National-Liberalism and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination

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Coming to the aid of the muddled Mr. Mogilyansky, the editors of the liberal Rech recently (in issue No. 340) published an unsigned, i. e., official and editorial statement on an important issue, namely, the right of nations to self-determination.

Evading a direct answer, Mr. Mogilyansky had asserted that his views had “nothing in common with the repudiation of the right of nations to self-determination”. Now Rech officially declares that Clause 11 of the Constitutional-Democratic Party programme gives a “direct, precise and clear answer to the question of the right to free cultural self-determination”.

The word we have underlined is particularly important, since it was not “cultural” self-determination that was discussed in Mr. Mogilyansky’s first article, or in Mr. Dontsov’s reply to it, or in Mr. Mogilyansky’s polemic with Mr. Dontsov. The question discussed was the political self-determination of nations, i. e., the right of nations to secede, whereas by “cultural self-determination” (a meaningless, pompous phrase, which contradicts the entire history of democracy) the liberals really mean only freedom of languages.

Rech now declares that Proletarskaya Pravda hopelessly confuses self-determination with “separatism”, with secession by a nation.

Which side is revealing hopeless (or perhaps deliberate...) confusion?

Will our enlightened “Constitutional-Democrats” deny that, throughout the entire history of international democracy, and especially since the middle of the nineteenth century, self-determination of nations has been understood to mean precisely political self-determination, i. e., the right to secede, to form an independent national state?

Will our enlightened “Constitutional-Democrats” deny that the International Socialist Congress held in London in 1896, in reaffirming the established democratic principle (to which, of course, the Congress did not confine itself) also had in mind political and not some sort of “cultural” self-determination?

Will our enlightened “Constitutional-Democrats” deny that Plekhanov, for example, who wrote about self-determination as far back as 1902, thereby understood political self-determination?

Please, gentlemen, explain yourselves more clearly; do not conceal the fruits of your “enlightenment” from the “mob”!

On the main issue Rech states:

“Actually, the Cadets have never pledged themselves to advocate the right of ‘nations to secede’ from the Russian state.”

Splendid! Thank you for being so candid, and for making such an explicit statement of principles! We draw the attention of Rossiya, Novoye Vremya, Zemshchina, and others, to this “most loyal” statement by the Cadets’ semi-official organ!

But stay your ire, gentlemen of the Cadet Party, should you be called national-liberals precisely for that reason. Herein lies one of the root causes of your chauvinism and of your ideological and political bloc with the Purishkeviches (or of your ideological and political dependence upon them). The Purishkeviches and their class inculcate in the ignorant masses the “firm” belief that it is “right” to “grab ’em and hold ’em”. The Cadets have studied history and know only too well what—to put it mildly—“pogrom-like” actions the practice of this “ancient right” has often led to. A democrat could not remain a democrat (let alone a proletarian democrat) without systematically advocating, precisely among the Great-Russian masses and in the Russian language, the “self-determination” of nations in the political amid not in the “cultural” sense.

Always and everywhere the characteristic feature of national-liberalism lies in its taking a stand entirely on the basis of relations (and boundaries) determined by the Purishkevich class and protected (often to the detriment of economic development and of “culture”) by Purishkevich methods. In effect, this means adapting oneself to the interests of the feudal-minded landlords and to the worst nationalist prejudices of the dominant nation, instead of systematically combating those prejudices.