national question

Dmitry Pozhidaev — Lenin’s vision of the national question was far from assimilationist; it was a dialectical approach that recognised proletarian internationalism could only be built on respect for national and cultural differences.

Hanna Perekhoda revisits Lenin’s pre-1917 writings on the right of nations to self-determination from the perspective of his Ukrainian contemporary, Lev Yurkevych.

Blanca Missé — Many activists recognize movements face the same decadent global capitalism and its imperialist state system. However, international and regional politics shape these struggles, making it hard for them to unite against their common enemy.

Ireland and Ukraine had similar challenges in the period 1916 – 1923. Conor Kostick and Vladyslav Starodubtsev answer questions about the period and compare the experiences of the left in that era.

Renfrey Clarke — Few questions of international politics have seen the Western left as sharply divided as the war in Ukraine. But there is no good reason why Marxists, with the writings of Vladimir Lenin at their disposal, should lack clarity on how to analyse the war.

Rohini Hensman — Given his prominence as a high-ranking Bolshevik, Mirsaid Sultan-Galiev is very little known. This is a pity, because there is much we can learn from his writings as well as his practice even today.

Richard Fidler - Historical analogies can indeed be useful in assessing the issues posed in contemporary events, provided of course that careful attention is paid to the particular circumstances and to what degree the differing situations and protagonists are comparable.

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.

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

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.

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.