development of capitalism.

The regulation of production by itself does not mean socialism at all; it exists in any sort of economy, in any slave-owning group with a natural economy. What awaits us in the immediate future is in fact state capitalism… The general pattern of the state’s development is as follows. At first the state is the only organisation of the dominant class. Then other organisations arise, whose numbers are especially increased in the epoch of finance capitalism, and the state is transformed from the only organisation of the dominant class into one of its organisations which exist simultaneously—an organisation which is distinguished by its most general character.

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