--- uvj at vsnl.com wrote:
> The "Leninist" claim would be that it's a question
> of applying the Bolshevik programme with regard to
> the oppressed nationalities, viz. their right of
> self determination including the right to secede. As
> Marx said, no nation that oppresses other nations
> can be really free. Is the Bolshevik programme on
> the national question still relevant to the
> contemporary world?
>
> Ulhas
>
The Bolsheviks didn't fulfill the program very well themselves when they disarmed the entire Chechen population in 1925.
I think that, among other things, the programme confuses nationality and physical location. The only Russian ethnic republics in which Russians are a minority of the population are Dagestan, Chuvashia and Tatarstan -- maybe also Ingushetia, I don't remember. Dagestan has 34 different ethnic groups. Chuvashia and Tatarstan are about 50% Chuvash and Tatar and about 50% other groups. How are the Tatars going to secede, assuming they even wanted to, which they don't, without ethnically cleansing the non-Tatars who don't want to? The population of Ukraine is about 40% non-Ukrainian. How could the "oppressed nationality" of Ukrainians secede without dragging the non-Ukrainians, mostly Russians, with them (as actually happened)? Chechnya was about 30% non-Chechen in 1991. Grozny was about 50%. The Nautsky District was 70% (!) non-Chechen.
===== Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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