Marxism and nationalism: An introduction to the struggle in the Ukraine

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demonstrating in Soviet Armenia. An upsurge on an equal scale in the much larger Ukraine lies just beneath the surface.

Zbigniew Kowalewski's study of the history and role of nationalism in Eastern Europe (see article next page) is an important contribution to understanding the irrepressible upsurge of mass opposition to the Stalinist bureaucratic castes that continue to exercise dictatorial rule over the deformed and degenerated workers' states.

His thesis is that fhe struggle for true self-determination by the historically oppressed nationalities, especially within the U.S.S.R., is an organic component of the unfolding working-class political revolution.

Kowalewski documents the profoundly anti-capitalist, anti-landlord character of the nationalist struggles of workers and poor peasants in Eastern Europe. It is only in this light that it is possible to begin to understand Gorbachev's inflexible opposition to the movements for national self-determination. Gorbachev's motive is not to defend the unity of the first workers' state, but to defend bureaucratic privilege.

The following brief review should be useful to the reader, who may be unfamiliar with the revolutionary Marxist view of nationalism, for understanding the complex role of this phenomenon in today's world Progressive or reactionary?

Is nationalism progressive or reactionary? This is one of the questions most misunderstood by serious fighters for human rights. The confusion is largely due to the way the question is posed.

All nationalisms cannot be placed under the same heading. Serious people must ask which nationalism is being considered—that of the oppressor or that of the oppressed? Three graphic examples of diametrically opposed nationalisms immediately come to mind: The nationalism of white America versus the nationalism of Black America, that of white South Africa versus that of Black South Africa, and the nationalism of Jewish Zionism versus that of the Arabs in Palestine.

In each case, the nationalism of the one is opposed to the nationalism of the other. In each case, a whole people— irrespective of social class—is denied a greater or lesser portion of the natural rights owed all human beings residing in the given geographical area.

For this simple reason alone, the nationalism of the exploiters and oppressors in America, South Africa, and Palestine-of all those who deny subjugated nations, nationalities, or racial groups their natural rights—is reactionary; while the nationalism of those denied their natural rights in these three places is progressive.

This is a good beginning guideline for determining the objective character of the many expressions of nationalism in the world today and throughout history.

In each of the cases so far considered, opposing national interests cannot be understood apart from the class struggle. Nationalism is set into motion and is conditioned by the opposing interests of the two main classes in modern society-workers and capitalists.

Proletarian internationalism

The question of nationalism must be set in the context of the Marxist principle of proletarian internationalism: The class interests of the workers in all countries transcend the 12 SOCIALIST ACTION JANU boundaries of nationality. An advance or retreat by workers in one country accordingly strengthens or weakens workers everywhere else. And the logic of the struggle for freedom of the world's workers is toward the abolition of all national boundaries in a global socialist confederation.

Workers of any dominant national grouping have absolutely nothing to gain from the super-exploitation of their counterparts among the oppressed nationalities. While they may have a relatively privileged position vis-a-vis their oppressed class sisters and brothers, they are also exploited and oppressed, albeit to a lesser degree.

The relative privileges of the workers in the dominant nationality, however, tend to create in their minds the illusion that they are beneficiaries of the system of inequality and that they have a vested interest in perpetuating national or racial oppression.

On the contrary, the system under which workers of oppressed nationalities are generally denied such things as equal pay and equal access to jobs works to depress the living standards of the "privileged" workers. The lowered living standards of the oppressed workers aggravate competition between workers. Class solidarity, a strategic requirement for an effective struggle to advance the living standards of all workers, is thus undermined.

The illusion is carefully and systematically cultivated by the true beneficiaries of national oppression, the capitalist class. The labor bureaucracies and other reformists are among the chief instruments of the capitalists for sowing and perpetuating this reactionary illusion.

This privileged parasitic layer encrusted on the economic and political institutions created by the working class has tied its caste interests to those of the ruling capitalist class, and thus indirectly benefits from the oppression of national and racial groups.

Union bureaucrats in the United States, for example, gravitate toward the most backward sections of the working class to secure a base for their class-collaborationist policies. They more or less openly cater to the racist attitudes capitalism inculcates within the ranks of society in general and the working class in particular. This more-or-less subtle identification by labor's misleaders with national and racial oppression creates a much bigger problem for the revolutionary workers' movement than meets the eye.

The division thus created between Black and white workers, for example, often becomes so acute as to be unbridgeable by routine sloganizing for working-class "unity." That's why, for example, Socialist Action, supports a range of demands—including separatist demands—arising from the Black freedom movement seeking immediate redress for centuries of racial injustice.

It will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for the working-class movement in the United States to achieve the highest levels of solidarity without the clearest demonstrations of support for Black demands ranging from affirmative action to the unqualified right to independent Black economic, political, and social organization and action.

At this point in history, this is the only sure road to working-class solidarity—without which effective defense of its class interests, not to mention the conquest of working-class political power, is impossible.

Self-determination in the Soviet Union The Soviet Union has been likened by the revolutionary Marxist movement to a trade union that has taken state RY 1989 power and rules in the historic interests of the world working class. But it is viewed as a union that has degenerated under the misleadership of a bureaucratic caste which has conquered political power by the most ruthless terroristic gangster methods such as we have seen on a relatively small scale in American unions.

The Bolshevik Party of Lenin and Trotsky, which led the workers of Czarist Russia to victory, had the clearest understanding of how national divisions within the working class can and must be overcome.

On the one hand, the workers' councils (soviets) that constituted the government of the revolutionary state created by the October Revolution were unambiguously committed to full equality for all national components of the Soviet Republic. Where Czarist Russia, with the support of the capitalists from the dominant regions, skillfully played one nationality against another, the workers' government worked assiduously to overcome national divisions.

The democratic soviet power took note of the residual effects of Czarist Imperial Russia, which had earned it the designation of "prison-house of nations." This history made it difficult to erase the legacy of chauvinist indoctrination of many workers belonging to dominant nationalities in their areas, especially in Russia.

The fears and suspicion of the long-oppressed nationalities could not be wiped out in a single stroke. Lenin and Trotsky tirelessly explained that the unity of the Soviet workers' state could only be gained if the constituent nationalities had the right to self-determination-including the right to separation.

In 1922 this right was institutionalized, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was established as a voluntary association of autonomous republics with the right to form independent Soviet socialist republics.

Stalinist betrayal

But Stalin very swiftly embarked on a course that negated the internationalist conquests of the Bolshevik Party and the Soviet state. As early as 1923, Stalin engineered the bureaucratic repression of Georgian Bolsheviks who sought to defend the national interests of their people against bureaucratic abuse.

Lenin, in response, proposed a bloc with Trotsky against this violation of Bolshevik principles. Following Lenin's death, and with the consolidation of Stalin's power, the right to autonomy and self-determination became an empty juridical "guarantee" that existed on paper but was systematically violated in everyday life.

Today we are witnessing a desperate attempt by Mikhail Gorbachev, the undisputed representative of the essentially unreconstructed Stalinist bureaucracy, to preserve the dictatorship of the ruling caste.

Gorbachev's glasnost (openness) is not the beginning of the self-reform of bureaucratic totalitarianism, but rather a tactical retreat. It is no accident that Gorbachev's "reform" of the Soviet constitution includes abolition of the nominal autonomy of the associated republics. This act, alone, gives the lie to his alleged goal of truly democratizing the Soviet Zbigniew Kowalewski's focus on the progressive character of the Ukrainian struggle for national independence helps deepen our understanding of the revolutionary nationalism of oppressed peoples.

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The eruption of massive movements for