Book: Marxism and the National Question

Overview
Joseph Stalin’s 1913 treatise sets out a Marxist framework for understanding nations and offers a program for addressing national conflicts within a multinational state, especially the Russian Empire. It combines a conceptual definition of the nation with a critique of rival socialist approaches and a set of political conclusions aimed at safeguarding proletarian unity while supporting democratic rights for oppressed peoples.

Historical Setting and Aim
Written amid the crisis of the late tsarist empire, marked by rapid capitalist development, rising national movements, and fierce debates within the socialist movement, the work targets two adversaries: liberal-bourgeois nationalism that seeks to subordinate workers to national elites, and socialist currents (Austro-Marxists and the Bund) that propose extraterritorial cultural autonomy. Stalin argues that Marxists must articulate a clear, class-based policy on the national question that links democratic rights with proletarian internationalism.

Defining a Nation
Stalin offers a now-canonical definition: a nation is a historically constituted, stable community of people formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological makeup manifested in a common culture. The definition is deliberately restrictive. A nation is not simply an aggregate of people sharing religion or language; it requires the convergence of all four features. By tying the emergence of nations to the epoch of ascending capitalism, he distinguishes modern nations from earlier, looser ethnic and tribal formations.

Capitalism and National Movements
Capitalist development both consolidates nations and inflames national conflicts. The creation of a national market, the spread of a common language, and the formation of a shared economic life strengthen national cohesion, while uneven development and imperial domination intensify contradictions between oppressor and oppressed nations. For Marxists, national movements can be historically progressive insofar as they tear down feudal and imperial barriers, yet they also carry the danger of subordinating workers to bourgeois leadership. The task is to support democratic national demands without yielding to nationalism.

The Right of Nations to Self-Determination
Stalin insists that consistent democracy requires upholding the right of nations to self-determination, including political secession. Recognition of the right is distinguished from the advisability of exercising it; whether separation serves working-class interests is a tactical question to be judged case by case. Unconditional rejection of the right feeds Great-Power chauvinism; uncritical support for every separatist project fosters bourgeois nationalism. The guiding principle is the unity of the proletariat across nations, secured by trust that springs from championing equality and freedom.

Centralization, Federalism, and Autonomy
He favors a centralized, democratic state with extensive regional and local self-government where national groups form territorial majorities. Federalism is criticized as institutionalizing fragmentation and hindering the development of the productive forces. Territorial autonomy is endorsed where it reflects real concentrations of a national community; it should encompass schooling, language rights, and administration without creating parallel, nation-based state structures.

Critique of Cultural-National Autonomy
A central polemic targets the Austro-Marxist proposal of cultural-national autonomy and the Jewish Bund’s advocacy of extraterritorial autonomy. By detaching nationality from territory and vesting schools and cultural institutions in nationality-based bodies, these schemes, Stalin argues, entrench divisions, promote clerical and bourgeois influence, and split the working class. He rejects the claim that dispersed groups constitute nations in the absence of common territory and economic life, contending that such proposals elevate culture over material bonds and class struggle.

Party Policy and Organizational Questions
The proletariat must organize in a single, centralized party that unites workers of all nations, while fighting both Great-Russian chauvinism and narrow nationalism. Practical measures include full legal equality, language rights in administration and education, and redress for oppressed nations, combined with relentless opposition to bourgeois projects that substitute national unity for class unity.

Legacy
The treatise provided Bolshevism with a systematic doctrine on the national question: a strict definition of nationhood, a defense of self-determination, a rejection of cultural-national autonomy, and a strategy for combining state centralization with democratic guarantees. Its influence extended into early Soviet nationality policy, even as later practices revealed tensions between principle and power.