PEN-L message, Re: Chechen relations -- final for today

> --- BTW, when the Bolshies were talking about national
> self-determination inside Russia, weren't they mainly talking about
> developed "nations" like Ukraine or Georgia? Did they write much on
> peoples like the Chechens, Avars, Chukchi, Chuvash, Ingush, etc.? >There are over 100 distinct nationalities in Russia (I did a search on
> marxists.org on "Chechnya" in the Lenin section and got nada; in
> Trotsky's, I got one where he quotes someone else.

Melvin P.

Your reply to this question was no . . .Lenin did not differtiatie between the economic states and class formation of peoples. The reply is that Lenin grouped all "Causauses nations together in social terms ". . . what ever that means.

Here is what what stated.

Lenin grouped all the Caucauses nations together in social terms. In his 1921 "To the Comrades Communists of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, Daghestan, and the Mountaineer Republic", he warned against the kind of steamroller methods that Stalin would make infamous:

Melvin P.

To begin with Lenin is addressing the communists "of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, Daghestan, and the Mountaineer Republic," and in fact is lumping together the communist and not the diverse people "of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, Daghestan, and the Mountaineer Republic."

This is why his letter says ""To the Comrade Communists" and not to the diverse peoples of . . .!

A reasonable reading of standard English would indicate this. Further, there is no such thing as "social terms" unless what define what of earth they mean or imply. We are all human beings but the chronology that is serving as reference to this thread begins in 1850 in particular with reference back to 1550.

The difference between nations and historically evolved people that are not classified as nations is fundamentally economic and manifested as class. Let us use an example close to the heart of the people of the American Union.

Marxists in the American Union have not classified the various Indian Nations, Bands and groups as modern nations in the Marxist and Leninist sense because of their economic stage of development.

In other words when the genocidal wars of extermination was launched against the Indians and after their brutal conquest there did not exist a petty bourgeoisie, a bourgeoisie or a proletariat as fundamental class - economic units amongst the various Indian nations.

Thus the various Indian people are "old nations" or advance national groups or historically evolved people who have not entered the economic development that characterizes modern nations - bourgeois property relations. Lenin is very . . . very clear about this distinction and speak repeatedly of it in his assessment of the national question.

Obviously the African American people were slaves in 1850 and actually did not exists as the African American people . . yet. What would become the African American people was a class of slaves. A class cannot constitute the basis of a modern nation . . . according to Lenin and his writings on this matter. Yet the African American people are a historically evolved people formed under the pressure and terror of the whites. Economic development as the appearance of modern classes mean everything to unraveling the national factor.

If anything the slave class constitute the primary value producing class of the plantation South with the other classes revolving around them - including the property holding class. Color or ethnicity is not the basis of a modern nation, but rather economic logic, that welds historically evolved peoples into nations and modern multinational states and national states.

The question of the Mexican and children of Azlan is even more complex because half of Mexico's territory was seized but for my money this specific question is a textbook study of the meaning of Regional Autonomy or what was called by the Bolsheviks . . . an autonomous region.

Lenin never lumped people together in "social terms" - never . . . but in fact demanded that communists and party members acted in unison. Lenin was very clear about the task of the communists amongst the less economically developed peoples and the task of the communist within the imperial centers.

Today we face an entirely different world . . in social terms . . . and in class composition and internal class components. The most obvious different in the American Union is the composition of the working class and the proletariat.

The most visible sign is in the composition of what was the leading sector of the industrial proletariat. Up until the 1950's the leading edge of combat of the industrial proletariat was the Slavic workers. For the past three decades that section of the industrial proletariat in combat as the cutting edge has been the African American workers, which has changed how the working class movement articulates itself and this includes the national question.

This is an interesting development because the revolutionary elements of this cutting edge can impose their articulation of the social question on the entire social movement due to their strategic location and density. For example, the national question is never a question to those on the short end of the stick . . . that is to say that the national question is only a question to the oppressing people.

What we have actually faced is the national factor during the epoch of the bourgeoisie. During the time of Marx and Lenin the national question presented itself differently.

In American the economic gravity and density if the colored workers allows them to impose another articulation on the entire working class. This is not an ideological question but a question of real world politics.

Here we once again run into the historical problem. The workers who density allows them to impart the primary social characterizes to the working class movement are hardly prepared to do such. When they become prepared and politically learned to do such another section of the working class leaps forward.

The women who are the absolute majority of the working class and its most poverty stricken and fighting section are going to further re-articulate the various features of the working class movement and impart to it new characteristics.

The point of course is dealing with real world events and current data and not ideological pronouncements that serve no one any good.

I would not jump on the bandwagon of "Chechnya self determination" and "Chechnya as a nation."

I am a reasonably decent book in my hand called "A State of Nations: Empire and Nation Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin," Oxford University Press 2001, and Chapter 5 is called "Stalinism and the Empire of Nations." It is interesting and worth reading. Also early in the book the distinction between nations and historically evolved peoples at various stages of economic development is made rather clear . . . and this is a bunch of bourgeois scholars.

Then again one bourgeois scholar is worth one thousand ideological Marxists.

Enough of this for today.

Melvin P.