ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the attitudes to nationalism of pre-1914 socialist leaders and movements, and the relationship of nationalists to both fascists and communists. Their champions were for the most part members of the educated elite, whether ‘upper’ or ‘middle’ class. The liberal phase of nationalism reached its climax in 1848, in the Assembly in the Paulskirche in Frankfurt and in the revolutions in Italy. In 1960 the Soviet ideological specialists propounded a new doctrine of ‘national democracy’. In the socialist republics of the future, solidarity of the workers would overcome all national conflicts. Meanwhile, those national movements which furthered the movement towards socialism must be supported, and those which were useful to the cause of despotism must be opposed. The most formidable reactionary force in Europe appeared to Marx and Engels to be Russian tsarism. The defeat of the Third Reich brought to an end the Age of Fascism, and discredited the word ‘fascism’, perhaps forever.
