Lenin’s Report To the Second Congress of the Communist International on the National and the Colonial Questions
Lenin’s report on behalf of the “Commission on National and Colonial Questions at the Second Congress of the Communist International”. In July 1920, the full text was first published according to the shorthand record of the Second Congress of the Comintern. Then it was published by the Publishing Bureau of the Comintern in Petrograd in 1921. The Chinese translation is included in Vol. 39 of the second revised edition of the “Lenin Collected Works”.
The Second Congress of the Communist International ( Comintern) was successively held in Petrograd and Moscow, Russia, from July 19 to August 17, 1920. One of the important topics discussed by the general assembly was the national and the colonial question. The first draft of Lenin’s work was submitted to the general assembly as a draft resolution on this issue. At the same time, Roy, the representative from British colony India, also submitted to the general assembly a supplementary outline on the national and the colonial questions. The 20-member Commission working on the national and colonial questions considered the two drafts on 25thof July. The Commission adopted Lenin’s draft after a slight revision, and Roy’s supplementary draft was also adopted by the Commission after amendment.
On July 26th, the two drafts were submitted to the general assembly for deliberation. On the same day, Lenin delivered a report to the Congress on behalf of the Commission and made it clear that the Commission had reached a consensus on the most important issues in respect to the national and the colonial questions. on the most important question of nationalities and colonies, Lenin also made a brief explanation on the following aspects of the guiding ideology of the “Draft Theses”.
Lenin pointed out that to put forward and resolve the national and the colonial questions correctly, we must adhere to the following two guiding principles: first, we should emphasize the distinction between oppressed nations and oppressing nations, which is completely contrary to the position of Second International and bourgeois democracy. Second, in the current world situation following the imperialist war, reciprocal relations between peoples and the world political system as a whole are determined by the struggle waged by a small group of imperialist nations against the Soviet movement and the Soviet states headed by Soviet Russia.
While expressing his opinions on the bourgeois democratic movement in the backward countries. Lenin clearly pointed out that the consensus of the discussion was to substitute the term “bourgeois democratic” movement with a better term as the “revolutionary national movement”. “The significance of this change is that we, as Communists, should and will support bourgeois-liberation movements in the colonies only when they are genuinely revolutionary, and when their exponents do not hinder our work of educating and organising in a revolutionary spirit the peasantry and the masses of the exploited. If these conditions do not exist, the Communists in these countries must combat the reformist bourgeoisie, to whom the heroes of the Second International also belong”.
When commenting on the issue of peasants, Lenin pointed out that in countries where there was almost no real industrial proletariat and the pre capitalist relations are dominant, the Communist Party should play a leading role in these areas despite tremendousdifficulties — to inspire in the massesan urge for independent political thinking and independent political action, and lead and organize them to establish peasants’ Soviets. Lenin added: It is necessary to point out that in the backward countries and colonies, the Communist Party and the people who are going to join the Communist Party are fully responsible for propagating in favour of peasants’ Soviets or of working people’s Soviets, this to include backward and colonial countries. Wherever conditions permit, they should at once make attempts to set up Soviets the working people.
On the question whether the backward nations can make a transition to the Soviet system without going through the capitalist development stage. Lenin pointed out: “We replied positive… If the victorious revolutionary proletariat conducts systematic propaganda among them, and the Soviet governments come to their aid with all the means at their disposal—in that event it will be mistaken to assume that the backward peoples must inevitably go through the capitalist stage of development. Not only should we create independent contingents of fighters and party organisations in the colonies and the backward countries, not only at once launch propaganda for the organisation of peasants’ Soviets and strive to adapt them to the pre-capitalist conditions, but the Communist International should advance the proposition, with the appropriate theoretical grounding, that with the aid of the proletariat of the advanced countries, backward countries can go over to the Soviet system and, through certain stages of development, to communism, without having to pass through the capitalist stage.” Lenin added: “the necessary means for this cannot be indicated in advance. These will be prompted by practical experience. “
This document is the first complete program formulated and approved by the Comintern on the “National and Colonial Questions”.