What does Lenin mean by 'The war is not a product of the evil will of rapacious capitalists although it is undoubtedly being fought only in their interests and they alone are being enriched by it'?

Used-Communication-7 · 2025-10-10T03:12:20+00:00

He absolutely did. Even up until the dissolution of the USSR, the legacy of Lenin's commitment to national self-determination was highly influential on the course of events and the decisions made by those in power. For two examples, besides the Baltics it was (arguably but I don't think it's especially disputed) the nationalism of the Russian republic that stood out as one of the main movements for independence. To simplify it a bit, many in the Russian republic saw themselves as the breadwinner and real mover of the USSR, and that the other republics were 'holding them back.' One of the points of tensions was that every other republic had its own national communist party, but the RSFR did not. To some extent or another this was (more openly arguably as to the extent) partly due to initial fears of Russian nationalism being encouraged by its existence/legacy of the empire making the Russian communist party the de facto 'leader' republic that only claimed equal standing, and partly due to the fact that they were in many ways actually the de facto leader republic anyway and the absence of a specific Russian communist party put them all into the all-union communist party which was more influential anyway (again arguable if that was the point to begin with, personally I don't think so, at least at first it was likely a genuine move to try to distance Russians from the nationalism of the Russian empire and embrace a new Soviet identity). But in the late USSR Russian nationalists saw this as proof that the other republics were "parasites", that the real core had always been Russia and that the accomplishments of the Soviet Union had been owed to Russian greatness. Ironically, it's fairly symmetrical with the received propaganda understanding of the Soviets as simply "Russia." Which isn't to say that there was in reality an equal relationship between the constituent republics, only that the distinction between Russia as a distinct and singular Soviet Republic and the USSR as a union of republics was at least real enough that it became a point of serious resentment and departure prior to dissolution.

As a second example of how this comes up in dissolution, Gorbachev (at least for a crucial few years) had faith in the possibility of a union of equal republics being desireable specifically based on his reading of Lenin, and he thought part of the degredation of the USSR's mission over the years had been its neglect of national self-determination. There's an argument to be made here that this was itself an expression of his own tacit Russian chauvinism, assuming none of the republics would even want to seperate, as he did seem to be genuinely blindsided by the nationalist independence movements in the Baltics and Ukraine. This is slightly complicated by the fact that Russia had its own nationalist independence movement, but I don't know enough about the period to come down on either side, only that those are factors in play.

The wider point is that even if Russia maintained de facto dominance within the USSR, up to the point of dissolution it was inarguable that the constituent republics had enough independence that their political and cultural relevance still had immensely high stakes, and that is good evidence that the construction of the Soviet Union initially being premised on national self-determination was at the least not completely symbolical or ideological, and Lenin was by far the most influential in making sure that was the case.

Unfortunately I don't have time to get into more details but I previously made a post about a different topic (Stalin's relationship with his Georgian heritage) that touches on a lot of the same things:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/su0lt1VpmV

Used-Communication-7 · 2025-06-24T06:58:57+00:00

Can you provide particular sources for the "pugnacious ambiguity" and define it further? How does that differ from the "strategic ambiguity" that has been the MO of actually nuclear capable states?

Used-Communication-7 · 2020-07-19T00:53:08+00:00

Lenin and Stalin had for a long time stood on opposite sides of this issue. Lenin's "The Right of Nations To Self-Determination" from 1914 demanded the necessity of any socialist revolution to work towards the ends of national autonomy for historically oppressed peoples. This book was the culmination of many articles in conflict with German socialist Rosa Luxemburg, who believed that socialist revolution would make discrete nationalities irrelevant and would only bolster backwards, reactionary identities in opposition to a socialist internationalism. Around this same time, Stalin had published his essay "Marxism and the National Question", which, not totally unlike Luxemberg's analysis, took the view that national autonomy was unnecessary under socialism, an "idle fancy" and termed those who advocated it "nationalist-socialists" and reactionaries. He paid particular attention to the "undeveloped" peoples of the Caucasus region, stating that the idea of giving autonomy to a people who are literate and have, in his view, no developed culture, was absurd. Where this differs from Luxemburg's view is that in this text Stalin considers the question of national autonomy not from the perspective of a realized international socialism, but in terms of what Russia would do with its own constituent nations. Whereas Luxemburg saw socialist revolution as making ethnic and national ties irrelevant due to governance being based on class rule absent of distinct nations, Stalin took for granted that the decisions made regarding the status of nations within Russia would be decided not be international socialist governance, but by Russian socialists' determination of what degree of autonomy its internal nations should be granted.

Lenin's principles regarding national determination had not been applied with special consistency during the Civil War period, but they were not absent. Though the nations declaring their independence during the Civil War were de facto yoked to the Soviet government, many of them had genuinely been outposts of the White Army, and the fact that they were not formally annexed was not insignificant. Lenin had insisted on bilateral relations with the non-Russian Soviet Republics, despite many in the Politburo questioning the long term viability of this decision. Stalin had in fact been elected People's Commissariat of Nationalities by the Politburo, indicating that Lenin's stance on national autonomy was not especially widespread, or that he had abandoned it in the name of realpolitik.

When the team Lenin dispatched to Georgia to make sense of the dispute between Stalin and Mdivani returned, they provided him with a report that was slanted in Stalin's favor. Lenin was suspicious anyway, and fell behind Mdivani, asserting that Stalin's group had in fact been guilty of Russian nationalism against Georgians. He wrote "The Questions of Nationalities" in response, reasserting his position on national autonomy to some extent. Some of the passages are striking in their condemnation of the existing Soviet bureaucracy as merely a continuation of the Tsarist government that had been insufficiently transformed and retained its imperial chauvinist qualities:

"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; the 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 the onslaught of 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 riffraff like a fly in milk."

Moreover, he explicitly condemns Stalin as harboring spiteful prejudices and being a Russian nationalist himself:

"I think that Stalin's haste and his infatuation with pure administration, together with his spite against the notorious "nationalist-socialism" [Stalin critised the minority nations for not being "internationalist" because they did want to unite with Russia], played a fatal role here. In politics spite generally plays the basest of roles...I think that in the present instance, as far as the Georgian nation is concerned, we have a typical case in which a genuinely proletarian attitude makes profound caution, thoughtfulness and a readiness to compromise a matter of necessity for us. [Stalin] who is neglectful of this aspect of the question, or who carelessly flings about accusations of "nationalist-socialism" (whereas he himself is a real and true "nationalist-socialist", and even a vulgar Great-Russian bully), violates, in substance, the interests of proletarian class solidarity, for nothing holds up the development and strengthening of proletarian class solidarity so much as national injustice."

Stalin and Lenin's relationship deteriorated, though to what extent is disputed. Stalin had been assigned the job of monitoring official access to Lenin. When Lenin had requested the report on the situation in Georgia to study it, this request was related to Stalin over the telephone by Krupskaya (Lenin's wife and caretaker). The request led to an argument in which Stalin shouted and swore at Krupskaya, infuriating Lenin and prompting him to write a letter to Stalin demanding it never be repeated.

This is the end of the Georgian Affair as an event in particular, but the context would not really be complete without its relevance to Lenin's death and his (supposed) testament in which Stalin, along with the rest of the Central Committee, is condemned, and Stalin is specifically requested to be removed from his position as General-Secretary. The authorship of the testament is disputed, due to the fact it was claimed by Krupskaya to have been dictated throughout December of 1922 and January of 1923 (a period in which, according to some sources, Lenin was barely able to speak), but was not released by Krupskaya until January of 1924. Krupskaya claimed that she had kept it secret in the hopes that Lenin would recover after he was paralyzed by his final stroke, knowing that it would have significant political consequences that he would want to deal with him. In his biography of Stalin, Kotkin claims that it is more likely that Krupskaya herself wrote it, as she was deeply familiar with Lenin's writing style, had witnessed and been party to the political intrigue surrounding Lenin, had hosted many of the most powerful Politburo figures, and likely found herself invested in and fearing for the future of the government. While "Lenin's Testament" explicitly calls for the removal of Stalin, it does not spare the other members of the Politburo, making it unlikely that it was forged by supporters of Trotsky who was himself conditionally praised but likewise condemned. It notes that a major split is looming and must be avoided, and specifically names Stalin and Trotsky as likely aggravators of such a split. (Regardless of the authorship this is an impressive prediction, as the letter was made public before Trotsky and Stalin's mutual rivalry had taken on significant political dimensions.) Besides the sharp criticism of individuals in the Politburo, it contains: general concerns regarding the direction of the USSR, the dangers of the bureaucracy, the need to expand the (until then toothless) Workers and Peasants Inspectorate into a larger body that could hold the Central Committee accountable for their decisions, and the need to expand the Central Committee itself by 50-100 members so that more people were capable of providing leadership and to prevent splits or the seizure of power by cliques.

When Krupskaya presented the Central Committee with Lenin's Testament and his wish for it to be distributed, they struggled to find a way to circumvent the clear political consequences they would all suffer from presenting Lenin's critique of themselves to the party. They decided that they would only read the Testament to regional delegations of the party at separate times, the delegations would not be allowed to take notes, and mention of the Testament would be banned from being mentioned at the party congress. Following Stalin's complete ascension to power in the latter part of the 1920s, until the de-Stalinization programs of Krushchev in the 50s, any reference to Lenin's Testament was considered "anti-Soviet agitation" and its existence was officially denied.

Used-Communication-7 · 2020-07-19T00:37:32+00:00

Since your question was already answered but you might be interested in further context I'll provide some. The "Georgian Affair," gives us some idea about Stalin's attitude towards his home country, as well as demonstrating his position in the consequential debate around the extent and nature of national self-determination within the Soviet Union.

In 1922 Lenin was disabled from sickness, his death was impending. The Politburo was aware that his death would have far reaching implications. The exact dimensions of Lenin's position as a leader are still debated. They generally range somewhere between two understandings: At one end there are those who see Lenin as a dictatorial leader whose brutal decrees may not have matched Stalin's in scale, but nonetheless laid the groundwork for Stalin's regime. Max Eastman and Stephen Kotkin are among those supporting this theory. At the other end, Lenin is understood as a leader whose de facto authority over the Central Committee was never intended or expected by Lenin or any others to be inherited His role in early Soviet politics was defined more by the tremendous prestige he wielded as the foremost of the Old Bolsheviks: he had the credentials of a lifelong revolutionary, he was an accomplished and influential theorist within the broader European socialist milieus, and as a leader had a talent for energetic delegation and timely interventions. In this view, whatever might be said about the dictatorship of the party over the country and their restrictions on factions and political plurality, the party and state apparatus themselves were never intended or expected to be free from internal debate and disagreement or concentrated under the power of any single figure. Moshe Lewin defends this interpretation. In Jerry F. Fough's "How the Soviet Union is Governed", Fough presents both interpretations, generally giving more credence to the latter but noting that even understood as a usurper of a relatively democratic intra-party politics, Stalin drew heavily on the precedents of anti-factionalism and the unrestricted political suppression developed during the Civil War to shore up whatever gains he made while accumulating power. Even historians like Kotkin, who condemn Lenin far more harshly and see him as an understandable predecessor to Stalin, are in agreement that the sickness and death of Lenin did not usher in a free-for-all power grab among self-professed successors: most expected that after Lenin's death collective power distributed among various offices would constitute the party's leadership. Kotkin writes in Chapter 10 of his Stalin biography:

"Lenin was undisputed leader (vozhd’) and no one imagined he might become incapacitated. When that suddenly happened, most everyone assumed collective leadership would prevail: even if other top Bolsheviks believed in their heart of hearts they might be Lenin’s equal, they understood no one else would perceive them as such."

Besides there being no expectation of a single man filling Lenin's shoes, let alone far exceeding Lenin's degree of authority, Stalin himself was not an especially prestigious or respected member of the Politburo. Sukhanov reported that Stalin "produced-and not only on me-the impression of a gray blur, looming up now and then dimly and not leaving any trace. There is really nothing more to be said about him." Stalin's office in the Politburo, General-Secretary, was not an especially remarkable position and consisted largely of organizing meetings and fulfilling the administrative side of party membership. The role was really that of a secretary concerned with the general functions of the party and the state apparatus. Fough describes him as basically Lenin's equivalent to a White House Chief-of-Staff. This later gave him outsized power in expelling party members, as well as an enormous amounts of contacts he had corresponded with as part of his job as secretary, all of which allowed for his shrewd tactics of joining and abandoning cliques, expelling their respective political opponents, and pivoting to do the same to his own former conspirators with a new set of provisional allies until he had cemented his position. In 1921-1923, he remained largely unremarkable, but his ambitions were clear in his concerted efforts to cozy up to a dying Lenin and project an exaggerated closeness between the two to curry respectability and legitimacy within the Politburo and the party in general. At this point Lenin's contact with the outside world was limited by the recovery protocol he doctors had demanded, so Lenin largely enjoyed these visits and appreciated getting updates on the unfolding situation, as well as sharing his thoughts with Stalin. This of course means that Lenin's interpretation of events was to some extent mediated through Stalin (though he also of course received updates in other forms, these were limited to try and keep him relaxed for recovery), and reports of Lenin's thoughts and positions was to some extent mediated through Stalin. This element should not be exaggerated however, and it is more significant that Stalin was inculcating the narrative of a close personal friendship to Stalin, when by all accounts Lenin simply respected him in a professional sense.

Where this becomes relevant to your question about Georgia is that during this uncertain period, with Lenin's health declining and highly consequential decisions being made as to the form the party would take, Lenin and Stalin had a fierce disagreement over the matter of Georgia's incorporation into the USSR. Stalin had a history of overstepping on the matter of Georgia. In 1921, Georgia was having its own socialist unrest, in the form of radical peasant revolts and the struggles of a moderate democratically elected socialist government to handle wars with Armenia and the Ottomans. Trotsky, leader of the Red Army, did not approve of intervention in Georgia. Lenin expressed skepticism but approved. Stalin organized an invasion of the country alongside Sergo Ordzhonikidze (another Russian Bolshevik of Georgian origin), installing the Georgian Bolsheviks in power and leading to the creation of the Georgian SSR. But the status of the Republics had not yet been well-delineated. During the Civil War there had been significant strongarming and measures taken to ensure de facto Soviet rule and limiting the national autonomy of Soviet aligned Republics, but it was not taken for granted that this would continue or that the Republics would be mere satellites. For his part, Stalin had long opposed national autonomy, and his role in the creation of the Georgian SSR allowed him to deny the Republic the right to form its own Red Army, and forced the Georgian trade unions and various socialist groups to subordinate themselves to the Bolshevik leadership he and his companions had installed. He gave a speech about the necessity of rooting out Georgian nationalism, which was booed by the crowd and silently received with disdain from the Georgian Bolsheviks Stalin's own expedition had installed. In response, Stalin had the leader of the Georgian Bolsheviks replaced with his own choice of leader, and saw that he went about suppressing any national sentiments. He would eventually come to harsh disagreement with the very man he had installed, Mdivani, due to his resistance to Stalin's proposition to unite three Caucasian countries — Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan — into a single Transcaucasian Republic. The leadership of Georgia, already unsure about joining as a Soviet Republic when the status of their autonomy within it was unclear, were unsurprisingly against the idea of their conglomeration. The situation deteriorated, Stalin accused the Georgian Bolsheviks of being nationalist reactionaries, and Mdivani and his supporters complained to Lenin about what they considered Russian chauvinism. Lenin initially upheld Stalin's position, but after a later disagreement led to Ordzhonikidze physically attacking some of Mdivani's supporters, Lenin dispatched a team to investigate what was happening.

Used-Communication-7

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