PEN-L message, Re: Chronology of Russian-Chechen relations -- part two

Comment

You question is absolutely valid and Lenin drew a sharp distinction between what he called nations and what in the English speaking world we call ethic groups or advanced national groups or groups of people who have not and did not get a chance to form distinct classes amongst themselves during the era of transition from landed property to industrial relations.

Lenin fought this out as policy in his polemic against the Bund.

Allow me to speak to this question and consolidate what is being discussed. I must state that this is a very complex issue for American Marxists and the lengthy reply below was first written as a response to another inquiry on Chechnya.

Please bear with me.

Again you are correct . . . Lenin distinguished between nations and historically formed peoples who had not reached the economic stage of development characteristic of modern classes in modern nations. This distinction became the basis of different policy and policy statements of the Soviet government. Avoiding the question will not make it go away since it is recorded in history and can be retrieved by anyone.

Well, history is written on a parchment of genocide in blood ink and all the back flogging will never change the facts. The real issue was self determination up to and including the formation of an independent national state as embodying what has been called "national rights."

Is what is taking place in Chechnya, the meaning of the "national question?" I answer absolutely not because the meaning of the national question refers to another period of history.

The national factor will persist for perhaps 200 more years, but what is talking place in Chechnya, is not the national question Lenin speaks of in its economic logic. The national question is a peasant question.

Further, It is impossible to form an independent national state in today's world because of the world market and the dispersal of peoples. In theory or rather as an abstraction one can only form an "independent" multinational state, which is the point concerning the existence of various peoples or "ethnic groups."

Ethnic grouping are not nations and the right of nations to self determination, up to and including the formation of independent states, means nations and not ethnic groups. Other political policies were enacted to embrace historically evolved peoples who where not modern nations in the history of Bolshevik policy.

If one is considering what Lenin actually wrote and how the national question was framed by the Bolsheviks, how can one even speak of a national state in relationship to the slogan self determination in the year 2004?

What is called "national rights" is in my estimate a misunderstanding of the formulation of the national question in history as a social and political manifestation of economic logic that draw peoples into the vortex of a new mode of production.

We are more than one hundred years from the concept of a "national state." The "national state" arose under specific conditions, more than less localized, during another era of human history. Exactly what is "national rights" except an ideological formulation attempting to make sense of a specific circumstance - Chechnya, that is not fully understood?

One must begin with the environment and reality of 2004 and the collapse of the Soviet State. These so-called national movements are more than less 100% reactionary in their political and economic content and bourgeois counterrevolution movements unleashed by the counterrevolution.

These are not national movements and in the context of history is the same as saying that the old Solidarity Movement in Poland was a revolutionary proletarian movement. These so-called national movements in the former Soviet Union are absolutely reactionary in relationship to history.

The reactionary bourgeois movements mistaken called national movements do not obscure certain political realities that needed critical adjustment. In this sense what is being referenced is roughly what can be called managerial structures of governance, which is many instances were heavily weighted by Russian nationals proper.

Earlier I specifically mentioned the humiliation and hatred expressed by the oppressed and lesser economically developed people at being administered by the ruling people and imperial state. The question of language and custom is extremely important to the lesser economically developed peoples. This question is still being fought out in America and the resistance to the Spanish language is enormous.

The scale, pace and how the process of ensuring the preservation of cultural distinctiveness and amalgamation -- at the same time, is exceptionally complex and my only scale of comparison is between the living practices and history of large states in comparison to one another -- as opposed to categories in my head.

Here is the difference between how the guardians of a large multinational state structure - the imperial peoples, approach what is called the difference between a nation and autonomous region.

There is always going to be heavy handiness, brutality and outright buffoonery on the part of the imperial peoples and their leaders, because they are protecting their jobs and right to privileges.

This question is complex and I am extremely familiar with it. Let us try and look at it in the context of American society. Women are the most oppressed and exploited in American society. African American occupy the bottom of the social ladder more than less and Mexicans - depending on where they live, cut the grass.

Why are the absolute majority of writers on Pen-L and other listservers - speaking on behalf of social revolution, white? Historical bribery or racism is an answer but does not unravel the structure of the question. The dynamic that emerges in history is that the people, groups and classes needing the most help or to benefit most from social revolution are hardly every prepared to handle the tasks of the day because their exclusion prevents the evolution of a set of skills, training, engagement with advanced means of production that allows one to overcome a historically evolved social position.

There is a reason progressive and revolutionary women are the last ones to enter this new form of communication called the Internet. Take this little bitty example and magnify it 100 times to embrace all the various nations, advanced national groups (historically evolved people whose class differentiation has not reached the stage of classes characteristic of bourgeois production and property relations), ethnic minorities and peoples marked by specific cultural traits by which they differentiate themselves from others and one begins to understand the breath of the national factor in Russia and the Soviet Union.

Let us examine this a little more closely in comparison with our own multinational state that is the USNA. In America the language question was solved by murdering blacks - the slaves, that spoke their native tongue. For the Mexican and children of Arzlan all education other than in English was banned. That is to say the bourgeoisie absolutely opposed with force of arms the Leninists concept of regional autonomy or the policy of autonomous regions in history. To this very day all forms of higher education and technical training are in English by government policy.

I once read an argument where an author stated the Soviets did not print enough books in native languages. Well, I cannot quantify this but I am deeply aware of the resistance of the oppressed to read in another language even if it means their economic advancement. I actually hate this form of English used in Internet dialogue and often will not run spell check because it is not that important to me and offends the structure and logic of the English that match how I think things out.

The point is that the national factor is not a slogan or ideological concept or screaming self determination but a product of history that is not going to be solved at this stage of development. At best partial solutions are possible and the Bolsheviks put forth the most advance political solutions of this question during their era of history.

The solution does not reduce itself to "the right of nations to self determination," that comes out of the mouth of every bourgeoisie nationalists or cultural nationalist with an ax to grind.

What is being discussed?

What provokes this dialogue was an assertion that members of Pen-L were passive in supporting the right of Chechnya to self determination and contributors to Pen-L were basically told they misunderstood the Marxist presentation of the national question in the hands of Lenin or were being "soft on Putin - the criminal bourgeois and/or the Russian State."

A flurry of responses came in saying "wait a minute" - no one is a cheer leader of Putin but is this not an issue that deserves inspection and economic unraveling? Plus a lot of contributors have read everything in Lenin and are not school children, but serious people.

Lenin did not say the right of self determination up to and including the formation of states for ethic groups or advance national groups and he stated this slogan in a historical context.

These various identity movement produced as Balkanization during the last decade or so are not national movements. National movement has a historically defined meaning. The national movement is a peasant question. We are dealing with something a little different from the Lenin of one hundred years ago.

Well, in 2004 there is no good guys on one side and bad guys on the other in the current reformulation of state relations within the old USSR. Putin is not a bad guy fighting good guys who want to protect their culture and cultural specificity. Life is never this simple.

In other words the question "which side are you on" in relationship to Chechnya and the Russian State under Putin can only steer one into the arms of reactionary fundamentalists or siding with Putin.

My initial answer to the question was Soviet power on a different basis, which is the most elementary standard answer of a communist that has lived and paid attention to the last forty years.

On this question of the distinction between nations and historically evolved people . . . are black people-African Americans a nation in the American Union. Are the Chechen a nation?

This does not mean the national factor is not real and painful. I understand the meaning and political consequence of raising the right of self determination for the African American people in 2004.

It is an utterly reactionary demand.

Melvin P.