During the Russian Civil War, in April, 1920, Polish capitalism launched an offensive into Ukraine with other imperialist support to take territories and weaken the Soviets. After pushing back the attack the Red Army went on the offensive to be defeated outside of Warsaw in August, 1920. Kamenev speaks to the question of self-determination.

‘In Behalf of the Polish People’ by Lev Kamenev from Soviet Russia (New York). Vol. 3 No. 18. October 30, 1920.

[Stenographic report of a Joint Meeting of the Central Executive Committee of the Moscow Council of Workmen’s Delegates, Industrial Unions, and Shop Committees, held on May 5, 1920.]

Comrade Kamenev, Chairman: The meeting will come to order. Comrades! A regular meeting of the Moscow Council of Workers’ Delegates was to have been held yesterday. The questions of the day were the ones on which the whole working class of Russia and we had been centering our attention the questions of economy and thrift. We had to postpone this meeting so that we might call today’s meeting with but one point on the order of business: the situation on the Polish front. The offensive of the Polish nobility pushes aside the problems of the day, problems on which we had been laboring, and draws the attention, will, and energy of the working masses of Russia to the external fronts.

Comrades! The history of imperialistic Russia was a history of national oppression, of people subjugated by Czardom. The history of imperialistic Russia is a history of repeated outrages on the small nationalities that were integral units of the Russian Empire, an empire that was cemented together by Muscovy with blood and violence. And when a really revolutionary party had considered the task of the overthrow of the old Russian regime as an easy one, this party had to consider that the imperialistic government of old Russia was not only founded on the oppression of the masses of the Russian people, above all the millions of peasants, but, also on the indispensable Czaristic system enforced on all the borders of Russia–a system of oppressing nationalities. That is why this party, which today through the will of the working-masses of Russia holds the power, had to draw up a clear program of national reconstruction; that is why the Communist Party of Russia, not in the year 1920 nor in 1917, not even in 1914, but long before the decision of the powers of the World War on the question of the emancipation of small nationalities, had to answer and has answered, in an open and above-board manner, the question of its attitude to nationalities, minorities, and to peoples oppressed by Czarism and capitalism. Our answer was given long before the world conflict, and the Communist Party of Russia may boldly declare that, aside from the changing political or military situation, aside from the question of whether a party struggled for power or possessed it, the Communist Party always settled the problem of oppressed nationalities in one way–by giving them the complete right of self-determination. Our policy is not one of opportunism; it does not depend on the diplomatic or military map, but flows from a deep insight into the united interests of all the workers. That is why, when we had taken over the power in 1917, and though we have conducted war for two and a half years, we have ever been proclaiming the watchword of the right of all the nationalities, formerly oppressed in Russia, to separate themselves from Russia and to found their own states. And no lies thrown at Soviet Russia, no slander by bourgeois diplomats and editors, have blinded the masses of the people to the fact that in reference to oppressed nationalities the Communist Party of Russia and the Soviet Government, directed by the same, have without any deviation from this recognized the right of Poland to guide its own destiny. Taking the above position, we have many times submitted to the Polish Government as it is constituted and as it is yet accepted by the working people, peace propositions, either directly or indirectly addressed to the governments standing behind Poland and directing its affairs. These propositions were rejected, and that is why the attention of the working-masses of Russia is directed to a new front, and for this reason we have to lay aside those questions which were considered in the order of business at our last Soviet and Party Congresses, and take up a new problem–the problem of the Polish front.

We are confronted by a new situation because the armies of the Polish bourgeoisie are standing at the gates of Kiev, and a new development arises in the Russian Revolution and in the history of the Soviet Republic. We are convinced that we shall withstand the new test in the same manner as we have withstood other critical moments in our struggles. We rely on two factors which have never failed us and which today form the guiding spirit of our victories. The first one is that of the class-consciousness of the working-masses of Poland, who despite all the obstructions raised by the Polish ruling class, know and feel that we are not only fighting for the independence of Soviet Russia, the freedom of the peasants and workers of Russia and Ukraine. Not only are we fighting for the gains made during the two and one-half years of bloody struggle against the counter-revolutionists of different groups and countries. No! The workers and peasants of Poland know that on the battle-fields of the western front we are struggling for their freedom, their emancipation from the yoke of the Polish nobility.

The second is our invincible Red Army. The Polish villages and cities have, more than once, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, seen armies composed of Russian workers and peasants, under the leaderships of the Czar’s officials, generals and officers, advancing to crush Poland, to subdue its heroic insurrections. Now Poland will see an army consisting of Russian workers and peasants, led by workers and peasants or those officers who sincerely have taken their stand with the army of workers and peasants and the Soviet Government; she will see that this army is marching under the banner of emancipation and not aiming at conquest or repression; she will see an army which has progressed because the workers and peasants of Russia have directed it to defend the freedom and revolutionary achievements of the Russian people against the attempts of the Polish bourgeoisie. We are convinced that this army will arouse enthusiasm in the Polish peasants and workers, and the spirit in which they, the workers and peasants of Poland, who are thus being liberated from the oppression of Polish landowners and capitalists, will receive this army, will be the best assurance that our arms will triumph in this struggle as they did in all the battles with all the foes of the Soviet power. For the first time we can unfold the banner which was the symbol of all the true Russian revolutionists with regard to the nations in general, in reference to Poland. It bears the inscription: “For our and your freedom; for the fraternal unity of the Russian and Polish workers; for the destruction of those who desire to place a bayonet between the Polish and Russian workers and to separate us with a wall of national hatred.”

Comrades! Convinced are we that the battle will end victoriously, for today as formerly, behind the ranks of the Red Army, stand masses of workers full of sympathy and revolutionary fervor. We believe profoundly that the first units despatched to the western front by the Petrograd and Moscow workers are like the early swallows; that the workers and peasants of Russia will begin to advance to that front in broad masses and will bring there military materials, bread, and all that the Red Army needs. Incidentally, here today, we have among us three hundred happy workers who are on their way to the western front, mobilized in Petrograd. (Loud applause.) With them we can voice the motto, inscribed on their Red banners, glorified in battles and handed on by Petrograd workers to its forward post: “Death to Polish magnates, long live the alliance with the peasants and workers of Poland!” “Long live independent Poland, emancipated from the yoke of capitalists and landowners, and long live its free alliance with Soviet Russia.” (Applause.)

Soviet Russia began in the summer of 1919, published by the Bureau of Information of Soviet Russia and replaced The Weekly Bulletin of the Bureau of Information of Soviet Russia. In lieu of an Embassy the Russian Soviet Government Bureau was the official voice of the Soviets in the US. Soviet Russia was published as the official organ of the RSGB until February 1922 when Soviet Russia became to the official organ of The Friends of Soviet Russia, becoming Soviet Russia Pictorial in 1923. There is no better US-published source for information on the Soviet state at this time, and includes official statements, articles by prominent Bolsheviks, data on the Soviet economy, weekly reports on the wars for survival the Soviets were engaged in, as well as efforts to in the US to lift the blockade and begin trade with the emerging Soviet Union.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/srp/v3n18-oct-30-1920-soviet-russia.pdf