V. I. Lenin
Collected Works
London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1960, Vol. 21, p. 409

"The Revolutionary Proletariat and the Right of Nations to
Self-Determination" 1915

"Imperialism means the progressively mounting oppression of the nations
of the world by a handful of Great Powers; it means a period of wars
between the latter to extend and consolidate the oppression of nations;
it means a period in which the masses of the people are deceived by
hypocritical social-patriots, i.e., individuals who, under the pretext of
the 'freedom of nations', 'the right of nations to self-determination',
and 'defence of the fatherland', justify and defend the oppression of
the majority of the world's nations by the Great Powers.

"That is why the focal point in the Social-Democratic programme
must be that division of nations into oppressor and oppressed which
forms the essence of imperialism, and is deceitfully evaded by the
social-chauvinists and Kautsky. This division is not significant
from the angle of bourgeois pacifism or the philistine Utopia of
peaceful competition among independent nations under capitalism, but
it is most significant from the angle of the revolutionary struggle
against imperialism. It is from this division that our definition of
the 'right of nations to self-determination' must follow, a definition
that is consistently democratic, revolutionary, and in accord with the
general task of the immediate struggle for socialism. It is for that
right, and in a struggle to achieve sincere recognition for it, that the
Social-Democrats of the oppressor nations must demand that the oppressed
nations should have the right of secession, for otherwise recognition of
equal rights for nations and of international working-class solidarity
would in fact be merely empty phrase-mongering, sheer hypocrisy. On the
other hand, the Social-Democrats of the oppressed nations must attach
prime significance to the unity and the merging of the workers of the
oppressed nations with those of the oppressor nations; otherwise these
Social-Democrats will involuntarily become the allies of their own
national bourgeoisie, which always betrays the interests of the people
and of democracy, and is always ready, in its turn, to annex territory
and oppress other nations."

[MC5 adds: Thanks to former SDS leader Noel Ignatin for pointing out
this Lenin quote in the defunct Urgent Tasks magazine. About in Lenin's
time after World War I, "Social-Democrats" were renamed communists and
"social-democrat" came to refer to reformist chauvinists. In the above
quote, Lenin still means communist when he says "Social-Democrat."]