FirstPublished: November 28, 1913 in Za Pravda No. 46
Source: Lenin's Collected Works, Progress Publishers, Moscow, Volume 19, 1968,pp. 503-7
Online Version: Lenin Internet Archive 2000
The essenceof the plan, or programme, of what is called "cultural-national"autonomy (or: "the establishment of institutions that will guaranteefreedom of national develpment") is separate schools for eachnationality.
The moreoften all avowed and tacit nationalists (including the Bundists) attempt to obscurethis fact the more must insist on it.
Every nation,irrespective of place of domicile of its individual members (irrespective ofterritory, hence the term "extra-territorial" autonomy) is a unitedofficially recognised association conducting national-cultural affairs. Themost important of these affairs is education. The determination of thecomposition of the nations by allowing every citizen to register freely,irrespective of place of omicile, as belonging to any national association,ensures absolute precision and absolute consistency in segregating the schoolsaccording to nationality.
Is such adivision, be it asked, permissible from the point of view of democracy ingeneral, and from the point of view of the interests of the proletarian classstruggle in particular?
A clear graspof the essence of the "cultural-national autonomy" programme issufficient to enable one to reply without hesitation -- it is absolutelyimpermissible.
As long asdifferent nations live in a single state they are bound to one another bymillions and thousands of millions of economic, legal and social bonds. How caneducation be extricated from these bonds? Can it be "taken out of thejurisdiction" of the state, to quote the Bund formula, classical in its strikingabsurdity? If the various nations living in a single state are bound byeconomic ties, then any attempt to divide them permanently in"cultural" and particularly educational matters would be absurd andreactionary. On the contrary, efforts should be made to unite thenations in educational matters, so that the schools should be a preparation forwhat is actually done in real life. At the present time we see that thedifferent nations are unequal in the rights they possess and in their level ofdevelopment. Under these circumstances, segregating the schools according tonationality would actually and inevitably worsen the conditions of themore backward nations. In the Southern, former slave States of America, Negrochildren are still segregated in separate schools, whereas in the North, whiteand Negro children attend the same schools. In Russia a plan was recentlyproposed for the "nationalisation of Jewish schools", i.e., thesegregation of Jewish children from the children of other nationalities inseparate schools. It is needless to add that this plan originated in the mostreactionary, Purishkevich circles.
One cannot bea democrat and at the same time advocate the principle of segregating theschools according to nationality. Note: we are arguing at present from thegeneral democratic (i.e., bourgeois-democratic) point of view.
From thepoint of view of the proletarian class struggle we must oppose segregating theschools according to nationality far more emphatically. Who does not know thatthe capitalists of all the nations in a given state are most closely andintimately united in joint-stock companies, cartels and trusts, inmanufacturers' associations, etc., which are directed against theworkers irrespective of their nationality? Who does not know that in anycapitalist undertaking -- from huge works, mines and factories and commercialenterprises down to capitalist farms -- we always, without exception,see a larger variety of nationalities among the workers than in remote,peaceful and sleepy villages?
The urbanworkers, who are best acquainted with developed capitalism and perceive moreprofoundly the psychology of the class struggle -- their whole life teachesthem or they perhaps imbibe it with their mothers' milk -- such workersinstinctively and inevitably realise that segregating the schools according tonationality is not only a harmful scheme, but a downright fraudulentswindle on the part of the capitalists. The workers can be split up,divided and weakened by the advocacy of such an idea, and still more by thesegregation, of the ordinary peoples' schools according to nationality; whilethe capitalists, whose children are well provided with rich private schools andspecially engaged tutors, cannot in any way be threatened by anydivision or weakening through "cultural-national autonomy".
As a matterof fact, "cultural-national autonomy", i.e., the absolutely pure andconsistent segregating of education according to nationality, was invented notby the capitalists (for the time being they resort to cruder methodsto divide the workers) but by the opportunist, philistine intelligentsia ofAustria. There is not a trace of this brilliantly philistine andbrilliantly nationalist idea in any of the democratic West-European countrieswith mixed populations. This idea of the despairing petty bourgeois could ariseonly in Eastern Europe, in backward, feudal, clerical, bureaucratic Austria,where all public and political life is hampered by wretched, pettysquabbling (worse still: cursing and brawling) over the question of languages.Since cat and dog can't agree, let us at least segregate all the nations onceand for all absolutely clearly and consistently in "national curias"for educational purposes! -- such is the psychology that engendered thisfoolish idea of "cultural-national autonomy". The proletariat, whichis conscious of and cherishes its internationalism, will never accept thisnonsense of refined nationalism.
It is noaccident that in Russia this idea of "cultural-national autonomy" wasaccepted only by all the Jewish bourgeois parties, then (in 1907) bythe conference of the petty-bourgeois Left-Narodnik parties ofdifferent nationalities, and lastly by the petty-bourgeois, opportunistelements of the near-Marxist groups, i.e., the Bundists and theliquidators (the latter were even too timid to do so straightforwardly anddefinitely). It is no accident that in the State Duma only thesemi-liquidator Chkhenkeli, who is infected with nationalism, and thepetty-bourgeois Kerensky, spoke in favour of "cultural-nationalautonomy".
In general,it is quite funny to read the liquidator and Bundist references to Austria onthis question. First of all, why should the most backward of the multinationalcountries be taken as the model? Why not take the most advanced? Thisis very much in the style of the bad Russian liberals, the Cadets, who formodels of a constitution turn mainly to such backward countries as Prussia andAustria, and not to advanced countries like France, Switzerland and America!
Secondly,after taking the Austrian model, the Russian nationalist philistines, i.e., theBundists, liquidators, Left Narodniks, and so forth, have themselves changed itfor the worse. In this country it is the Bundists (plus all theJewish bourgeois parties, in whose wake the Bundists follow without alwaysrealising it) that mainly and primarily use this plan for"cultural-national autonomy " in their propaganda and agitation; andyet in Austria, the country where this idea of "cultural-nationalautonomy" originated, Otto Bauer, the father of the idea, devoted aspecial chapter of his book top roving that "cultural-nationalautonomy" cannot be applied to the Jews!
This provesmore conclusively than lengthy speeches how inconsistent Otto Bauer is and howlittle he believes in his own idea, for he excludes the onlyextra-territorial (not having its own territory) nation from his plan forextra-territorial national autonomy.
This showshow Bundists borrow old-fashioned plans from Europe, multiply themistakes of Europe tenfold and "develop" them to the point ofabsurdity.
The fact is-- and this is the third point -- that at their congress in Brünn (in 1899) theAustrian Social-Democrats rejected the programme of"cultural-national autonomy" that was proposed to them. They merelyadopted a compromise in the form of a proposal for a union of the nationallydelimited regions of the country. This compromise did not provideeither for extra-territoriality or for segregating education according tonationality. In accordance with this compromise, in the most advanced(capitalistically) populated centres, towns, factory and mining districts,large country estates, etc., there are no separate schools for eachnationality! The Russian working class has been combating this reactionary,pernicious, petty-bourgeois nationalist idea of "cultural-nationalautonomy", and will continue to do so.