The historic difference between Leninist and Maoist approaches to the national question is revealed in the dramatic contrast in status of Asian peoples on the Soviet side of the border—who enjoy the right of self-determination—and Asian peoples on the Chinese side of the border—who are confronted with forced Sinicization.
This vast contrast in the situations of the peoples on each side of the border is the reason why the brilliant young Black scholar, Earl Ofari, is profoundly mistaken when he writes: “The Chinese Communist Party was in substantial agreement with the Soviets on self-determination.” (Marxism-Leninism—The Key to Black Liberation, by Earl Ofari. The Black Scholar, September, 1972. page 39.)
There has never been full agreement, either in theory or practice, between the Chinese Communist party and the Communist party of the Soviet Union on the right of self-determination. What gave an outward appearance of “substantial agreement” in an earlier period was the fact that Mao’s Han great power nationalist influence did not become fully dominant until more than a decade after the 1949 Revolution.
But even at the moment of anti-imperialist victory, in 1949, Mao’s influence was strong enough so that a unitary state structure was established, the People’s Republic Of China. The unitary form had been defeated under Lenin’s leadership in the period after the October Revolution, and the Union of Soviet Republics was founded in 1922.
Lenin opposed a unitary state because it conflicted with the right of self-determination, with the carrying out of policies required to abolish the dominance and privilege of the Russian nation in relation to the non-Russian nations oppressed by czarism. The founding of a unitary state in China was a rejection of these Leninist principles.
With the formation of the U.S.S.R. the formerly oppressed nations in areas with a potentially viable economy were placed on a basis of full equality with the Russian former oppressor nation within the state structure. In addition, those minorities whose numbers or territory did not constitute the basis for viable national republics were granted regional autonomy. Within this great constellation of peoples, the former oppressor nation together with the nations that had been oppressed by czarist imperialism began, under the leadership of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the task of building socialism and national freedom.
Within this context, the Russian former oppressor nation assumed a special historic responsibility in its relations with the many peoples of this multi-racial, mufti-national union—the internationalist duty of every formerly oppressor nation to those who have oppressed by their “own” thus implementing their Leninist economic, social and political policies “to make up for the inequality” of the past.
Such policies can hardly be described as “in substantial agreement” with the economic, social and political policies of the Chinese Communist Party! The Maoist Sinicization of non-Chinese nationalities—whose numbers are as great as the non-Russian nationalities in the U.S.S.R.—is magnifying, instead of compensating for, inequalities inherited from the past. Han dominance is wiping out even the formal, partial national rights of minorities in the People’s Republic.
James E. Jackson, National Educational Director of the C.P.U.S.A. writes:
When one considers that there are some 2,000 distinctive peoples in the world—nations, nationalities, tribes—and something less than 150 states, it is apparent that the problem of the solution of the national question and its relationship to social revolution is one of the most important social tasks of the contemporary period.
The experience and spectacular accomplishments of the Soviet Union in solving the problem of realizing the aspirations of formerly oppressed national communities to equality, freedom and unfettered material and spiritual development, affrm the power of Marxist-Leninist theory and party guidance for the solution of the most complex of revolutionary problems. (A Mighty Union of Nations, by James E. Jackson, Political Affairs. December, 1972. Pages 41-42.)
The principles of Marxism-Leninism are indeed decisive in every phase of the revolutionary process. Maoism—which violates the identity of national minorities through Sinicization, thus deforming China’s Socialist gains—is a contrastingly negative influence On the revolutionary process both internally and on a world scale. The content of Maoist betrayal—violation of solidarity between the working classes and peoples against imperialism—is the same nationally and internationally; only the form changes.
The October Revolution was followed by several years of imperialist intervention from every direction, including from the U.S. and Japan. These interventions were defeated by Lenin’s policy that united the peoples on the basis of the right of self-determination. This policy combined the rights of the non-Russian peoples with the obligations of the Russian former oppressor nation to carry out the principle of “reparations,” that is, to compensate the formerly oppressed peoples for the economically and socially more privileged position gained by the Russian nation at their expense. Led by Lenin, the Russian working class placed this principle at the center of its relationships with the working Classes of the many different races and peoples of the Soviet Union; it became the cornerstone of every political decision, of all facets of economic and social policy, including every decision relating to the successive five-year plans.
In carrying out this obligation of the former oppressor nation to the formerly oppressed, Soviet policy developed along lines diametrically opposed to Maoism, which proclaims self-determination and equality while it violates the right of self-determination and compounds inequality.
While Lenin warned of the danger of bourgeois nationalism from both the former oppressor nation and the former oppressed nations, he put the emphasis as follows:
A distinction must necessarily be made between the nationalism of an oppressor nation and that of an oppressed nation, the nationalism of a big nation and that of a small nation.
In respect of the second kind of nationalism we, nationals of a big nation, have nearly always been guilty, in historic practice, of an infinite number of cases of violence; furthermore, we commit violence and insult an infinite number of times without noticing it.
That is why internationalism on the part of oppressors or “great” nations, as they are called (though they are great only in their violence, only great as bullies), must consist not only in the observance of formal equality of nations, but even in an inequality of the oppressor nation, the great nation, must make up for the inequality which obtains in actual practice. (Lenin, Collected Works. Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1966, Volume 36, pages 607-608. My emphasis—H.W.)
Lenin added:
For the proletarian it is not only important, it is absolutely essential that he be assured that the non-Russians place the greatest possible trust in the proletarian class struggle. What is needed to insure this? Not merely formal equality. In one way or another, by one’s attitude or by concessions, it is necessary to compensate the non-Russians for the lack of trust, for the suspicion and the insults, to which the government of the “dominant” nation subjected them in the past. (Ibid., page 608. My emphasis—H.W.)
By their attitude, by their policies, by their concessions to the formerly oppressed peoples, the truly “great” Russian former oppressor nation has carried out the Leninist principles of proletarian internationalism.
The principle of placing the responsibility for abolishing inequality on the former oppressor nation became one of the foundations of Socialist law; it was central to the Constitution of the new Socialist state. This obligation to erase inequalities has shaped the course of Socialist development. Over the past fifty years construction of the vast area of the former czarist prison of nations has taken precedence over the Russian nation.
As a result of this new phenomenon in the relationship of nations, the land and peoples of one-sixth of the earth’s surface were transformed within the short space of fifty years. This historic accomplishment reflected not only the abolition of class exploitation. It also expressed a conscious plan to abolish national inequalities gnd rapidly close the social, economic and political gap between the economically more developed Russian nation and those nations whose progress was suppressed by capitalist and czarist imperialism.
This revolutionary closing of the gap between a more advanced nation and economically less developed ones was made possible because Soviet policy from the start was totally different from that of the Maoists, who adopted a purely formal “equality” to camouflage Han supremacy over non-Han nationalities. In all Soviet plans, there was recognition of a definite historical stage during which Russian inequality, as explicitly demanded by Leninist principles, would prevail in the relations between all peoples of the Soviet Union.
Ending all traces of privilege of one nation over other nations was recognized as an obligation that could be fulfilled only within an historical period of Socialist construction geared to bringing the formerly oppressed peoples to a point of development overtaking and even surpassing the Russian nation.
The evidence is now at hand that the Soviet Union has succeeded in abolishing all forms of inequality between peoples—one of the most inspiring chapters in human history.
Included in those areas on the Soviet side of the Sino-Soviet border—where inequality is a thing of the past—are the Central Asian Republics: Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kirghizia, Tadjikistan and Turkmenistan. They cover an enormous region, almost miles long and comprising over 1,500,000 square miles. The population is approximately 25,000,000 and bears about the same relationship to the total population of the U.S.S.R. as do Black people to the total U.S. Each of these five republics represents the free national existence of a distinct, non-white Asian people in full control of its life and economy, and with its own thriving culture and language. As James E. Jackson has pointed out:
It is particularly instructive to contemplate the comparison in status between the Kazakhs, a formerly oppressed people of the U.S.S.R. and the Black American people of the United States. The Kazakhs would be classified as “Black” or “Negro” if they lived in the U.S.A., as distinguished from “white”-skinned Americans. (“A Mighty Union of Nations,” by James E. Jackson. Political Affairs, December, 1972. page 33.)
Jackson then goes on to say:
The people of Kazakhstan (being a full-fledged nation) exercise the right of political self-determination as a state, a free and equal member of the 15 Union Republics which comprise the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It has its own legislative, judiciary and executive branches of government, as well as its own economic, social and political institutions and administrative structures. It has a flourishing culture and its own language. While the 12 million plus Kazakh people exercise the commanding power in their national territory and enjoy unchallengeable equality and access to everything everywhere in the entire U.S.S.R., such total political and total enjoyment of civil rights is not the condition of 25 million Blacks in the USA, (Ibid.)
To illustrate how the non-Russian peoples of the U.S.S.R. have advanced “from last place to front runner,” Jackson quotes from a recent article by the Soviet historian E. V. Tadevosyan:
To overcome the backwardness of many peoples inherited from the past, the Soviet state, in the of socialist construction, took measures to insure that the economy and culture of the national regions develop faster than those of more advanced regions. Thus, while the industrial output of the USSR as a whole increased 92 times on the average between 1913 and 1970, the increase in Kazakhstan and Moldavia was 146 times, in Armenia 184 times, in Kirghizia 188 times. In the standard of education the of these republics have either closely approached or even exceeded the average for the country. According to the 1970 all-Union census the number of employed people with a higher or secondary (complete or incomplete) education per 1,000 in 1970 was 653 in the country as a whole, and 654 in Kazakhstan, 663 in Uzbekistan, 682 in Turkmenia. the of college students of Russian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian nationality increased 26-28 times between the 1927-28 and 1968-69 academic years, the number of Turkmen students increased during the same period 212 times, of Kirghizian students, 220 times, of Tadjik students, more than 250 times, of Uzbek students, more than 280 times, of Kazakh students more than 310 times.
The accelerated development of the national regions made it possible for nations, which only a few decades ago had lagged behind for several historical epochs to catch up and to enter Socialism simultaneously with the other peoples of our country and share in the building of a developed, socialist society. (Ibid. page 32.)
What Professor Tadevosyan has written about the results of Soviet policy in abolishing the inequality between Russian and non-Russian is confirmed by all sources whose accuracy has not been totally impaired by subjective motivation. For example, Charles K. Wilber, Associate Professor of Economics at American University, Washington, D.C.—who has made a study of Soviet Central Asia before and after the Socialist Revolution—writes:
The industrial development of Central Asia began with Soviet power. . . . In the whole of Uzbekistan before 1917, there were only 425 primitive workshops and factories. There was not a single textile mill, although the main crop was cotton. In 1913, Kirghizia had only a small number of handicraft shops with primitive machinery which employed fewer than 1,500 workers. (The Soviet Model and Underdeveloped Countries, by Charles K. Wilber. University of North Carolina Press. Chapel Hill. 1969. Pages 142-143. My emphasis—H.W.)
The experience of the population of the Fergana Valley—a vast area of the Central Asian Republics—has a special resemblance to the Black experience in the U.S. Serfdom was abolished in the Czarist empire in 1861, and some of the effects this had on the Fergana Valley are discussed by Professor Wilber:
The fertility of the Fergana valley and the successful introduction of American cotton in 1894 made cotton a key product of Central Asia. Although the economy changed rapidly from one that was self-sufficient in food products to a one-crop system (the area under cotton cultivation grew from 13,200 hectares in 1866 to 597,200 hectares in 1914), the beck-dakkan (lord-peasant) relationship remained. In fact, the relationship was strengthened because the independent peasantry rapidly lost most of their land under the usurious terms of credit and became sharecroppers, often retaining only one-fourth of the crop. (Ibid. Page 141)
Wilber makes no comparison between the former serfs of Central Asia and the former slaves of the U.S., who did not get even temporary possession of the land after the end of slavery. Instead, they were re-enslaved on the land of their former masters. However, he does report on the progress the former serfs and sharecroppers have made in the Central Asian Republics. In a chapter titled “Social Change and the Formation of Human Capital,” he points out that Soviet “investment in physical assets is a key factor in economic development,” in these areas, “but possibly as important, or more so, is investment in human capital.” He then quotes the following from the United Nations Economic Bulletin for Europe:
The picture would remain incomplete without a discussion of the very impressive investments in the bodies and minds of men, that is in health and education. In these fields the standards in Central Asia have improved so strikingly in the period of Soviet rule that relevant comparison is no longer with neighboring Asian countries, but with the countries of Western Europe. (Ibid. Page 158.)
In his report on the Central Asian Republics, Wilber covers the years from the founding of Soviet power to 1962. Even with the omission of the past decade, when the rate of advance was still greater, the progress of these formerly oppressed nations demonstrates the prospects that can open up for the oppressed peoples in Africa, Asia and Latin America as they take the non-capitalist path of development within the world’s revolutionary with the Socialist countries as its chief bulwark.
Before the Revolution, reports Professor Wilber, there were just over 137,000 students—only 1.1 per cent of the population—in the schools of what are now the five Central Asian Republics. By 1961-62, the number had climbed to 5,880,000—22.5 percent of the population.
In 1955-56, the number of students in secondary and higher education was 5.46 percent of the population, which even as early as seventeen years ago placed Soviet Central Asia sixth highest in educational rank in the world—and at a time when the U.S.S.R. as a whole placed twelfth. Here we see in education—as in all other aspects of society—the dramatic extent to which the Russian former oppressor nation. led by its Leninist Communist party, voluntarily subordinated Russian development to programs wilh the central aim of abolishing inequality.
In 1955 there were fifty-three teachers per thousand students in primary schools in the Central Asian Republics, forty-five in the U.S.S.R. as a whole, while France had twenty-seven per thousand, West Germany thirty-nine, and England and Wales thirty-three. “The data illustrate,” Wilber notes, “that Soviet Central Asia had progressed to the point, in providing for the education of its people, where it is comparable to the more advanced countries.” (Ibid. page 161) While this was already true 18 years ago, progress since then had vastly accelerated throughout the Soviet Union, especially in the Central Asian Republics. And this was precisely the period when the educational crisis in the United States, with its intensification of racism and inequality, became a dominant aspect in the total crisis in opportunity not only in education but in all areas of life, especially for the non-whites.
Before the October Revolution, Central Asian women were among the most oppressed in the world. In a population with an illiteracy rate of over 90 percent, the illiteracy of women was virtually total. And even as late as a few years after the founding of the Central Asian Republics, the former landlords—who tried to incite revolts—often assassinated “emancipated” women and village teachers.
Despite such resistance, Wilber reports that by 1931-32, out of a total of 135,976 students in Tadjikistan, 22,137 were women. By 1955-56, the percentage of females in primary, seven-year and secondary schools had risen to 42.3 in Tadjikistan, over 43 percent in Uzbekistan, 48 in Kazakhstan and approximately 46 percent in Kirghizia and Turkmenistan. (Ibid. page 161)
Going beyond the covered by Wilber’s figures, one learns that by 1971, 70,000 Uzbek women had a higher education, and 84,000 a specialized secondary education. Women now make up almost half the employed population of that republic, including almost 7,000 scientific workers, and 17,000 engineers and technicians. Over 140 women have been elected to the Supreme Soviet of the Uzbek Republic; twenty-two Uzbek women are deputies to the U.S.S.R.’s Supreme Soviet; almost 35,000 have been elected to the local Soviets of the Uzbek Republic. The Chairman of the Soviet House of Nationalities of the U.S.S.R., Yadgar Nasriddinova is a woman; before election to this she served as President of the Uzbek Republic. (The Nationalities Question: How It Was in the USSR. By A. Zevelev. Novosti Press Agency Publishing House. Moscow, 1972. Page 40)
The overall per capita outlay for health and education in Central Asia, Wilber reports, was 20 percent higher than for the USSR as a whole as far back as the Second Five-Year Plan (1932-37). (The Soviet Model and Under-Developed Countries. page 164) Once again, statistics show that from the start, the Soviet Union’s Leninist policies were transforming the relations between the Russian and the non-Russian formerly oppressed peoples.
In addition to the statistics Wilber presents confirming the inspiring results of the Leninist solution of the national question on the Soviet side of the Sino-Soviet border, he also cites an opinion which, however unintentionally, makes the same point. The opinion comes from Warren Wilhelm, an anti-Soviet writer, who states in an article titled “Soviet Central Asia: Development of a Backward Area,” that “The region was not ’Russianized’ but it was pitilessly Sovietized . . . “ (Ibid., Page 157)
In accepting this view uncritically, Wilber shares in its bourgeois bias—because its class implications are clear: the peoples of Central Asia refused to compromise with the past in their struggle for liberation from the heritage of “pitilessly” brutal oppression under czarism. In solidarity with the Russian working class and all other nations and nationalities of the old czarist empire, they won the right to self-determination, and went on to create a new life—Socialist in content, national in form.
However, Wilber once again returns to objectivity when—summing up conclusions based on a careful examination of his data—he writes:
. . . Central Asia has been transformed from a stagnant, illiterate, disease-ridden, semi-feudal society into a dynamic progress-oriented society. (Ibid„ page 214.)
Wilber closes his examination of Soviet Central Asia by quoting from House Without A Roof: Russia After Forty-Three Years, by Maurice Hindus, who is not known as a friend of the Soviet Union:
Uzbekistan is an example of an underdeveloped Asian country which within a brief span of time—as time is reckoned in history—Moscow has lifted to an advanced stage of industrial development and technology. . . . The Asian, the African, the visitor from any underdeveloped country, who comes to Tashkent can only compare the miseries of his homeland with the achievements of the health of the people, the rising living standards, the upsurge of education, technology, industry and science.
Uzbekistan is a non-Slavic Asian land, and at the beginning of the Soviet Revolution it was one of the most backward in Asia. This is what lends the Kremlin formula of development its global significance. (Ibid., Pages 214-215.)
What Hindus calls the “Kremlin formula” is actually the application of Marxist-Leninist principles of internationalism. This is what accounts for the basic difference between the status of formerly oppressed Asian peoples in the U.S.S.R. and those in China, where Maoist policies deny the right of self-determination to non-Hans, accentuating the heritage of inequality between Han and non-Han instead of overcoming it.
Next: THE “LEANING” THEORY OF MAO TSE-TUNG