Lenin, ‘Self-Determination’ and the Radical Idea of Freedom

Abstract

This chapter explores how Lenin legitimised his discourse on ‘self-determination’ with reference to a radical idea of freedom. It was Lenin’s articulations of ‘self-determination’ from the start of the twentieth century that Woodrow Wilson responded to when the U.S. President internationalised this language in 1918. Specifically, the chapter shows how Lenin’s mentions of ‘self-determination’ evolved between 1903 and 1917, and how the First World War impacted on his discourse. The radical idea of freedom Lenin inserted into the international language of ‘self-determination’ entailed arguing for freedom as equality and, in practice, the option of full statehood for oppressed peoples. At the same time, Lenin attached specific political, historical and economic conditions for implementing self-determination as independence. Both the conditionality and the radical idea of freedom Lenin attached to the language of ‘self-determination’ would be echoed in later international self-determination moments.