제 1차 세계대전 말 유럽의 국제정치와 민족자결주의

Abstract

This article attempts to explore the self-determination discourse set from the late nineteenth century to the period of the First World War in Europe. Firstly, it examines European Lefts’ discourse on self-determination and argues that, despite clear discrepancies among the Left intellectuals, it tended to put the self-determination principle to go beyond war-related issues and to include anti-imperialist agenda. Secondly, the article traces the European controversies on self-determination in the late First World War, particularly, during 1917 Russian revolutions and on the Brest-Litovsk conference. In the process, according to the findings of the article, the self-determination discourse simply became a matter of war settlements, namely, how to resolve the territorial issues that the war had caused on Central and Eastern Europe. It failed to touch on a more universal issue of anti-imperialism and anticolonialism. Well-known Wilson’s 14 Points speech was a product of, or reaction to, such atmosphere, as it focused on the issue of postwar settlements only among European empires. Bolsheviks’ self-determination discourse was the only exception to this tendency, but they were not able to make their antiimperialism a major agenda of European politics at that time because of their vulnerable position in the war situation.