by Louis Proyect Charles Brown wrote:
CB: The SU had autonomous regions. They were formally autonomous. In reality, there was Great Russian chauvinism from just around the time that Stalin was consolidating power. Lenin's concern over this matter prompted him to wage his final struggle against Stalin. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1922/dec/testamnt/autonomy.htm ^^^^^^ CB: In this, Lenin actually discusses sovereign republics , not autonomous regions: "The Question of Nationalities or "Autonomisation" I suppose I have been very remiss with respect to the workers of Russia for not having intervened energetically and decisively enough in the notorious question of autonomisation, which, it appears, is officially called the question of the Soviet socialist republics." ^^^^ CB: Nonetheless, the problem of great power, Russian chauvinism would be pertinent to autonomous regions. Lenin doesn't say don't establish autonomous regions, but that the Party must struggle against Russian chauvinism in doing so. ( Russian chauvinism arose centuries before Stalin consolidated power) And Lenin outlines issues for struggling against chauvinism including affirmative action: "That is why internationalism on the part of oppressors or "great" nations, as they are called (though they are great only in their violence, only great as bullies), must consist not only in the observance of the formal equality of nations but even in an inequality of the oppressor nation, the great nation, that must make up for the inequality which obtains in actual practice. Anybody who does not understand this has not grasped the real proletarian attitude to the national question, he is still essentially petty bourgeois in his point of view and is, therefore, sure to descend to the bourgeois point of view"
