ABSTRACT
Bolshevik Nationality Policy before October There was little room for nationalism in the system of Karl Marx. A world view that regarded mankind as differentiated into economic classes had little tolerance for an attitude that persisted in regarding nations as groupings of individuals with common interests. At most, Marx’s “scientific” socialism might support nationalist movements that advanced capitalist society along the road to proletarian revolution, but such movements must involve nations with a welldeveloped bourgeoisie and be aimed at the formation of larger, rather than smaller, states, for capitalism needed an extensive market.1 Late nineteenthcentury Marxists, however, shared the positive attitude toward national aspirations in general that characterized their age: the Second International at its London Congress in 1896 adopted a resolution favoring “the full autonomy of all nationalities.” Following the lead of the Western Marxists, the Second Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party went on record in 1903 in favor of “the right of self-determination [samoopredelenie] for all nations forming part of the state.”2
