ABSTRACT
When Joseph Stalin was suggested for membership of the commission to formulate a new party program at the Seventh Party Congress in 1918, it was objected that he had never written any articles of programmatic significance. Only when the chairman pointed to his writings on the national question was he voted in. 1 The revolutionary activities and writings of Stalin in the period before the October Revolution are a subject worthy of attention in themselves, but for the development of the Stalinist doctrine, which is the proper subject of the present book, his work on the national question was most significant. What is more, nationalism seems to have been the first important influence shaping the later Stalin’s political thought.
