Marxism and the national question. Stalin's definition of the nation and social reality: nations, peoples, regional civilizations Stalin's definition of the term "nation"

2.1. Stalin's definition of the term "nation"

The definition that has become practically generally accepted in the science of the USSR and the post-Soviet Russian Federation nation as a social phenomenon gave I.V. Stalin in Marxism and the National Question. Let us give the full section I of the named work, entitled "Nation", and not just the very wording of the Stalinist definition of this term, since the wording is the result - imprinted in the text-dialectical procedure of cognition: asking questions and finding answers to them in real life , and everyone needs to master dialectics in order to become free.

“What is a nation?

A nation is, first of all, a community, a certain community of people.

This community is not racial or tribal. The current Italian nation was formed from the Romans, Germans, Etruscans, Greeks, Arabs, etc. The French nation was made up of Gauls, Romans, Britons, Germans, and so on. The same must be said of the English, Germans, and others who have formed into a nation from people of various races and tribes.

So, the nation is not racial or tribal, but historical community of people .

On the other hand, there is no doubt that the great states of Cyrus or Alexander could not be called nations, although they were formed historically, formed from different tribes and races. These were not nations, but random and loosely connected conglomerates of groups that broke up and united depending on the success or defeat of one or another conqueror.

So, the nation is not a random and ephemeral conglomerate, but stable community of people .

But not every stable community creates a nation. Austria and Russia are also stable communities, however, no one calls them nations. What is the difference between a national community and a state community? By the way, by the fact that a national community is inconceivable without a common language, while a common language is not necessary for a state. The Czech nation in Austria and the Polish nation in Russia would be impossible without a common language for each of them, while the integrity of Russia and Austria is not hindered by the existence within them of a number of languages. We are talking, of course, about vernacular languages, and not about official clerical ones.

So - common language as one of the characteristic features of the nation.

This, of course, does not mean that different nations always and everywhere speak different languages, or that all speakers of the same language necessarily constitute one nation. Common language for each nation, but not necessarily different languages for different nations! There is no nation that would speak different languages at once, but this does not mean that there cannot be two nations speaking the same language! The English and North Americans speak the same language, and yet they do not constitute one nation. The same must be said about the Norwegians and Danes, the British and the Irish.

But why, for example, the British and North Americans do not constitute one nation, despite the common language?

First of all, because they do not live together, but in different territories. A nation is formed only as a result of long and regular communication, as a result of the joint life of people from generation to generation. A long life together is impossible without a common territory. The British and Americans used to inhabit the same territory, England, and constituted one nation. Then one part of the English moved out of England to a new territory, to America, and here, in the new territory, over time, formed a new North American nation. Different territories led to the formation of different nations.

So, community of territory as one of the characteristic features of the nation.

But that is not all. The commonality of a territory does not in itself constitute a nation. This requires, in addition, an internal economic connection, uniting the individual parts of the nation into a single whole. There is no such connection between England and North America, and therefore they constitute two distinct nations. But the North Americans themselves would not deserve the name of a nation if the individual corners of North America were not linked together into an economic whole through the division of labor between them, the development of communications, and so on.

Take at least the Georgians. Georgians of pre-reform times lived on a common territory and spoke the same language, however, they did not, strictly speaking, constitute one nation, for they, divided into a number of principalities torn apart from each other, could not live a common economic life, for centuries they led among themselves wars and ruined each other, setting Persians and Turks against each other. The ephemeral and accidental unification of the principalities, which some successful king sometimes managed to carry out, at best captured only the superficial administrative sphere, quickly breaking up against the whims of the princes and the indifference of the peasants. Yes, it could not be otherwise with the economic fragmentation of Georgia ... Georgia, as a nation, appeared only in the second half of the 19th century, when the fall of serfdom and the growth of the economic life of the country, the development of communications and the emergence of capitalism established the division of labor between the regions of Georgia, completely shattered economic isolation principalities and tied them into one whole.

The same must be said about other nations that have passed the stage of feudalism and developed capitalism.

So, community of economic life, economic coherence, as one of the characteristic features of the nation.

But that's not all. In addition to all that has been said, it is also necessary to take into account the peculiarities of the spiritual appearance of people united in a nation. Nations differ from each other not only in terms of their living conditions, but also in their spiritual appearance, which is expressed in the peculiarities of national culture. If England, North America and Ireland, who speak the same language, nevertheless constitute three different nations, then the peculiar mental warehouse that has been developed in them from generation to generation as a result of unequal conditions of existence plays a significant role in this.

Of course, the psychic warehouse itself, or - as it is called otherwise - “national character”, is something elusive for the observer, but since it is expressed in the uniqueness of culture, a common nation, it is perceptible and cannot be ignored.

Needless to say, the “national character” does not represent something given once and for all, but changes along with the conditions of life, but, since it exists at every given moment, it leaves its stamp on the physiognomy of the nation.

So, community of mind, affecting the community of culture, as one of the characteristic features of the nation.

Thus, we have exhausted all the signs of a nation.

A nation is a historically established, stable community of people that has arisen on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and mental make-up, manifested in a common culture.

At the same time, it goes without saying that a nation, like any historical phenomenon, is subject to the law of change, has its own history, beginning and end.

It must be emphasized that none of these signs, taken separately, is sufficient to define a nation. Moreover, the absence of at least one of these signs is enough for a nation to cease to be a nation.

It is possible to imagine people with a common “national character” and yet it cannot be said that they constitute one nation if they are economically divided, live in different territories, speak different languages, etc. These are, for example, Russian, Galician, American, Georgian and mountain jews, not constituting, in our opinion, a single nation.

One can imagine people with a common territory and economic life, and yet they will not constitute one nation without a common language and "national character". Such, for example, are the Germans and Latvians in the Baltic region.

Finally, Norwegians and Danes speak the same language, but they do not constitute one nation due to the absence of other signs.

Only the presence of all the signs taken together gives us a nation.

It may seem that "national character" is not one of the signs, but only essential feature of the nation, and all other features are, in fact, terms development of the nation, and not its signs. This point of view is supported, for example, by the well-known Social-Democrats in Austria. theorists of the national question R. Springer and, especially, O. Bauer

Consider their theory of the nation.

According to Springer, "a nation is a union of people who think alike and speak alike." This is “a cultural community of a group of modern people, not connected with the“ earth ”(our italics).

So - the “union” of people who think and speak the same way, no matter how they are divided from each other, no matter where they live.

“What is a nation? he asks. - Is there a common language that unites people into a nation? But the English and the Irish ... speak the same language, without, however, representing a single people; Jews do not have a common language at all and nevertheless constitute a nation” .

So what is a nation?

“A nation is a relative community of character” .

But what is character, in this case, national character?

National character is “the sum of features that distinguish people of one nationality from people of another nationality, a complex of physical and spiritual qualities that distinguishes one nation from another” .

Bauer, of course, knows that the national character does not fall from the sky, and therefore he adds:

“The character of people is determined by nothing else than their fate”, which ... “a nation is nothing but a community of fate”, which in turn is determined by “the conditions in which people produce the means of their life and distribute the products of their labor” .

Thus, we have arrived at the most "complete", as Bauer puts it, definition of a nation.

“A nation is the totality of people connected in a common character on the basis of a common fate” .

So, a community of national character on the basis of a community of fate, taken without the obligatory connection with a community of territory, language, and economic life.

But what then remains of the nation? What kind of national community can be discussed among people who are economically separated from each other, living in different territories and speaking different languages from generation to generation?

Bauer speaks of the Jews as a nation, although “they do not have a common language at all”, but what kind of “common destiny” and national connection can there be, for example, Georgian, Dagestan, Russian and American Jews, completely cut off from each other friend living in different territories and speaking different languages?

The mentioned Jews, no doubt, live a common economic and political life with Georgians, Dagestanis, Russians and Americans, in a common cultural atmosphere with them; this cannot but impose its stamp on their national character; if they have anything in common, it is religion, a common origin, and some vestiges of a national character. All this is certain. But how can one seriously say that ossified religious rites and weathered psychological remnants influence the “fate” of the said Jews more than the living socio-economic and cultural environment surrounding them? But only under such an assumption can one speak of the Jews in general as a single nation.

How then does the nation of Bauer differ from the mystical and self-sufficing "national spirit" of the Spiritualists?

Bauer draws an impenetrable line between the "distinguishing feature" of the nation (national character) and the "conditions" of their life, tearing them apart. But what is a national character if not a reflection of the conditions of life, if not a bunch of impressions received from the environment? How can one confine oneself to a single national character, isolating and separating it from the soil that gave birth to it?

Then, how, in fact, did the English nation differ from the North American one at the end of the 18th and at the beginning of the 19th century, when North America was still called “New England”? Certainly not a national character: for the North Americans came from England, they took with them to America, in addition to the English language, also the English national character and, of course, could not lose it so quickly, although under the influence of new conditions they must have developed its own special character. And yet, despite their greater or lesser commonality of character, they already then constituted a nation distinct from England!

Obviously, “New England”, as a nation, differed then from England, as a nation, not in a special national character, or not so much in a national character, as in a special environment from England, living conditions.

Thus, it is clear that in reality there is no single distinguishing feature of a nation. There is only a sum of signs, of which, when comparing nations, one sign stands out more clearly (national character), then another (language), then a third (territory, economic conditions). A nation is a combination of all the features taken together.

Bauer's point of view, identifying the nation with the national character, tears the nation from the soil and turns it into some kind of invisible, self-sufficient force. It turns out not a nation, alive and active, but something mystical, elusive and beyond the grave. For, I repeat, what kind of a Jewish nation is this, for example, consisting of Georgian, Dagestan, Russian, American and other Jews, whose members do not understand each other (they speak different languages), live in different parts of the globe, never meet each other they will see, they will never act together, neither in peacetime, nor in wartime ?!

No, it is not for such paper "nations" that the Social-Democrats draw up their national program. It can reckon only with real nations, acting and moving, and therefore forcing them to reckon with themselves.

Bauer obviously mixes nation, being a historical category, with tribe, which is an ethnographic category.

However, Bauer himself seems to feel the weakness of his position. Declaring decisively at the beginning of his book about the Jews as a nation, Bauer at the end of the book corrects himself by stating that “capitalist society does not allow them (the Jews) to survive as a nation at all”, assimilating them with other nations. The reason, it turns out, is that "the Jews do not have a closed colonization area", while such an area exists, for example, among the Czechs, who, according to Bauer, should be preserved as a nation. In short: the reason is the lack of territory.

By reasoning in this way, Bauer wanted to prove that national autonomy could not be the demand of the Jewish workers, but he inadvertently overturned his own theory, which denies the community of territory, as one of the signs of a nation.

But Bauer goes further. At the beginning of his book, he emphatically states that “the Jews have no general language and nevertheless constitute a nation. But before he got to page one hundred and thirteen, he changed the front, declaring just as emphatically: “it is certain that no nation is possible without a common language”(our italics).

Bauer here wanted to prove that “language is the most important tool of human communication”, but at the same time he accidentally proved what he did not intend to prove, namely: the inconsistency of his own theory of the nation, which denies the importance of the common language.

This is how a theory sewn with idealistic threads refutes itself” (I.V. Stalin. Works, vol. 2, Moscow, 1946, pp. 292 - 303).

In the full text of the above section of the article the definition of a nation given by I.V. Stalin appears as having a basis in the historical process, and not just as a declarative definition of the term, which expresses subjectivism, which can be opposed to another subjectivism with claims to the ultimate truth. This is the merit of the definition of I.V. Stalin, and this is what distinguishes it from other definitions of the term “nation”.

The Stalinist definition of a nation was an official scientific definition in the USSR and in post-Stalin times, although, citing this definition or stylistically reworking it, I.V. she, like all other works of I.V. Stalin, was not reprinted and was withdrawn from public access in libraries). Actually, the very same signs of a nation that I.V. Stalin gives in his definition are also given in the modern school textbook "social science" edited by L.N. Bogolyubov (vol. 2, "Man and Society" - a textbook for 10 - 11 classes, M., "Prosveshchenie", ed. 8, 2003), although they are not summarized in a strict definition of the term "nation": the historical nature of the formation of nations (p. 316, paragraph 2), language (ibid., p. 316, paragraph 3), community of territory and economic coherence (ibid., p. 316, paragraph 5), community of culture (ibid., pp. 316, 317), in which the national character is expressed and reproduced in the continuity of generations ( although the textbook leaves the question of the national character and national psychology in silence).

But in the work of I.V. Stalin “Marxism and the national question”, due to various objective and subjective reasons, topics are not considered, an adequate understanding of which is necessary for the harmonization of national relations in multinational societies:

what is culture in general and national culture specifically;
the formation of national cultures;
the interaction of nations, the emergence and development of diasporas and their impact on the life of the indigenous population in the areas where the diasporas have penetrated;
implementation of the full function of management in the life of peoples, as an aggregate of the national population in the area of the formation of its culture and diasporas outside this area;
detachment of the diasporas from the region where ethnic cultures were formed and the replacement of the population that once gave rise to the diasporas with an ethnically different population belonging to other nations and diasporas;
the existence of diasporas that have lost the territories of the formation of their national cultures;
the formation of a universal culture, which will have to integrate into itself the entire multinational humanity in its historical past;
problems of the biological basis of national cultures, the genetic core of the nation and its originality, which distinguishes peoples in a statistical sense on purely biological grounds from each other;
nation and civilization;
egregorial processes in the life of nations, diasporas and in national interaction.
Along with this, it should be noted that the definition of a nation as a social, historically conditioned phenomenon, given by I.V. Stalin, distinguishes the nation from the people as a social organism, passing throughout history through various forms of organizing the life of a culturally unique (national) society in one or another regional civilization. This difference between the phenomena “nation” and “people” is also visible in the text of the work, in particular, when in the above fragment I.V. nation in the sense that this term was defined by I.V. Stalin. But I.V. Stalin does not give a definition of how a nation differs from a tribe or a people, as a result of which a nation, a people, an ethnic group, even in the scientific lexicon, are perceived as synonyms - almost complete equivalents, not to mention the everyday understanding of these words in wide sections of society .

The lack of adequate coverage of the problems mentioned above by the sociological science of the USSR is one of the reasons why the process of the formation of a new historical community, called the "Soviet people", was interrupted, and national conflicts in the purposeful destruction of the USSR by foreign political forces played an important role. And this is one of the threats to the territorial integrity of post-Soviet Russia and the well-being of its peoples.

An important contribution of I.V. Stalin in the treasury of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine was his article, written in Vienna, in January 1913. In it, Comrade. Stalin gave his own, which has become a classic, definition of "NATION". This Stalinist definition occupies one of the central places in the conceptual apparatus of the BER and is opposed by its authors to the definition of "nation" given by the "founder of Zionism" Theodor Herzl, and therefore is of significant conceptual interest to us.

It is also mentioned in the work of the VP of the USSR, which we are considering, "Judas' Sin of the Twentieth Congress" (in note No. 149):

« With the publication of “Economic Problems of Socialism in the USSR”, the masters of Freemasonry realized that I.V. Stalin is not a Masonic agency in the Bolshevik Party, but a real Bolshevik who caused irreparable damage to the Marxist project of liquidating capitalism and replacing it with inter-Nazi fascism in the economic forms of socialism on a global scale. But it was too late to take any action to save Marxism.
Note. 149:
In addition, they have to I.V. Stalin has one more claim in connection with the fact that back in 1913 he gave a definition of the term “nation”:
“A nation is a historically formed, stable community of people that has arisen on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life and mental make-up, manifested in a common culture. (...) Only the presence of all the signs taken together gives us a nation ”(JV Stalin, “Marxism and the National Question”, Works, vol. 2., 1946, pp. 296, 297).
The Jews of the Diaspora - the main carriers of the biblical project of enslaving everyone - do not satisfy this definition of a nation. And although they are certainly a historically established stable community of people, however, this community, in its characteristic features, is mafia masquerading as a nation. The main sign of the mafia is the attitude of its members towards other people, based on the identification of their belonging to their mafia: one’s own is “bro”, someone else’s is “loh”, i.e. object of influence and exploitation.
Actually, the very same signs of a nation that I.V. Stalin gives in his definition are also given in the modern school textbook “Introduction to Social Science” for grades 8–9 of educational institutions, edited by L.N. Bogolyubov, published by the Prosveshchenie publishing house in 2003. See: the historical nature of the formation of nations (“Man and Society”, p. 316, paragraph 2), language (ibid., p. 316, paragraph 3), common territory and economic connectedness (ibid., p. 316, paragraph 4), psychological unity in the continuity of generations, and commonality of culture.

The Stalinist definition of the nation removes the Jewish question from the field of interethnic relations, which I.V. Many cannot forgive Stalin: i.e. this is a “national-diaspora” relationship.»

It is easy to see that the quoted fragment contains a serious contradiction, even several.

On the one side, “The masters of Freemasonry have serious claims against Joseph Vissarionovich” for his definition of "nation" because he thus removed the "Jewish question" from the field of interethnic relations. On the other hand, it is not clear why, then, the publication of the work "Marxism and the National Question" in 1913 did not cut off Stalin's Masonic political career, but, on the contrary, brought him to the MASTER OF REVOLUTION?

On the one hand, Stalin, by his definition, “brought the Jewish question out of the field of interethnic relations” and exposed Jewry as a MAFIA. On the other hand, it is known that it was thanks to the efforts of the USSR and Stalin personally in 1947-1948. The "Jewish question" was just introduced into the field of "interethnic relations" by UN Resolution No. 181 on the establishment of the State of Israel. So the Soviet representative to the UN, Andrei Andreevich Gromyko, was known at that time to every Israeli schoolchild, and he was considered in Israel almost as the "father of the nation."

Again, it is not clear: if the world behind the scenes (masters of Freemasonry) still has such a grudge against Joseph Vissarionovich for his scientific contribution to the development of the problem of nationalities, then why his definition still appears in school Masonic textbooks(edited by Academician L.N. Bogolyubov criticized by the Predictors)? Perhaps this definition is so chiselled-classical that the Masons cannot develop any other, alternative definition that is more "suitable" for them ideologically?

All these questions are left unanswered by respected Predictors. I believe that they are serious enough to make the sincere supporters of the BSC think about the true meaning of the concept of "NATION": how true is its Stalinist definition?

So, "Judas' sin of the 20th Congress", Stalin's definition of "nation", "Marxism and the National Question"(1913).

In itself, this work is quite interesting. Firstly, Iosif Vissarionovich, who until then had already tried many party nicknames, first signed it with a pseudonym "TO. Stalin"(the letter "K" is all that remains of "Koba"), so it was from this article that the official birth took place STALIN as a politician..

Secondly, the time and place of its writing is pre-war Vienna, in which at that moment, by a curious coincidence (accidentally?), all the largest political figures of the 20th century gathered together: Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Hitler. Trotsky periodically traveled from Vienna to Belgrade, where he was accredited as a "war correspondent" from the newspaper Kievskaya Mysl. The first Balkan war was already underway, which became the prologue to the world massacre of 1914-1918. (" No one can say that the Balkan War is the end, not the beginning of complications." - Stalin)

Hitler, who shied away from mobilization, soon moved to Munich, the capital of European occultism, and Vladimir Ilyich also moved there after him. Of course, it is not so easy to keep track of the movements of the traveling circus of "professional revolutionaries", but based on the sources I have, the "powerful, instant tool of Providence" big four was collected at the beginning of 1913 in Vienna. (If someone has more accurate data, I would be grateful for clarifications.)

Direct work on the article, apparently, began even earlier - in November and December 1912, Stalin twice met with Lenin in Krakow "at meetings of the Central Committee with party workers" and, undoubtedly, discussed with him the plan of his work. Here is what is said about this in Stalin's lifetime (1952) biography:

« Lenin and Stalin developed a Marxist program on the national question. In my work Stalin gave the Marxist theory of the nation, formulated the foundations of the Bolshevik approach to solving the national question (the requirement to consider the national question as part of the general question of the revolution and inextricably linked with the entire international situation of the era of imperialism), substantiated the Bolshevik principle of the international rallying of workers.»

Thus, the Stalinist definition of “NATION” that interests us is strictly Marxist and purely programmatic, it does not contain any gag - the more interesting it will be for us to understand it meaningfully.

But first, a few more words about Marxism and the National Question itself.

I studied it quite carefully and I can immediately report my general impression - this work, without a doubt, was "Jewish sin" of Stalin himself in relation to Russia, without which his further Masonic career as one of the navigators of the "Russian revolution" would have been impossible. As you can see, here my opinion is quite at odds with the assessment of the Predictors, who unnecessarily idealize this scientific Marxist work.

Why did I get this impression from studying the article? Stalin was well aware that there was no "oppression of national minorities" (anything comparable to the colonial policy of Western countries) in the Russian Empire. The Predictors themselves have repeatedly written about this specific feature of Russian civilization; there is no need to prove it and illustrate it with examples. Yes, and Stalin himself in his article in several places, as if reluctantly forced to admit this indisputable fact:

« On the other hand, if, for example, there is no serious anti-Russian nationalism in Georgia, this is primarily because there are no Russian landowners or Russian big bourgeoisie there who could provide food for such nationalism among the masses. Georgia has anti-Armenian nationalism, but this is because there is still an Armenian big bourgeoisie there, which, beating the petty, not yet strong Georgian bourgeoisie, is pushing the latter towards anti-Armenian nationalism.»

By 1913, Stalin could not but know that if there was any oppressed people in Russia, it was the Russians themselves. He could hardly fail to understand that the attitude of Great Russia towards the outskirts fundamentally different from the situation in Austria-Hungary in which the national question was indeed extremely acute. And at the same time, knowing this, he writes the following in his article:

« Restrictions on freedom of movement, restriction of language, restriction of voting rights, reduction of schools, religious restrictions, etc., fall on the head of the “competitor”. Of course, such measures pursue not only the interests of the bourgeois classes of the ruling nation, but also the specific, so to speak, caste-based goals of the ruling bureaucracy. But from the point of view of results, this is completely indifferent: the bourgeois classes and the bureaucracy go hand in hand in this case - it doesn't matter if we are talking about Austria-Hungary or Russia. »

The absurdity of this statement was all too obvious. A few pages later, Stalin himself is forced to admit this:

« Meanwhile, Austria and Russia represent completely different conditions....

Finally, Russia and Austria are facing completely different immediate tasks, which is why the method of solving the national question is dictated by a different one. ...
Not so in Russia. In Russia, firstly, "thank God, there is no parliament." Secondly - and this is the main thing - the axis of the political life of Russia is not the national question, but the agrarian. »

Such an eye-catching inconsistency of presentation (illogicality) betrays the author's bias. The “wonderful Georgian” (as Lenin called Stalin), on the advice of party comrades, even decided to speak out in defense of “oppressed Finland”:

« In Finland, there has been a diet for a long time, which also tries to protect the Finnish nationality from "assassination attempts", but how much can it do in this direction - everyone sees it.»

The Finns themselves, as you know, at the first opportunity preferred to slip away from the caring social democratic guardianship.

An extremely repulsive impression is made by the constant curtsy of Comrade. Stalin to home of the Global Predictor - Switzerland, whose Masonic lodges sheltered in those years many homeless "petrels of the revolution" who were preparing a bloody coup in Russia. I counted at once four such scrapings, thoroughly imbued with the rotten spirit of liberalism. In such cases, Predictors like to quote F. Tyutchev: "the more liberal, the more vulgar they are". Surpass in liberality the following curtsies of comrade. Stalin, it will probably not be easy for us:

« The final downfall of the national movement is possible only with the downfall of the bourgeoisie. Only in the realm of socialism can complete peace be established. But to bring the national struggle to a minimum, to undermine it in the bud, to make it as harmless as possible for the proletariat, is possible within the framework of capitalism as well. This is evidenced by at least examples of Switzerland and America. To do this, it is necessary to democratize the country and give the nations the opportunity for free development.»

Switzerland and America - that's how comrade's role models are. Stalin! What incredible vulgarity! (Tyutchev) Further - more. The traditional blood libel against Russia begins - it is being used the myth of the pogroms:

« The point, obviously, is not in "institutions", but in the general order in the country. There is no democratization in the country - there are no guarantees of "complete freedom of cultural development" of nationalities. It can be said with confidence that the more democratic the country, the fewer "assaults" on the "freedom of nationalities", the more guarantees against "assassination attempts".
Russia is a semi-Asian country, and therefore the policy of "assassination attempts" often takes the most crude forms there, forms of pogrom. Needless to say, "guarantees" in Russia have been brought to an extreme minimum.»

We will immediately return to the topic of "pogroms", but let's see who Comrade. Stalin cites Russia as an example this time?

« Germany is already Europe with more or less political freedom. It is not surprising that the policy of "assassination" never takes the form of a pogrom there.
In France, of course, there are even more "guarantees", since France is more democratic than Germany.
We're not talking about Switzerland anymore where, thanks to its high, albeit bourgeois, democracy, nationalities live freely - it does not matter whether they represent a minority or a majority.

It's hard to read these lines. We, perhaps, can only rejoice that Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev did not live to see the time of writing the Stalinist article on the national question. However, comrade. Stalin does not stop there - curtsies to the Global Predictor continue:

« Well, how, after all, in the future democratic system? Won't special "cultural guaranteeing institutions," etc., also be needed under democracy? How is the situation in this regard, for example, in democratic Switzerland? Are there special cultural institutions there, like the "national council" of Springer? They are not there. But do not the cultural interests, for example, of the Italians, who are a minority there, suffer because of this? Something is not heard. Yes, it is clear: democracy in switzerland makes superfluous all sorts of specially-cultural "institutions" supposedly "guaranteeing" and so on.»

On the topic of pogroms, we should perhaps dwell in more detail. In his article, Stalin not only supports the traditional blood libel against Russia through the lies of the Western press, but also states that "pogroms"(by default perceived by readers as “Jewish pogroms”) were organized from above, planned in Russia:

« But The policy of repression does not stop there.. From a "system" of oppression, it often passes to a "system" of inciting nations, to the "system" of massacres and pogroms. Of course, the latter is not always and not always possible, but where it is possible, in the absence of elementary freedoms, it often assumes terrifying proportions, threatening to drown the cause of uniting the workers in blood and tears. The Caucasus and southern Russia provide many examples. "Divide and Conquer" is the goal of the policy of inciting.»

These are completely false accusations, and here it is necessary to make three clarifications at once.

Firstly, in the central provinces of Russia there were almost never any pogroms at all. I am not aware of any significant case.

Secondly, those clashes that really took place in the Southern or Western regions, that is, on the outskirts of the country (Little Russia, Bessarabia, the Caucasus, Belarus) - these so-called "pogroms", as a rule, were in the nature of beatings by Jewish militants of the local population and only in exceptional cases, as a forced response of despair to the horrifying Jewish terror, did individual self-defense actions take place, which were immediately inflated by the international Jewish press to the level of a universal event. There are many facts of this kind that are amazing in terms of cynicism, and I am ready to cite them if at least some interest in this topic is shown.

Thirdly, there can be no question of any "organization from above" of such clashes. On the contrary, one can state the often negligent and conniving attitude on the part of officials towards the terrorist, pogrom antics of Jewish thugs. And after the February Revolution of 1917, already by the Provisional Government, and earlier, appropriate investigations of traces of the "organization of pogroms" were undertaken, but, of course, nothing was found.

As an example, I will cite an excerpt from a report on the Odessa “pogrom” in October 1905 (with a large number of victims on both sides), made in hot pursuit by a representative of the Jewish organization Poalei Zion. This report was published as a separate pamphlet in Paris in 1906:

« I went to Odessa precisely in order to find a purely provocative pogrom, but - alas! - didn’t find it ... The tale about hooligans ... was invented by feeble-minded Jewish talkers who are afraid to face the truth, and cunning liberals who want to get rid of the terrible question with a cheap resolution...»

Why did Stalin resort to such blatant lie in his policy article on the national question? How can we explain it to ourselves? "Jewish sin" in relation to his own Fatherland, who raised him and gave him a good spiritual (Orthodox) education? (Let me remind you - 6 years in the Gori theological school and 4 years in the Tiflis Orthodox seminary.)

Various explanations are possible here. The version of deliberate sabotage by Comrade. I don’t even want to raise Stalin in order to work out the Swiss and American pieces of silver. Rather, in this case, we can talk about a deeply confused young man who had read Marxist literature that was extremely destructive for a young and hot mind and succumbed to the negative influence of the aggressive lumpen environment around him, saturated with pathological hatred of everything traditionally Russian and Christian.

Could comrade. Stalin at the age of 33 have any clear idea about the national question? Of course he couldn't. For this, he had neither the necessary life experience, nor the appropriate education, nor the conditions for concentrated mental work. How much could he think up and compose in the Vienna cafe with Judas Trotsky hanging over one ear, Ilyich mumbling in the other ear and, perhaps, under the searching gaze of a young and capable Austrian watercolor artist, the future Fuhrer of the German nation? I think that there is nothing particularly profound Comrade. Stalin in such circumstances could not come up with.

It is not surprising that in theoretical terms, the work "Marxism and the National Question" turned out to be comrade. Stalin is rather weak. We can now proceed to the analysis of his theoretical miscalculations.

The definition that has become practically generally accepted in the science of the USSR and the post-Soviet Russian Federation nation as a social phenomenon gave I.V. Stalin in Marxism and the National Question. Let us quote in full section I of the named work, entitled "Nation", and not only the very wording of the Stalinist definition of this term, since the wording is the result - imprinted in the text—dialectical procedure of cognition: asking questions and finding answers to them in real life , and everyone needs to master dialectics in order to become free.

A nation is, first of all, a community, a certain community of people.

This community is not racial or tribal. The current Italian nation was formed from the Romans, Germans, Etruscans, Greeks, Arabs, etc. The French nation was made up of Gauls, Romans, Britons, Germans, and so on. The same must be said of the English, Germans, and others who have formed into a nation from people of various races and tribes.

So the nation is not racial or tribal, but historical community of people .

On the other hand, there is no doubt that the great states of Cyrus or Alexander could not be called nations, although they were formed historically, formed from different tribes and races. These were not nations, but random and loosely connected conglomerates of groups that broke up and united depending on the success or defeat of one or another conqueror.

Thus, the nation is not a random and ephemeral conglomerate, but stable community of people .

But not every stable community creates a nation. Austria and Russia are also stable communities, however, no one calls them nations. What is the difference between a national community and a state community? By the way, by the fact that a national community is inconceivable without a common language, while a common language is not necessary for a state. The Czech nation in Austria and the Polish nation in Russia would be impossible without a common language for each of them, while the integrity of Russia and Austria is not hindered by the existence within them of a number of languages. We are talking, of course, about vernacular languages, and not about official clerical ones.

So - common language as one of the characteristic features of the nation.

This, of course, does not mean that different nations always and everywhere speak different languages, or that all speakers of the same language necessarily constitute one nation. Common language for each nation, but not necessarily different languages for different nations! There is no nation that would speak different languages at once, but this does not mean that there cannot be two nations speaking the same language! The English and North Americans speak the same language, and yet they do not constitute one nation. The same must be said about the Norwegians and Danes, the British and the Irish.

But why, for example, the British and North Americans do not constitute one nation, despite the common language?

First of all, because they do not live together, but in different territories. A nation is formed only as a result of long and regular communication, as a result of the joint life of people from generation to generation. A long life together is impossible without a common territory. The British and Americans used to inhabit the same territory, England, and constituted one nation. Then one part of the English moved out of England to a new territory, to America, and here, in the new territory, over time, formed a new North American nation. Different territories led to the formation of different nations.

So, community of territory as one of the characteristic features of the nation.

But that is not all. The commonality of a territory does not in itself constitute a nation. This requires, in addition, an internal economic connection, uniting the individual parts of the nation into a single whole. There is no such connection between England and North America, and therefore they constitute two distinct nations. But the North Americans themselves would not deserve the name of a nation if the individual corners of North America were not linked together into an economic whole through the division of labor between them, the development of communications, and so on.

Take at least the Georgians. Georgians of pre-reform times lived on a common territory and spoke the same language, however, they did not, strictly speaking, constitute one nation, for they, divided into a number of principalities torn apart from each other, could not live a common economic life, for centuries they led among themselves wars and ruined each other, setting Persians and Turks against each other. The ephemeral and accidental unification of the principalities, which some successful king sometimes managed to carry out, at best captured only the superficial administrative sphere, quickly breaking up against the whims of the princes and the indifference of the peasants. Yes, it could not be otherwise with the economic fragmentation of Georgia ... Georgia, as a nation, appeared only in the second half of the 19th century, when the fall of serfdom and the growth of the economic life of the country, the development of communications and the emergence of capitalism established the division of labor between the regions of Georgia, completely shattered economic isolation principalities and tied them into one whole.

The same must be said about other nations that have passed the stage of feudalism and have developed in themselves.

So, community of economic life, economic coherence, as one of the characteristic features of the nation.

But that's not all. In addition to all that has been said, it is also necessary to take into account the peculiarities of the spiritual appearance of people united in a nation. Nations differ from each other not only in terms of their living conditions, but also in their spiritual appearance, which is expressed in the peculiarities of national culture. If England, North America and Ireland, who speak the same language, nevertheless constitute three different nations, then the peculiar mental warehouse that has been developed in them from generation to generation as a result of unequal conditions of existence plays a significant role in this.

Of course, the psychic warehouse itself, or, as it is otherwise called, “national character”, is something elusive for the observer, but since it is expressed in the uniqueness of culture, a common nation, it is perceptible and cannot be ignored.

Needless to say, the “national character” does not represent something given once and for all, but changes along with the conditions of life, but, insofar as it exists at every given moment, it leaves its stamp on the physiognomy of the nation.

So, community of mind, affecting the community of culture, as one of the characteristic features of the nation.

Thus, we have exhausted all the signs of a nation.

A nation is a historically established, stable community of people that has arisen on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and mental make-up, manifested in a common culture.

At the same time, it goes without saying that a nation, like any historical phenomenon, is subject to the law of change, has its own history, beginning and end.

It must be emphasized that none of these signs, taken separately, is sufficient to define a nation. Moreover, the absence of at least one of these signs is enough for a nation to cease to be a nation.

It is possible to imagine people with a common “national character” and yet it cannot be said that they constitute one nation if they are economically divided, live in different territories, speak different languages, etc. These are, for example, Russian, Galician, American, Georgian and mountain jews, not constituting, in our opinion, a single nation.

One can imagine people with a common territory and economic life, and yet they will not constitute one nation without a common language and "national character". Such, for example, are the Germans and Latvians in the Baltic region.

Finally, Norwegians and Danes speak the same language, but they do not constitute one nation due to the absence of other signs.

Only the presence of all the signs taken together gives us a nation.

It may seem that "national character" is not one of the signs, but only essential feature of the nation, and all other features are, in fact, terms development of the nation, and not its signs. This point of view is supported, for example, by the well-known Social-Democrats in Austria. theorists of the national question R. Springer and, especially, O. Bauer

Consider their theory of the nation.

According to Springer, "a nation is a union of people who think alike and speak alike." This is “a cultural community of a group of modern people, not connected with the“ earth ” ( italics ours ).

So - a "union" of people who think and speak the same way, no matter how disunited they are from each other, no matter where they live.

“What is a nation? he asks. Is there a common language that unites people into a nation? But the English and the Irish ... speak the same language, without representing, however, a single people; Jews do not have a common language at all and nevertheless constitute a nation” .

So what is a nation?

“A nation is a relative community of character” .

But what is character, in this case, national character?

National character is “the sum of features that distinguish people of one nationality from people of another nationality, a complex of physical and spiritual qualities that distinguishes one nation from another” .

Bauer, of course, knows that the national character does not fall from the sky, and therefore he adds:

“The character of people is determined by nothing else than their fate”, which ... “a nation is nothing but a community of fate”, in turn determined by “the conditions in which people produce the means of their life and distribute the products of their labor” .

Thus, we have arrived at the most "complete", as Bauer puts it, definition of a nation.

“A nation is the totality of people connected in a common character on the basis of a common fate” .

So, a community of national character on the basis of a community of fate, taken without the obligatory connection with a community of territory, language, and economic life.

But what then remains of the nation? What kind of national community can be discussed among people who are economically separated from each other, living in different territories and speaking different languages from generation to generation?

Bauer speaks of the Jews as a nation, although “they do not have a common language at all”, but what kind of “common destiny” and national connection can there be, for example, Georgian, Dagestan, Russian and American Jews, completely cut off from each other friend living in different territories and speaking different languages?

The mentioned Jews, no doubt, live a common economic and political life with Georgians, Dagestanis, Russians and Americans, in a common cultural atmosphere with them; this cannot but impose its stamp on their national character; if they have anything in common, it is a common origin and some remnants of a national character. All this is certain. But how can one seriously say that ossified religious rites and weathered psychological remnants influence the “fate” of the said Jews more than the living socio-economic and cultural environment surrounding them? But only under such an assumption can one speak of the Jews in general as a single nation.

How then does the nation of Bauer differ from the mystical and self-sufficing "national spirit" of the Spiritualists?

Bauer draws an impenetrable line between the "distinguishing feature" of the nation (national character) and the "conditions" of their life, tearing them apart. But what is a national character if not a reflection of the conditions of life, if not a bunch of impressions received from the environment? How can one confine oneself to a single national character, isolating and separating it from the soil that gave birth to it?

Then, how, in fact, did the English nation differ from the North American one at the end of the 18th and at the beginning of the 19th century, when North America was still called “New England”? Certainly not a national character: for the North Americans came from England, they took with them to America, in addition to the English language, also the English national character and, of course, could not lose it so quickly, although under the influence of new conditions they must have developed its own special character. And yet, despite their greater or lesser commonality of character, they already then constituted a nation distinct from England!

Obviously, “New England”, as a nation, differed then from England, as a nation, not in a special national character, or not so much in a national character, as in a special environment from England, living conditions.

Thus, it is clear that in reality there is no single distinguishing feature of a nation. There is only a sum of signs, of which, when comparing nations, one sign stands out more clearly (national character), then another (language), then a third (territory, economic conditions). A nation is a combination of all the features taken together.

Bauer's point of view, identifying the nation with the national character, tears the nation from the soil and turns it into some kind of invisible, self-sufficient force. It turns out not a nation, alive and active, but something mystical, elusive and beyond the grave. For, I repeat, what kind of a Jewish nation is this, for example, consisting of Georgian, Dagestan, Russian, American and other Jews, whose members do not understand each other (they speak different languages), live in different parts of the globe, never meet each other they will see, they will never act together, neither in peacetime, nor in wartime ?!

No, it is not for such paper "nations" that the Social-Democrats draw up their national program. It can reckon only with real nations, acting and moving, and therefore forcing them to reckon with themselves.

Bauer obviously mixes nation, being a historical category, with tribe, which is an ethnographic category.

However, Bauer himself seems to feel the weakness of his position. Declaring decisively at the beginning of his book about the Jews as a nation, Bauer at the end of the book corrects himself by stating that “the capitalist does not allow them (the Jews) to survive as a nation at all”, assimilating them with other nations. The reason, it turns out, is that “Jews do not have a closed colonization area”, while such an area exists, for example, among the Czechs, who, according to Bauer, should be preserved as a nation. In short: the reason is the lack of territory.

Reasoning in this way, Bauer wanted to prove that national autonomy could not be the demand of the Jewish workers, but he thereby inadvertently overturned his own theory, which denies the community of territory, as one of the signs of a nation.

But Bauer goes further. At the beginning of his book, he emphatically states that “the Jews have no general language and nevertheless constitute a nation. But before he got to page one hundred and thirteen, he changed the front, declaring just as emphatically: “it is certain that no nation is possible without a common language”(our italics).

Bauer here wanted to prove that “language is the most important tool of human communication”, but at the same time he accidentally proved what he did not intend to prove, namely: the inconsistency of his own theory of the nation, which denies the importance of the common language.

This is how a theory sewn with idealistic threads refutes itself” (I.V. Stalin. Works, vol. 2, Moscow, 1946, pp. 292-303).

The Stalinist definition of a nation was an official scientific definition in the USSR and in post-Stalin times, although, citing this definition or stylistically reworking it, I.V. she, like all other works of I.V. Stalin, was not reprinted and was withdrawn from public access in libraries). In fact, the very same signs of a nation that I.V. Stalin gives in his definition are also given in the modern school textbook "social science" edited by L.N. Bogolyubov (vol. 2, "Man and Society" - a textbook for 10 - 11 classes, M., "Prosve-shche-nie", ed. 8, 2003), although they are not summarized in a strict definition of the term "nation": the historical nature of the formation of nations (p. 316, paragraph 2), language ( ibid., p. 316, para. 3), common territory and economic connectivity (ibid., p. 316, para. 5), common culture (ibid., pp. 316, 317), in which the national character is expressed and reproduced in the continuity of generations (although the textbook leaves the question of the national character and national psychology in silence).

A few months later, the Prime Minister of Great Britain joined the opinion of the German Chancellor. “British Prime Minister David Cameron was accused of pandering to far-right organizations - British anti-fascists, Muslims and oppositionists criticized the politician for the Munich speech. On the eve of the conference on security, he announced the failure of the policy of multiculturalism. A few hours later, a massive anti-Islamic demonstration took place in the city of Luton, Ekho Moskvy reports” (“Cameron announced that the policy of multiculturalism has failed. We must show muscles”: http://www.newsru.com/world/06feb2011/kemeron.html ).

Then French President Nicolas Sarkozy joined them:

“We were too worried about the identity of the people who came to our country, but not enough about the identity of our own country that received them,” he said last Thursday<10.02.2010>in a TV interview and bluntly called the policy of multiculturalism a failure.

“Of course, we should all respect differences, but we don't want… a society consisting of separate communities existing side by side. If you come to live in France, you must agree to dissolve, as in a melting pot, in a single society, namely in a national society, and if you do not want to accept this, then you will not be able to be a welcome guest in France ”(... )

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former Australian and Spanish Prime Ministers John Howard and José Maria Aznar also spoke about the failure of the multicultural policy” (http://www.newsru.com/world/11feb2011/sarkozy.html).

The Dutch went further. “The Dutch government has said it intends to abandon the old model of multiculturalism that encouraged Muslim immigrants to create a parallel society in the Netherlands.

The new integration bill (covering letter and 15-page action plan), which Dutch Interior Minister Piet Hein Donner submitted to Parliament on June 16, states: preservation of the values of the Dutch people.

With the new systemic integration, the values of Dutch society will play a central role. In connection with this change, the government is abandoning the model of a multicultural society” (“Hudson New York”, USA - June 23, 2011; “The Netherlands to Abandon Multiculturalism”; http://perevodika.ru/articles/18983.html) .

In Norway, politicians did not make official statements about the collapse of multiculturalism, but on July 22, 2011, Anders Behring Breivik, a member of the Masonic Lodge of St. announced the exclusion of Breivik from the lodge) set off an explosion in the government quarter of Oslo and opened fire at the youth camp of the ruling workers' party on the island of Utoya. As a result of the attacks, 77 people died.

But a lot says that Breivik is not a crazy loner, but has assumed sole legal responsibility for a certain "brigade" and acts as its mouthpiece. This is supported by the fact that, according to what was shown in the first TV reports from the scene of the tragedy on the island of Utoya, the bodies of many of the dead lay on the shore in places that were poorly visible from the height of the island due to bushes, etc. This gave the impression that they, having fled from Breivik, who was shooting on the island, tried to leave the island by swimming, but already on the way to the water's edge they were killed by shots fired from a boat or from the other side. In addition, in 2011, reports slipped on the Internet that Breivik was supervised by the British MI-5 and the CIA. And in August 2012, the results of an official investigation into the activities of government agencies were announced, according to which the police did not take timely measures to neutralize Breivik, and demands were made to release Breivik and threats against Norwegian officials on behalf of the "Templar Order" followed.

In his court speech on 17 April 2012, Breivik stated: “I stand here as a representative of the Norwegian, European, anti-communist and anti-Islamic opposition movement: the Norwegian-European Resistance Movement. And just like a representative of the Templars. I speak on behalf of many Norwegians, Scandinavians, Europeans who do not want to be deprived of their rights as an indigenous ethnic group, do not want to be deprived of cultural and territorial rights. (…) we have the right to ask two very important questions to politicians, journalists, scientists and public figures. First question: Do you think it is undemocratic that the Norwegian people have never had the opportunity to hold a referendum on turning the country into a multiethnic and multicultural state? Is it undemocratic to turn to one's own citizens for advice? The second question is: Is it democratic to never ask the citizens of one's own country whether they are ready to welcome African and Asian refugees into their homes, moreover, to make indigenous citizens a minority in their own country? (http://pavel-slob.livejournal.com/515445.html ; http://worldcrisis.ru/crisis/971021?PARENT_RUBR=wc_social&PARENT_ORDER=-WRITTEN%2C-PUBLISHED)

From this it can be understood that multiculturalism, if it did not collapse in Norway, is opposed to it, as elsewhere in Europe, by a fair share of the indigenous population; and there are reasons for this in the statistically massive behavior of aliens from other cultures and their descendants.

Nations, diasporas, individuals, multinational culture - multinational society

Stalin's definition of the term "nation"

The definition that has become practically generally accepted in the science of the USSR and the post-Soviet Russian Federation nation as a social phenomenon gave I.V. Stalin, Marxism and the National Question. Let us give the full section I of the named work, entitled "Nation", and not just the very wording of the Stalinist definition of this term, since the wording is the result - imprinted in the text-dialectical procedure of cognition: asking questions and finding answers to them in real life , and everyone needs to master dialectics in order to become free.

“What is a nation?

A nation is, first of all, a community, a certain community of people.

This community is not racial or tribal. The current Italian nation was formed from the Romans, Germans, Etruscans, Greeks, Arabs, etc. The French nation was made up of Gauls, Romans, Britons, Germans, and so on. The same must be said of the English, Germans, and others who have formed into a nation from people of various races and tribes.

So, the nation is not racial or tribal, but historical community of people.

On the other hand, there is no doubt that the great states of Cyrus or Alexander could not be called nations, although they were formed historically, formed from different tribes and races. These were not nations, but random and loosely connected conglomerates of groups that broke up and united depending on the success or defeat of one or another conqueror.

So, the nation is not a random and ephemeral conglomerate, but stable community of people.

But not every stable community creates a nation. Austria and Russia are also stable communities, however, no one calls them nations. What is the difference between a national community and a state community? By the way, by the fact that a national community is inconceivable without a common language, while a common language is not necessary for a state. The Czech nation in Austria and the Polish nation in Russia would be impossible without a common language for each of them, while the integrity of Russia and Austria is not hindered by the existence within them of a number of languages. We are talking, of course, about vernacular languages, and not about official clerical ones.

So - common language as one of the characteristic features of the nation.

This, of course, does not mean that different nations always and everywhere speak different languages, or that all speakers of the same language necessarily constitute one nation. Common language for each nation, but not necessarily different languages for different nations! There is no nation that would speak different languages at once, but this does not mean that there cannot be two nations speaking the same language! The English and North Americans speak the same language, and yet they do not constitute one nation. The same must be said about the Norwegians and Danes, the British and the Irish.

But why, for example, the British and North Americans do not constitute one nation, despite the common language?

First of all, because they do not live together, but in different territories. A nation is formed only as a result of long and regular communication, as a result of the joint life of people from generation to generation. A long life together is impossible without a common territory. The British and Americans used to inhabit the same territory, England, and constituted one nation. Then one part of the English moved out of England to a new territory, to America, and here, in the new territory, over time, formed a new North American nation. Different territories led to the formation of different nations.

So, community of territory as one of the characteristic features of the nation.

But that is not all. The commonality of a territory does not in itself constitute a nation. This requires, in addition, an internal economic connection, uniting the individual parts of the nation into a single whole. There is no such connection between England and North America, and therefore they constitute two distinct nations. But the North Americans themselves would not deserve the name of a nation if the individual corners of North America were not linked together into an economic whole through the division of labor between them, the development of communications, and so on.

Take at least the Georgians. Georgians of pre-reform times lived on a common territory and spoke the same language, however, they did not, strictly speaking, constitute one nation, for they, divided into a number of principalities torn apart from each other, could not live a common economic life, for centuries they led among themselves wars and ruined each other, setting Persians and Turks against each other. The ephemeral and accidental unification of the principalities, which some successful king sometimes managed to carry out, at best captured only the superficial administrative sphere, quickly breaking up against the whims of the princes and the indifference of the peasants. Yes, it could not be otherwise with the economic fragmentation of Georgia ... Georgia, as a nation, appeared only in the second half of the 19th century, when the fall of serfdom and the growth of the economic life of the country, the development of communications and the emergence of capitalism established the division of labor between the regions of Georgia, completely shattered economic isolation principalities and tied them into one whole.

The same must be said about other nations that have passed the stage of feudalism and developed capitalism.

So, community of economic life, economic coherence, as one of the characteristic features of the nation.

But that's not all. In addition to all that has been said, it is also necessary to take into account the peculiarities of the spiritual appearance of people united in a nation. Nations differ from each other not only in terms of their living conditions, but also in their spiritual appearance, which is expressed in the peculiarities of national culture. If England, North America and Ireland, who speak the same language, nevertheless constitute three different nations, then the peculiar mental warehouse that has been developed in them from generation to generation as a result of unequal conditions of existence plays a significant role in this.

Of course, the psychic warehouse itself, or - as it is called otherwise - “national character”, is something elusive for the observer, but since it is expressed in the uniqueness of culture, a common nation, it is perceptible and cannot be ignored.

Needless to say, the “national character” does not represent something given once and for all, but changes along with the conditions of life, but, since it exists at every given moment, it leaves its stamp on the physiognomy of the nation.

So, community of mind, affecting the community of culture, as one of the characteristic features of the nation.

Thus, we have exhausted all the signs of a nation.

A nation is a historically established, stable community of people that has arisen on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and mental make-up, manifested in a common culture.

At the same time, it goes without saying that a nation, like any historical phenomenon, is subject to the law of change, has its own history, beginning and end.

It must be emphasized that none of these signs, taken separately, is sufficient to define a nation. Moreover, the absence of at least one of these signs is enough for a nation to cease to be a nation.

It is possible to imagine people with a common “national character” and yet it cannot be said that they constitute one nation if they are economically divided, live in different territories, speak different languages, etc. These are, for example, Russian, Galician, American, Georgian and mountain jews, not constituting, in our opinion, a single nation.

One can imagine people with a common territory and economic life, and yet they will not constitute one nation without a common language and "national character". Such, for example, are the Germans and Latvians in the Baltic region.

Finally, Norwegians and Danes speak the same language, but they do not constitute one nation due to the absence of other signs.

“What is a nation?

A nation is, first of all, a community, a certain community of people.

So, a nation is not a racial or tribal, but a historically established community of people.

Thus, a nation is not a random and ephemeral conglomerate, but a stable community of people.

But not every stable community creates a nation. Austria and Russia are also stable communities, however, no one calls them nations

So - common language as one of the characteristic features of the nation.

But why, for example, the British and North Americans do not constitute one nation, despite the common language?

So, community of territory as one of the characteristic features of the nation.

But that is not all. The commonality of a territory does not in itself constitute a nation. This requires, in addition, an internal economic connection, uniting the individual parts of the nation into a single whole. There is no such connection between England and North America, and therefore they constitute two distinct nations. But the North Americans themselves would not deserve the name of a nation if the separate corners of North America were not interconnected into an economic whole through the division of labor.

Take at least the Georgians. Georgians of pre-reform times lived on a common territory and spoke the same language, however, they did not, strictly speaking, one nation, because they, divided into a number of principalities torn apart from each other, could not live a common economic life, waged wars among themselves for centuries and ruined each other, setting Persians and Turks against each other. The ephemeral and accidental unification of the principalities, which some successful king sometimes managed to carry out, at best captured only the superficial administrative sphere, quickly breaking up against the whims of the princes and the indifference of the peasants. Yes, it could not be otherwise with the economic fragmentation of Georgia ... Georgia, as a nation, appeared only in the second half of the 19th century, when the fall of serfdom and the growth of the economic life of the country, the development of communications and the emergence of capitalism established the division of labor between the regions of Georgia, completely shook economic isolation of the principalities and tied them into one whole.

The same must be said about other nations that have passed the stage of feudalism and developed capitalism.

So, community of economic life, economic coherence, as one of the characteristic features of the nation.

Of course, the psychic warehouse itself, or, as it is otherwise called, “national character”, is something elusive for the observer, but since it is expressed in the uniqueness of culture, a common nation, it is perceptible and cannot be ignored.

Needless to say, the “national character” does not represent something given once and for all, but changes along with the conditions of life, but, insofar as it exists at every given moment, it leaves its stamp on the physiognomy of the nation.

So, community of mind, affecting the community of culture, as one of the characteristic features of the nation.

Thus, we have exhausted all the signs of a nation.

A nation is a historically established, stable community of people that has arisen on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and mental make-up, manifested in a common culture.

At the same time, it goes without saying that a nation, like any historical phenomenon, is subject to the law of change, has its own history, beginning and end.

Finally, Norwegians and Danes speak the same language, but they do not constitute one nation due to the absence of other signs.

Only the presence of all the signs taken together gives us a nation.

It may seem that "national character" is not one of the signs, but only essential feature of the nation, and all other features are, in fact, terms development of the nation, and not its signs. This point of view is supported, for example, by the well-known Social-Democrats in Austria. theorists of the national question R. Springer and, especially, O. Bauer

Consider their theory of the nation.

According to Springer, "a nation is a union of people who think alike and speak alike." It is “a cultural commonality of a group of modern people, n e connected with "earth"

So - a "union" of people who think and speak the same way, no matter how disunited they are from each other, no matter where they live.

Bauer goes even further.

“What is a nation? he asks. Is there a common language that unites people into a nation? But the English and the Irish ... speak the same language, without, however, representing a single people; Jews do not have a common language at all and nevertheless constitute a nation”

So what is a nation?

“A nation is a relative community of character”

But what is character, in this case, national character?

National character is “the sum of features that distinguish people of one nationality from people of another nationality, a complex of physical and spiritual qualities that distinguishes one nation from another”

Bauer, of course, knows that the national character does not fall from the sky, and therefore he adds:

“The character of people is determined by nothing else than their fate”, which ... “a nation is nothing but a community of fate”, which in turn is determined by “the conditions in which people produce the means of their life and distribute the products of their labor”

Thus, we have arrived at the most "complete", as Bauer puts it, definition of a nation.

“A nation is the totality of people connected in a common character on the basis of a common fate”

So, a community of national character on the basis of a community of fate, taken without the obligatory connection with a community of territory, language, and economic life.

But what then remains of the nation? What kind of national community can be discussed among people who are economically separated from each other, living in different territories and speaking different languages from generation to generation?

Bauer speaks of the Jews as a nation, although "they do not have a common language at all"

The mentioned Jews, no doubt, live a common economic and political life with Georgians, Dagestanis, Russians and Americans, in a common cultural atmosphere with them; this cannot but impose its stamp on their national character; if they have anything in common, it is religion, a common origin, and some vestiges of a national character. All this is certain. But how can one seriously say that ossified religious rites and weathered psychological remnants influence the “fate” of the said Jews more than the living socio-economic and cultural environment surrounding them? But only under such an assumption can one speak of the Jews in general as a single nation.

How then does Bauer's nation differ from the mystical and self-sufficing "national spirit"

Bauer draws an impenetrable line between the "distinguishing feature" of the nation (national character) and the "conditions" of their life, tearing them apart. But what is a national character if not a reflection of the conditions of life, if not a bunch of impressions received from the environment? How can one confine oneself to a single national character, isolating and separating it from the soil that gave birth to it?

Then, how, in fact, did the English nation differ from the North American nation at the end of the 18th and at the beginning of the 19th century, when North America was still called “New England”? Certainly not a national character: for the North Americans were from England, they took with them to America, in addition to the English language, also the English national character.

Obviously, “New England”, as a nation, differed then from England, as a nation, not in a special national character, or not so much in a national character, as in a special environment from England, living conditions.

Thus, it is clear that in reality there is no single distinguishing feature of a nation. There is only a sum of signs, of which, when comparing nations, one sign stands out more clearly (national character), then another (language), then a third (territory, economic conditions). A nation is a combination of all the features taken together.

Bauer's point of view, identifying the nation with the national character, tears the nation from the soil and turns it into some kind of invisible, self-sufficient force. It turns out not a nation, alive and active, but something mystical, elusive and beyond the grave. For, I repeat, what kind of a Jewish nation is this, for example, consisting of Georgian, Dagestan, Russian, American and other Jews, whose members do not understand each other (they speak different languages), live in different parts of the globe, never meet each other they will see, they will never act together, neither in peacetime, nor in wartime ?!

No, it is not for such paper "nations" that the Social-Democrats draw up their national program. It can reckon only with real nations, acting and moving, and therefore forcing them to reckon with themselves.

Bauer obviously confuses the nation, which is a historical category, with the tribe, which is an ethnographic category.

However, Bauer himself seems to feel the weakness of his position. Declaring emphatically at the beginning of his book about the Jews as a nation

Reasoning in this way, Bauer wanted to prove that national autonomy could not be the demand of the Jewish workers.

But Bauer goes further. At the beginning of his book, he emphatically states that “the Jews do not have a common language at all and nevertheless constitute a nation”

Bauer here wanted to prove that “language is the most important instrument of human communication”

This is how the theory sewn with idealistic threads refutes itself” (I.V. Stalin. Works, vol. 2, M., 1946, pp. 292 - 303).

In the full text of the above section of the article the definition of a nation given by I.V. Stalin appears as having a basis in the historical process, and not just as a declarative definition of a term in which this or that subjectivism is expressed. This is its merit, and this is what distinguishes it from the definitions of the term "nation" given by others.

Stalin's definition of a nation was an official scientific definition in the USSR and in post-Stalin times, although, citing this definition, J.V. Stalin's work "Marxism and the National Question" after the 20th Congress of the CPSU in most cases was not referred to. In fact, the very same signs of a nation that I.V. Stalin gives in his definition are also given in the modern school textbook "social science"4 edited by L.N. Bogolyubov (vol. 2, "Man and Society"5 - a textbook for - 11 classes, M., "Prosveshchenie", ed. 8, 2003), although they are not summarized in a strict definition of the term "nation": the historical nature of the formation of nations (p. 316, paragraph 2), language ( ibid., p. 316, para. 3), common territory and economic coherence (ibid., p. 316, para. 5), common culture (ibid., p. 316, 317), in which the national character is expressed and reproduced in the continuity of generations (although the textbook leaves the question of the national character and national psychology in silence).

In the work of I.V. Stalin “Marxism and the national question”, due to various objective and subjective reasons, topics an adequate understanding of which is necessary for the harmonization of national relations in multinational societies:

What is culture in general and national culture specifically;

Formation of national cultures;

The interaction of nations, the emergence and development of diasporas and their impact on the life of the indigenous population in the areas where the diasporas penetrated;

Implementation of the full function of management in the life of peoples, as an aggregate of the national population in the area of the formation of its culture and diasporas outside this area;

Separation of diasporas from the region of formation of ethnic cultures and replacement of the population that once gave rise to diasporas with an ethnically different population belonging to other nations and diasporas;

The formation of a universal culture, which will have to integrate into itself all the multinational humanity in its historical past;

The problems of the biological basis of national cultures, the genetic core of the nation and its originality, which distinguishes peoples in a statistical sense from each other according to purely biological characteristics;

Nation and Civilization;

Egregorial processes in the life of nations, diasporas and in national interaction.

Along with this, it should be noted that the definition of a nation as a social, historically conditioned phenomenon, given by I.V. Stalin, distinguishes the nation from the people as a social organism, passing throughout history through various forms of organizing the life of a culturally unique (national) society in one or another regional civilization. This difference between the phenomena “nation” and “people” can also be seen in the text of the work, in particular, when in the above fragment I.V. in the sense that this term was defined by I.V. Stalin. But I.V. Stalin does not give a definition of how a nation differs from a tribe or a people, as a result of which a nation, a people, an ethnos, even in the scientific lexicon, are perceived as synonyms - almost complete equivalents, not to mention the everyday understanding of these words in wide sections of society .