private capitals and the repudiation of national debts, were other measures urged by the Balsheviki.—F.]
***
When it comes to the question of nationalities, the proletarian party must at once grant full freedom to secede from Russia to all the races or nationalities which were driven into subjection by the Czars, forcibly annexed to Russia, or compelled to remain within the Russian Empire. Any statements, declarations or manifestoes to the effect that we renounce annexations, and which are not immediately followed by the granting of freedom to secede from Russia, is just bourgeois prattle calculated to deceive the people, or simply petty bourgeois sentimentalism.
The proletarian party is trying to build up as large a national unit as possible, for this is in the interest of the workers; it is trying to knit the nations closely together, but it does not intend to bring about that consummation by the use of force, but through the free, fraternal union of the laboring masses of all nationalities.
The more democratic the Russian republic will be, the more speedily it will organize itself into a republic of Councils of Workers and Peasants, the more powerful the force of attraction of such a republic will be for the laboring masses of all nations.
Full freedom of secession, the broadest local autonomy, full guarantees for the rights of minorities,—such is the program of the revolutionary proletariat.
