The position of Ukraine has long been a point of debate in the workers’ movement, from well before the Russian Revolution. This rebuttal to Trotsky’s ‘The Problem of the Ukraine’, presumably written by Hugo Oehler, from the theoretical journal of the former Trotskyists of the Revolutionary Workers League, ‘Marxist.’

‘The Ukraine Problem: An Answer to Leon Trotsky and Others’ from Marxist (Revolutionary Workers League). Vol. 5 No. 4. July, 1939.

The Hitler propaganda for a “Greater Ukraine”, which lays the basis for a Nazi attempt to carve a colonial empire out of this vast fertile territory and is an opening wedge to overthrow the Soviet Union, focuses attention upon one of the most complex questions of Eastern Europe. The Ukraine, like Poland, has constituted a historical jig-saw ever since the days of Czarism. The Versailles Treaty did not solve this problem; but only created new and sharper antagonisms. Today, with the decline of the Soviet Union under Stalinism, and with the rise of Fascism, the problem of the Ukraine becomes one of the important questions of world politics. Although Hitler has momentarily relegated to the background agitation on the Ukraine question, this by no means indicates a new policy. The Nazis have a healthy fear of the social forces which a movement for a “Greater Ukraine” would unleash, such a movement can too easily become a boomerang. But Hitler is only trying to go around the obstacles and difficulties. he now confronts.

The victorious October Revolution opened up a new perspective for the oppressed minorities as well as for the workers and peasants and began the construction of a society based upon production for use. The decisive part of the Ukraine was under the Red Flag and became a rallying, center for those sections of the Ukraine still controlled by the imperialist. exploiters arid their lackeys.

THE RIGHT OF SELF-DETERMINATION

The slogan for the right of self-determination was raised by the Bolsheviks as part of the workers struggle for power, as an auxiliary tactic to put backward sections of the population into action, and to undermine the imperialist domination of national minorities. It was not a trick slogan, a maneuver. It answered a genuine need of the oppressed minorities. The concept of the right of self-determination was carried over and incorporated into the Constitution of the Soviet Union, the first country to legally recognize this right even to the point of separation of the federated nationality if it so desired. But one must understand that this slogan is an auxiliary slogan, that is it not raised under ALL conditions at ALL times. For example, the Soviets pointed out that the victorious Allies in the world war all advocated self-determination in Eastern Europe for the purpose of dismembering and rendering impotent Germany and her allies, and to place a wall between the Soviet Union and the rest of Europe. The Bolsheviks correctly exposed and fought this type of self-determination. Hitler’s agitation today is only the other side of the same coin.

The right of self-determination under capitalism, and the right of self-determination under Soviet rule do not have the same axis. Thus, while the Bolsheviks affirmed this right, they sought to convince the masses to stay within the framework of the Federated Republic. The question is one of STRATEGY, not principle. The party of the working class will not advance this slogan in situations where it becomes a lever for an imperialist power AGAINST THE MINORITIES and against the working class, as was the case in Eastern Europe yesterday under the Anglo, French imperialist bloc, and as is the case today under the Rome-Berlin axis.

FOR A UNITED SOVIET UKRAINE

One cannot consider the Ukraine problem isolated from the Soviet Union, notwithstanding Stalinist domination, because in that country is found the greater part of the Ukraine. But neither can one ignore the Ukrainian sections still under the rule of the exploiters in Poland, Hungary and Roumania. There is on the one hand the task of freeing these sections, and on the other hand the task of ousting Stalinism which has stifled all development in the Soviet Ukraine as it has in the rest of the Soviet Union. These tasks are two sides of one problem.

It is not too early to envisage the time when the yoke of exploitation will be smashed and the different sections of the Ukraine will be united into a Ukraine Soviet. The precondition for this is the revolution in one or more advanced capitalist countries in Europe and the establishment of a Soviet system. This will be a beginning toward the consolidation of the United Socialist Soviets of Europe. Under the structure the present relation to the Soviet Union will be supplanted by a new and higher stage in which the Ukraine as an entity in its own right will be affiliated to the European Soviet. Within this framework we can speak of a free, independent Soviet Ukraine.

TROTSKY AND THE UKRAINE QUESTION

An article by Trotsky, “The Problem of the Ukraine” provides a good springboard to differentiate between the Marxist and centrist positions on this question. Trotsky advocates the separation of the Ukraine from the Soviet Union and the establishment of a “Free independent Soviet Ukraine.” This position runs counter to the basic interests of the working class, and can only play into the hands at the imperialists and their Russian agents, Stalinists and others. Implied in it is an identification of the Soviet Union with the Stalinist bureaucracy, a loss of faith in the possibilities of the regeneration of the warped workers state.

As usual, the article abounds in ambiguous formulations intended to meet the objections of the comrades who ask too many questions. Trotsky says: “The program of independence for the Ukraine in the epoch of imperialism is directly and indissolubly bound up with the program of the proletarian revolution. It would be criminal to entertain any illusions on this score.” But this correct statement is immediately negated: “In the face of such an internal situation (degeneration under Stalinism) it is naturally impossible even to talk of western Ukraine voluntarily joining the USSR as it is at present constituted. Consequently the unification of the Ukraine PRESUPPOSES (our emphasis – Ed) freeing the so-called Soviet Ukraine from the Stalinist boot.” First the Soviet Ukraine must be freed from the rest of the Soviet Union, then we will have the proletarian revolution and unification of the rest of Ukraine! This position makes so many empty words of the talk of a proletarian revolution. It is no better in content than the stand of the Second International leaders who are for “socialism.”

Trotsky resorts to faulty logic to make his point. He speaks of the impossibility of Western Ukraine VOLUNTARILY joining the Soviet Union as at present constituted. But western Ukraine could not voluntarily join the Soviet Union even if the S. U. were under a Marxian leadership. In any case, that is possible only AFTER the proletarian revolution in Western Ukraine, a factor which would change the whole relationship of forces both within and outside the U.S.S.R.

A REVOLUTION IN THE UKRAINE

If the workers carry through a successful revolution in Western Ukraine (and other countries of that area) should our strategy then be to demand that the Soviet Ukraine separate and join its western section? Just the opposite. The revolutionary Marxists would call for unification of the new workers’ state with the Soviet Union on CONDITIONS necessary to insure the workers democratic control of the new Dictatorship of the Proletariat against the exploiters and as a wedge to revive workers democracy and genuine Soviets in Russia. On this basis the revolution in Western Ukraine would be a wedge for a political revolution against Stalinism. At the same time, it would extend its force westward to other parts of Europe.

If the workers in Soviet Ukraine overthrow Stalinism and reestablish a genuine workers state, shall they separate from the rest of the Soviet Union? No. If the workers regain their position in Soviet Ukraine before the proletarian revolution in Western Ukraine they should DRIVE DEEPER INTO THE SOVIET UNION AGAINST STALINISM and the other imperialist agents. Not turning our backs on the Soviet Union, but its regeneration and reestablishment as a mighty citadel of world revolution – that is the road of Marxism.

Trotsky says: “The question of first order is the revolutionary guarantee of the unity and independence of a workers’ and peasants’ Ukraine in the struggle against imperialism, on the one hand, and against Moscow Bonapartism, on the other.” This is begging the question. This “first order” of Trotsky is about the tenth order. To have a united and independent Ukraine, the workers and

peasants must succeed with a proletarian revolution in three capitalist countries, and must carry through a political revolution in Soviet Ukraine.

Trotsky’s concept turns inside out the position of the extension of the October Revolution and a political revolution in the Soviet Union, and completely negates the position of the defense of the Soviet Union. It has nothing in common with the concept of the permanent revolution.

Enmeshed in capitalist contradictions in Western Ukraine, confronted with Stalinist degeneration within Soviet Ukraine, with both sections beaten down under the hammer blows of the imperialist struggle for the redivision of the world, the problem of the Ukraine calls for special attention. The policy the revolutionary Marxists present is first and foremost the independent action of the working class. This is possible only on the basis of the political and organizational independence of the revolutionary Marxian organization. In Western Europe and Ukraine this independent class action calls for steps that prepare the class in action for the social revolution. In the time element it makes no difference where the workers are successful first, in the social revolution of Western Ukraine or in the political revolution of Soviet Ukraine. In the Soviet Ukraine this independent class action calls for such a political revolution and the EXTENSION of this workers’ victory to the rest of the Soviet Union and for the social revolution internationally. Only on this basis can the working class EXTEND THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION.

International News was the theoretical journal of the Revolutionary Workers League (first calling themselves the Left Wing Group of the Workers Party), publishers of ‘Fighting Worker.’ It began with the split in the Workers Party in 1935. In 1936 it was renamed ‘Fourth International’ (not to be confused wit the SWP’s theoretical journal of the same name from 1940-56) from 1936 to 1939 and was renamed The Marxist in 1939 which lasted on that year. Fighting Worker was the newspaper of the Revolutionary Workers League from 1936 until 1947. The RWL was a 1935 split from the Workers Party of the U.S. led by James Cannon and allied with the Movement for the Fourth International led by Leon Trotsky. Led by Hugo Oehler and Tom Stamm, the RWL opposed the ‘French Turn’ then happening in world Trotskyism whereby national sections were joining left-moving Socialist Parties. Fighting Worker and the RWL at first positioned themselves as oppositional Trotskyists, but by 1938 refuted Trotsky and his international movement as “degenerate.’, The exact date of Trotsky’s degeneration causing an organizational split between the group’s founders and, for a time, two rival Revolutionary Workers Leagues with papers called Fighting Worker. Oehler went to Spain to make contact with the POUM but was arrested during their suppression. Declaring a rival Provisional International Contact Commission for the New Communist (Fourth) International in 1938, they briefly joined with the Leninist League (UK) and the Revolutionary Communist Organization (Austria). Fighting Worker would be published monthly and then every two weeks in Chicago and New York. After suffering a series of splits in the late 1930s, including of Tom Stamm, the RWL went into decline and Fighting Worker ceased publishing entirely in 1947. In addition to Fighting Worker, the RWL published local, labor, and theoretical papers.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/marxist/v5n4-jul-1939-Marxist-RWL.pdf