From Self-determination to Secession? The Bolsheviks and National Self-determination, 1914–1924

Abstract

This article argues that between 1914 and 1924 the Bolsheviks’ conception and propagation of self-determination underwent a significant transition from already-contested beginnings. Initially, despite resistance from both within and beyond the party, Vladimir Lenin’s advocacy of national self-determination – including the right to secession – won out. However, though this was to some extent realized in practice after their seizure of power (after significant armed conflict about such matters), the upper echelons of the party, and Joseph Stalin in particular, sought to later decouple self-determination from the formation of the USSR. Partly the legacy of the turbulence of Russia’s Civil War and related documents of international law such as the Treaty of Tartu, by mid-1921 the right to self-determination was confusingly replaced by the right to secession in Bolshevik discourse, and for the colonized peoples of the world in particular – on paper, at least. This replacement was reaffirmed in 1922 with the founding of the USSR and again in its constitution of 1924. The article concludes by stating the consequences of this for intellectual and/or conceptual historians, as well as for legal scholars intrigued by the sudden absence of self-determination in Soviet legal texts from an initial position of such prominence.