national question

Ukraine, Russia, imperialism and national self-determination

Renfrey Clarke - The war in Ukraine has presented left-wing theorists and commentators with a difficult analytical challenge. How are we to resolve this conundrum? As well as needing to answer the question of where Russia stands within the capitalist world-system we also need to decide how the right to national self-determination plays out within this context.

Did Lenin create Ukraine? On the right of nations to self-determination and Marxism

Grusha Gilaeva analyzes the positions of Marx and Lenin on the national question and explains why the left movement must support the anti-colonial struggle of Ukraine

Q&A: Navigating the left’s Ukraine debate

Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Elly Leary - Sovereignty and self-determination are important concepts to keep at the heart of Left analysis —and can help orient us in the confusion and misinformation surrounding Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Nikolay Bogdanov-Bel’sky, “New Fairy Tale,” 1891.

Ukraine and its language in the political imagination of the Russian empire

Hanna Perekhoda - In order to understand Putin’s war against Ukraine and its people, one must take a close look at the place that Ukraine, its state, language, and culture occupy in the imperial and national imagination of Russians.

National struggle and class struggle: complementary or contradictory?

Introduction by Richard Fidler

A Québécois view of Canada’s 150th anniversary: Why celebrate colonial autonomy?

By André Binette, translation and notes by Richard Fidler May 16, 2017 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Life on the Left — Each sovereign state can choose the date of its national holiday. Generally, this date recalls the accession to independence. The United States, for example, chose to emphasize each year their unilateral declaration of independence of July 4, 1776. They preferred this date to the date of the Treaty of Paris, 1783, which ended the revolutionary war they had won thanks to France’s decisive support. Their national holiday commemorates a founding act.

The Kurdish struggle – An interview with Dilar Dirik