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p Capitalist society, which is based on private ownership and exploitation and foments discord and hostility between peoples, cannot solve the national question. Only socialism, which eliminates exploitation and class antagonisms, puts an end to national discord and ensures the true flourishing, mutual trust and rapprochement of the peoples. “In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another is put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to.”  [272•* 

p The socialist revolution in the USSR sundered the chains of national oppression, vanquished the age-old enmity between peoples and paved the way for their allround cooperation and rapprochement. It granted the people the right to decide their own future and develop national statehood, economy and culture.

p The Communist Party and the socialist state attached special importance to the national question from the moment the Soviet Republic was founded. Already on November 15, 1917 the Soviet Government adopted the Declaration of Rights of the Peoples of Russia which solemnly proclaimed the equality and sovereignty of all its peoples, and their unlimited right to self-determination up to and including secession and the formation of independent states. It repealed all national privileges and restrictions and guaranteed the free development of national minorities and ethnic groups.

p The adoption of this declaration signified the abolition of national oppression and the establishment of political and juridical equality of the numerous nations and nationalities inhabiting the country. It also laid a firm foundation for the voluntary alliance of all nations and nationalities into a single state. This unification was completed in the formation, on December 30, 1922, of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the world’s first multinational state 273 based on national equality and voluntary accession. The establishment of the USSR enhanced the economic and military might and the political status of the Soviet republics and created conditions for the further drawing together of the peoples and for their joint struggle for socialism.

p Needless to say, the emancipation of nations could not be confined solely to the abolition of national oppression and ensurance of their political and juridical equality. The main thing was that the Soviet socialist state successfully accomplished the difficult task of surmounting the age-old economic and cultural backwardness inherited by the new society from tsarist Russia. It not only granted the formerly oppressed nations the right to free development, but helped them to overcome their backwardness and raise their national economy and culture to great heights.

p Having rehabilitated the economy that the imperialist First World War and the Civil War had left in ruins, the Communist Party and the Soviet Government immediately launched the industrialisation of the national republics. Thanks to the concern of the Party and the state and the disinterested assistance of other nations, the Russians in the first place, the formerly backward republics set up new branches of industry which developed at an unprecedented rate. It should be noted that these rates of growth were considerably higher than the rate of industrial development in the USSR as a whole. For instance, while gross industrial output in the whole of the USSR in 1940 was 11.7 times greater than in 1913, the figures for Kirghizia and Tajikistan were 153 and 277 respectively. Ferrous and non-ferrous metal, automobile, electrotechnical and other new branches of industry appeared in the national republics.

p Agriculture in these, republics also changed beyond recognition: it is now collective and highly mechanised.

p The development of the productive forces in the Soviet republics stimulated the growth of skilled national personnel and a numerous intelligentsia. Cultural backwardness was surmounted. The peoples of the Soviet Union accomplished not only a most profound revolution in the economy, but also the greatest cultural revolution.

p There is universal literacy in all the Soviet republics which have numerous schools, institutions of higher learning and research and cultural establishments. They have a 274 flowering culture which is socialist in content and national in form. In terms of cultural growth the Soviet national republics have greatly outstripped not only the capitalist countries of the East but also many industrialised capitalist countries in the West.

p Thus, as a result of the victory of socialism in the USSR, Russia’s former national borderlands that were tsarism’s economically and culturally backward raw materials appendages, became advanced sovereign socialist republics with a highly developed industry and productive agriculture, with their own working class and a numerous intelligentsia. Bourgeois nations became qualitatively new, socialist nations. Numerous nationalities also consolidated into socialist nations on the new socio-economic basis. Many of them bypassed the capitalist stage and with the help of other, more developed peoples, reached the level of the advanced nations.

p The development of nations in the USSR does not take place through the strengthening of national barriers and cultivation of national narrow-mindedness and egoism as is the case in capitalist society, but through the drawing together of nations, their fraternal mutual assistance and friendship. The rapid and all-round development of each nation, on the one hand, and the increasing rapprochement of socialist nations on the basis of proletarian internationalism, on the other, are the two interconnected progressive tendencies in the national relations under socialism. As a result, a new, formerly unknown historical community, “the Soviet people which is based on the solid alliance of the working class, the peasantry and the intelligentsia... the friendship of all the big and small nations of our country,”  [274•*  has come into being. This community arose on the basis of public ownership of the means of production, uniformity of economic, socio-political and cultural life, Marxist-Leninist ideology and interests and communist ideals of the working class. Rallied round the Communist Party this great family of nations is advancing towards the common goal—-communism.

p Relations of fraternal cooperation and mutual assistance 275 between peoples, relations that had never before existed in the world took shape in the USSR on the basis of the complete domination of socialist relations of production. The lasting friendship of the Soviet peoples which became a permanent factor of Soviet reality as a result of the victory of socialism in the country has turned into a mighty motive force of socialist society and a major source of its indestructibility and strength. The full and consistent solution of the most complicated national question inherited by the USSR from the old system vividly attests to the triumph of the ideas .of Marx ism-Leninism, of proletarian internationalism.

p Judging by the great progress of the Soviet nations and nationalities it is clear that only socialist revolution creates conditions for the complete elimination of national oppression, for the voluntary union of free and equal peoples in a single state, for the true flourishing and rapprochement of nations. Today the states of the world socialist system draw upon the Soviet Union’s experience as they try to solve the national question at home and within the framework of the socialist community of nations as a whole. This invaluable experience is also of great importance for the peoples of the young sovereign national states that had cast oft the colonial yoke, and for peoples who are fighting against colonialism. For them the successes of the peoples of the USSR are a source of inspiration and strength in their difficult fight against imperialism. In the present of the socialist nations they see their own future.

p Developed socialism and the building of communist society are a new stage in the development of national relations in the USSR which is characterised by the further drawing together of nations and the achievement of full unity, and not only legal but actual equality.

p The creation of the material and technical base of communism stimulates the further all-round development of the economy of the Union republics, improves the division of labour between them and promotes the expansion of the existing and establishment of new economic links. Each of them contributes to the common cause of augmenting the growth of the country’s productive forces and fostering, closer economic unity of the socialist nations.

p The successes in communist construction, the obliteration of class distinctions and the development of communist 276 social relations solidify the social homogeneity of nations and stimulate the development of common communist features in their culture, morality and mode of life. All this enhances their mutual trust and friendship. The spiritual unity of nations is strengthening. There is an all-round flourishing of the socialist culture of the peoples of the USSR and mutual enrichment and rapprochement of the national cultures.

p Taking the interests of the Soviet state into consideration, the Party will continue undeviatingly to pursue the Leninist line of strengthening the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It will also take into account the specific conditions of development of each of the Soviet republics as it works consistently to promote the further burgeoning and rapprochement of all socialist nations.

p The further drawing together of nations in the course of communist construction is an objective process, and the Party is both against spurring it on artificially and against any attempts to hold it up, to create obstacles in its way under any pretext and to deliberately consolidate national isolation. The Party resolutely counters all manifestations and survivals of nationalism and chauvinism, and opposes tendencies towards national seclusion and exelusiveness, the idealisation of the past and concealment of social contradictions in the history of peoples, and obsolete customs and morals.

The drawing together of nations will eventually lead to their merger. But the merger of nations and the obliteration of distinctions between them is a much longer process than the obliteration of distinctions between classes. Class distinctions will disappear with the victory of communism, but national distinctions, particularly in language, will persist for a considerable time.