Date: Tue, 8 Apr 1997 09:55:39 -0400 (EDT)
From: louisgodena-AT-ids.net (Louis R Godena)
Subject: M-I: Re: In the Time of Stalin: Nation, Race & Class in the interwar South, 1928-1940 



Roxanne asks:

>In what sense did Stalin's "theory of nationalities" follow Lenin's?   
> And how could a bifurcated society, such as that existing 
>in the Deep South of the 'thirties,  exist as an incubus for a 
>"distinct nation" of the type posed by the Comintern in 1928?...
>What would have been the result of an absolute "right to secede"
>on working-class unity...under these circumstances?

Lenin's three point strategy for harnessing nationalism to the wagon of
scientific socialism proved to be,  in different contexts,  both a stunning
triumph and a profound failure.    His famous dictum promising all national
groups the right of self-determination (while proffering national equality
to all those who wished to remain within the state) reaped impressive
results.   The manipulation of the national aspirations of minorities was a
key element in the assumption (and consolidation) of power by the
Bolsheviks; it figured prominently in the rise to power of Mao;  and it was
likely the single most important factor in the success of the Vietnamese and
Yugoslav parties.    Thus the four most important Marxist-Leninist
movements,  which can legitimately lay claim to having achieved power
through their own devices,  attest to the genuine success of at least the
first article of Lenin's national strategy.

On the other hand,  Lenin's presumption that one could encourage "nations"
without simultaneously fomenting nationalism was to be seriously challenged
long before 1928.    The second feature of his strategy,  that of
substituting autonomy for secession following the seizure of state power,
had proven only partially successful (for example in the Caucasus) by the
time Stalin had begun formulating his American policy.    The lengthy
process of assimilation which was necessarily the concomitant of Lenin's
"autonomy" strategy proved unworkable and shared the same fate as the
"dictatorship of the proletariat" and other canards; a lofty if
muddle-headed ideal unattainable in the political world of the interwar era.
Both,  however,  continued to exert a powerful influence on the thinking of
revolutionary Marxists long after their practical disutility had been
tacitly recognized.

The third feature of Lenin's national strategy,  that of keeping the party
itself clear of all nationalist proclivities,  was to suffer a similar fate.
The pursuit of national prejudice at the highest party levels,  and often
with an eye toward promoting one faction or individual over another,
produced a culture of disarray and turmoil that was only partially subsumed
by the discipline of the Stalin era.    The Leninist scenario that called
for nationalist sentiment to be restricted to a hostile non-Marxist world in
order to weaken it never fully materialized.   Stalin's American policy,
coextensive with a strategy of fomenting national hostilities within
potentially belligerent capitalist powers like the United States,  was a
notable exception.     Black American Communists were remarkable for their
ability to excite feelings of black pride and black solidarity against a
background of black grievance and injustice without themeselves succumbing
to the vagaries of nascent black nationalist bigotry.    The most prominent
Party - orchestrated Southern campaigns  (e.g., the Scottsboro Case,  the
Angelo Herndon trial,  etc.) skilfully identified "negro" issues with the
cause of the multi-racial working class as a whole.

Still,  the concept of a "separate nation" with "natural rights" of
secession or autonomy existed not as an end in itself,  but to serve the
security concerns of Soviet Russia.    That Stalin's American policy had
greatly positive -- and sometimes wholly unanticipated -- consequences far
beyond its professed object does not detract from this salient feature of
Comintern policy  -- the preservation at all costs of the world's first
socialist state.

Louis Godena



     --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---