The Right of Nations to Self-Determination

Written in the months directly preceding the outbreak of World War I, Lenin’s Right of Nations to Self-Determination lays out a comprehensive and detailed Marxist analysis of national determination as it applied to the Russian Empire at the time. As with much of Lenin’s work, many lessons are applicable to the broader science of Marxism. Worth noting is that Lenin’s analysis followed a meeting with a young Georgian scholar in 1913 to discuss what the future might hold for the Empire’s many ethnic minorities and oppressed nations. That Georgian, one J. V. Stalin, would likewise go on to write on the so-called National Question, lending heavily from Lenin; their combined work would inform Soviet policymaking for generations, and create a blueprint that has been referenced by all Socialist revolutionaries and Nations ever since.