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AGAINST LIBERALISM  IN U.S. NEGRO QUESTION   299

was emphatically rejected by the Party." Comrade Shick apparently wants to infer thereby that he is right and the Comintern is wrong.
The right to self-determination does not signify impartiality with regards to class processes, but a recognition of the right for each given nationality to wage the class struggle in those national forms which it chooses, i.e. within the framework of the given political association or within the framework of its own national state. The right must be recognized by the proletariat of the ruling nation in order to eliminate the national distrust which exists among the proletarians of the oppressed nations towards the oppressor nations, including the proletariat of those nations.
Comrade Shick wants to picture us as narrow nationalists who "live and let live." It appears that the attitude of the Bolsheviks to other nations, and their duty as internationalists in relation to the proletariat of other countries, consist merely in the recognition of the right to political separation, i.e., the right of independent existence as a separate State. That is how far Bolshevik international policy goes. But this is not true.
"We must so arrange matters that the German Social patriots may not have the opportunity to say that the Bolsheviks enforce their universal system which could be introduced in Berlin with the aid of red army bayonets. Should we reject the principle of self-determination of nations, such conclusions might be drawn." (Lenin, Vol. XIX, p. 213. Russian edition).
That was said in 1919. But did this mean that the programme of the Russian Bolsheviks was merely confined to the postulate that their universal principles could not be enforced upon other nationalities with the aid of Red Army bayonets? Of course not. Has not the Communist Party of Germany been created  and formed with their aid of the Russian Party? The Russian Communist Party is a party of the proletariat which has taken power and is interested that the workers of the other countries take power into their hands as soon as possible. This Party is the leading Party in the Comintern. It helps by every means the revolutionary struggle in other countries and participates through the Comintern in defining the national tasks of the revolutionary movements of all nations of the world. But no nation can accuse the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of wanting to enforce its principles by means of violence. Comrade Shick does not see that the question of recognition of the right to self-determination is a question of confidence and not of impartiality. Only the recognition of the right to self-determination for the oppressed nations gives the proletariat of the oppressor nation an opportunity to take active part in the class struggles of the oppressed nation.