An article by Leon Trotsky, 'The Problem of the Ukraine', in which he called for an independent Ukraine, was published in the 9 May 1939 issue of Socialist Appeal (USA).1 Hugo Oehler of the Revolutionary Workers' League attacked it. Trotsky's reply first appeared under the title of 'The Independence of the Ukraine and Sectarian Muddleheads' in the 15 and 18 September 1939 issues of Socialist Appeal.2 It was republished in the December 1949 issue of Fourth International. It is to this reply of Trotsky's that we have the rejoinder of Oehler's, published in the November 1939 issue of International News, and which we publish below.
At the end of his first article, Trotsky said of his position: 'This appears to me to be the correct policy. I speak here personally and in my own name. The question must be opened up to international discussion... There is little time left for preparation.' As the preface to Trotsky's article in the 1949 Fourth Intemational put it: 'The only opposition to Trotsky's slogan of independence for the Ukraine came from the small sectarian Oehler group.'
In spite of the unequal literary ability of the contestants, for Oehler was not the most fluent of writers, the polemic is interesting and important for the issue around which it revolves, and which still exists today - the national question and the Russian state. In addition, for those concerned with the history of our movement, Oehler's article is of some historical interest in itself, as it lists the differences of the two groups, and reveals the circulation of their respective organs, though not the groups' memberships. In fact, the American Trotskyists numbered about 800,3 and the Oehlerites about 200.4 Oehler argues against Trotsky's propaganda for an independent Ukraine and its secession from Russia as being a petty bourgeois policy detrimental to the class interests of the working class in general and the Soviet Union's in particular. Oehler pits workers' democracy against Stalinism, that is to say, Russian centralism. Although Oehler does quote Lenin and the theses of the Second Congress of the Third International, he omits a relevant statement Lenin made on the subject in 1914 in his essay written against Rosa Luxemburg, The Right of Nations to Self-Determination, and also the notes dictated by Lenin to his secretary at the end of 1922, and first published under Khrushchev in 1956 under the title of 'The Question of Nationalities or of "Autonomisation" ', though these latter were not available to Oehler.5 In The Right of Nations to Self-Determination Lenin said: 'The demand for an answer "Yes" or "No" to the question of secession in the case of every nation may seem a very "practical" one. In reality it is absurd; it is metaphysical in theory, while in practice it leads to subordinating the proletariat to the bourgeoisie's policy. The bourgeoisie always places its national demands in the forefront, and does so in categorical fashion. With the proletariat, however, these demands are subordinated to the interests of the class struggle. Theoretically, you cannot say in advance whether the bourgeois democratic revolution will end with a given nation seceding from another nation, or in its equality with the latter; in either case, the important thing for the proletariat is to ensure the development of its class.' 6 As applied to Russia this algebraic formulation of Lenin is given more detailed and arithmetic expression in an early part of the same article: 'Russia is a state with a single national centre - Great Russia. The Great Russians occupy a vast, unbroken stretch of territory, and number about 70 million. The specific features of this national state are: firstly, the "subject peoples" (which, on the whole, comprise the majority of the entire population - 57 per cent) inhabit the border regions; secondly, the oppression of these subject peoples is much stronger here than in the neighbouring states (and not even in the European states alone); thirdly, in a number of cases the oppressed nationalities inhabiting the border regions have compatriots across the border, who enjoy greater national independence (suffice it to mention the Finns, the Swedes, the Poles, the Ukrainians and the Romanians along the western and southern frontiers of the state); fourthly, the development of capitalism and the general level of culture are often higher in the non-Russian border regions than in the centre.
Although these remarks were made three years before the October Revolution, the revolution did not alter Lenin's opinion on the matter. At the end of 1922, paralysed and unable to write, he dictated the following, one of his last communications to the party: 'It is said that a united apparatus was needed. Where did that assurance come from? Did it not come from that same Russian apparatus which, as I pointed out in one of the preceding sections of my diary, we took over from tsarism and slightly anointed with Soviet oil? 'There is no doubt that that measure should have been delayed somewhat until we could say that we vouched for our apparatus as our own. But now we must, in all conscience, admit the contrary; that apparatus we call ours is, in fact, still quite alien to us; it is a bourgeois and tsarist hotch-potch, and there has been no possibility of getting rid of it in the course of the past five years without the help of other countries, and because we have been "busy" most of the time with military engagements and the fight against famine.
'It is quite natural that in such circumstances the "freedom to secede from the union" by which we justify ourselves will be a mere scrap of paper, unable to defend the non-Russians from that really Russian man, the Great Russian chauvinist, in substance a rascal and a tyrant, such as the typical Russian bureaucrat is. There is no doubt that the infinitesimal percentage of Soviet and sovietised workers will drown in that tide of chauvinistic Great Russian riff-raff like a fly in milk. '8 These dictated notes were directed against Stalin, whose removal from the position of party General Secretary was proposed by Lenin. The Soviet Union and the world were left to mourn the fact that this proposal was not carried out. On reading this polemic between Trotsky and Oehler, one may wonder whether, as Lenin does in these quotations, they sufficiently identify Stalinism with Russian nationalism.
Furthermore, on 13 November 1922, at the Fourth Congress of the Communist International, only 43 days before dictating 'The Question of Nationalities', Lenin raised a question mark against the Communist International itself, in which he said: 'At the Third Congress in 1921, we adopted a resolution on the organisational structure of the Communist parties, and on the methods and content of their activities. The resolution is an excellent one, but it is almost entirely Russian... it is too Russian... it is thoroughly imbued with the Russian spirit.
And... if by way of exception some foreigner does understand it, he cannot carry it out... I have the impression that we made a big mistake with this resolution, namely, that we blocked our own road to further success... All that was said in the resolution has remained a dead letter. '9 In effect Lenin is saying here that the Communist International is suffering from the same defect as the Soviet state - Russian nationalism. So Lenin executed a shattering volte-face on the character of the Communist International and the Soviet state. In 1917 Lenin's defeatism expressed in the April Theses stunned the leaders of the party. In 1922 Lenin's thoughts on the Soviet state and the Communist International seemed so outrageous to the leadership that they considered him to be ill, and no longer competent. To return to the dispute between Trotsky and Oehler, we must assume that in 1939 the war was behind the thoughts of both participants in this debate, and therefore have to consider to what extent the outcome of the war revealed the truth or error in the arguments. It must be conceded that the war did not lead to the weakening of the Russian centre and the strengthening of the periphery in the shape of Ukrainian independence, etc, but rather the reverse, a weakening of the periphery and the strengthening of the centre round the 'Great Leader of His People in the Patriotic War, Stalin', or as Lenin expressed the matter, 'the infinitesimal percentage of Soviet and sovietised workers' were drowned 'in that tide of chauvinistic Great Russian riff-raff like a fly in milk.' So much for Trotsky's side of the debate. What of Oehler's position, that of 'workers' democracy against Stalinism'? 'The history of the Russian proletariat from the end of 1939, until quite recently, is the history of an inert terrorised mass impervious to outside influence. All the revolts since 1945 against Stalinism, or Russian nationalism as I prefer to call it, have taken place in the satellite states, Poland, Hungary, East Germany and Czechoslovakia, and have been mainly proletarian in character, but without having the slightest effect on the Russian workers. The latest events in the Soviet Union have once more placed on the agenda the questions raised in this 50 year-old polemic. Will 'workers' democracy or secession' or 'workers' democracy and secession' be a solution to the problem of the Soviet Union, and which party or group, if any, will advocate which policy? All this, as the phrase goes, remains to be seen.