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LENIN , RUSSIA , UKRAINE and 

 THE RIGHT OF NATIONS TO SECEDE


   The elimination of national oppression, if at all achievable in capitalist society, is possible under a  consistently  democratic republican  system and state  administration that guarantee complete equality  for all nations and languages. 

   The right  of all nations forming part of Russia freely to secede and form independent  states must be recognised. To deny them this right, or to fail to take measures guaranteeing  its practical realisation, is equivalent to supporting a policy of seizure or annexation. Only the recognition by the proletariat  of the right of nations to secede can ensure complete solidarity  among the workers of various nations and help to bring the nations closer together on tryly democratic lines...

   The  right of nations freely to secede most not be confused with the advisability of secession by a given nation at a given moment. The party of the proletariat must decide the latter question quite independently in each particular case, having regard to the interests of social development as a whole and the interests of the class struggle of the proletariat  for socialism.

 ( Resolution on the National Question Lenin - Collected Works - Vol. 24 - p. . 302/03 (1917)


   The freer Russia is, and the more resolutely our republic  recognises the right of non-great Russian nations to secede, the more strongly  will other nations be attracted towards an alliance with us, the less friction will there be, more rarely will actual secession occur, the shorter the period of secession will last, and the closer and more enduring - in the  long run- will the fraternal alliance be between the Russian proletarian and peasant republic and the republics of all other nations. 

 (Finland and Russia - Lenin- collected Works -Vol. 24 - p. 338 (1917)

            UKRAINIANS' RIGHT  TO SECEDE 

    They  Ukrainian Rada) state very specifically that the Ukrainian people do not wish to secede from Russia at present. They demand autonomy without denying the need for  the supreme  authority of  "all Russia Parliament".  No democrat, let alone a socialist, will venture to deny the complete legitimacy of the Ukrainian demands. And no democrat can deny the Ukrainian's right to freely secede from Russia. Only unqualified recognition of this right makes it possible to advocate a free union of the Ukrainians and the Great Russians, a voluntary association of two peoples in one state. Only unqualified  recognition of this right can actually break completely and irrevocably  with the accursed Tsarist past, when everything was done to bring about a mutual estrangement  of the two peoples so close to each other in language, territory, character ad history..  

   We do not favour the existence of  small states. We stand for the closest union of the workers of the world against " their own " capitalists and those of all other countries. But for this union to be voluntary , the Russian worker, who does not for a moment trust the Russian or the Ukrainian bourgeoisie in anything, now stand for the right of the Ukrainians to secede, without imposing his friendship upon them, but striving to win their friendship by treating them as an equal, as an ally and brother in the struggle for socialism


 The Ukraine -Lenin - collected Works - Vol. 25 - pp.91/92 (1917)

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