The fall of the tsarist autocracy in Russia as a result of the February Revolution of 1917, demonstrated a complete inability of the Russian bourgeoisie and its political representatives – the constitutional democrats, Right-wing Mensheviks and SRs in the framework of the Provisional Government- to resolve the pressing problems of the revolution. This resulted in the complete paralysis of the ruling classes on the question of peace, as well as regarding agrarian reform and the elimination of social classes, and the provision state independence and a wide autonomy of the national regions.
Moreover, the rotating ministries were all together the collective government of the war to carry out tasks of the imperialist conquests in the framework the former Union of the Entente countries and the continuation of the counter-revolutionary objectives of the previous policies of the autocracy against the oppressed peoples. But their initiatives were not destined to succeed in the situation of the army‘s and the empire’s collapse, the economic disaster, dual power that represented an extensive system of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies. By September, after the suppression of the Kornilov revolt, the Bolsheviks began to dominate in the Soviets who followed the new program for complete seizure of power by the Soviets (“April theses”), developed by Lenin.
The Bolsheviks proclaimed an immediate peace, nationalization and redistribution of land, workers' control, no confidence in the bourgeois government, the need for proletarian revolution and the establishment of Soviet power, and finally the federalization of the country. This again emphasized that only the victorious proletariat can implement all the democratic tasks of the revolution, including for the peoples of the empire to have the right to self-determination, which after the conquest of power to proceeds immediately to the destruction of the old order and to radical social transformation.
In fact, “April Theses” became the basic foundation for the complete “reformatting” of the revolutionary movement, the creation of a new Communist Party, the change of the program and the safeguarding of the victory of the October Revolution in Russia. II Congress of Soviets on October 26 (November 7) 1917, authorized the armed overthrow of the Provisional Government and proclaimed the Soviet Republic of Russia, announced the decrees on peace, land, formed the Council of People's Commissars (SNK), which created the Commissariat of Nationalities. The first People's Commissar for Nationalities was the old Bolshevik Joseph Stalin.
Already on 2 (15) of November 1917, a week after the overthrow of the Provisional Government, the Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia was issued, which on behalf of the Russian Soviet Republic was signed by the chairman of the SNK, Vladimir Lenin, and the Commissar for Nationalities, Joseph Stalin. In the Declaration the four pillars of the national policy of Soviet power were declared as follows:
1. The equality and sovereignty of the peoples of Russia.
2. The right of the peoples of Russia to free self-determination, even to the point of separation and the formation of an independent state.
3. The abolition of any and all national and national-religious privileges and disabilities.
4. The free development of national minorities and ethnographic groups inhabiting the territory of Russia.
The declaration proclaimed that the Soviet state sought to achieve the voluntary and honourable union of the peoples of Russia and ensuring full trust between them. “ Only as the result of such a union can the working men and peasants of Russia be cemented into one revolutionary force able to resist all attempts on the part of the imperialist-annexationist bourgeoisie.”
On the basis of the Declaration in late 1917 Finland, Poland, the Baltic states received full independence and the many peoples of the Caucasus, Transcaucasia, Central Asia and Siberia received national autonomy. The principles enunciated in the Declaration, were a huge mobilizing force in the consolidation of Soviet power in Russia.
Interesting in itself is the Soviet government’s recognition of the sovereignty of Finland on 18 (31) in December 1917, which was decided in one day, and the decree signed by Lenin, according to representatives of the Finnish government delegation, directly on the wall in the corridor of the Smolny Institute.
It makes sense to reproduce this decree in full:
"a) To recognize the state independence of the Republic of Finland and
b) to organize, in agreement with the Finnish Government, a special commission of representatives from both sides to develop the practical measures that arise from separation of Finland from Russia.
Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars
Vladimir Ulyanov (Lenin).
The People's Commissars:
I.Shteynberg, Karelin, J.Stalin,
Managing the affairs of the Council of People's Commissars
Bonch-Bruevich."
At that time, the Bolsheviks, and Lenin himself, believed that the victory of the socialist revolution in Finland was guaranteed by the very fact of the political rise of working class struggle in this country, the full support of the Social Democratic Party of Finland for II Congress decision of the Soviets and the process of preparing to seize power in Helsingfors (Helsinki) by the local Soviets. With the prospects of the imminent fall of the main empires and the development of the global revolution in Europe, Finland and Poland would have been involved in this movement and would become Soviet.
To this end, all the evidence exists, because in February 1918, there was a proletarian revolution in Finland, bloodily repressed by German troops and detachments of the bourgeoisie, and in early 1919 the Soviets, who were under the influence of the Communists were formed in all Polish cities. In November 1918 there was a revolution in Germany and Estonia, in December 1918 - in Latvia and Lithuania. In March 1919, in Hungary, in April 1919 in Bavaria in June 1919 in Slovakia there emerged Soviet republics.
It is this fundamental policy of the Soviet Government on the national question and the transfer of power into the hands of the working people that led to the absolute support of the Bolsheviks in proletarian Latvia in the elections for the Constituent Assembly in November 1917, where the RSDLP(b) received 80% of the votes of the local population. In fact, the Social Democratic Party of Latvia was closely linked to the Bolsheviks, and the Latvian workers and laborers participated actively as early as the 1905 revolution. This explains the absolute devotion to the Soviet government of the Latvian military units, even after the occupation of their country by German troops in early 1918.
On 5 (18) on January 1918, It was proposed in the Constituent Assembly by the Central Executive Committee to adopt the Declaration of Rights of Working and Exploited People. The Declaration repeated the decision of the Congress of the Soviets on agrarian reform, workers' control and peace. However, the Assembly by a majority of 237 votes to 146 refused to even discuss the Bolsheviks‘ Declaration. The refusal to accept the document by the SR-Cadet majority, served as the formal reason for the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly, because it was an instrument of the bourgeoisie in its attempt to regain power.
The draft Declaration of Rights of Working and Exploited People was written by Lenin, and on January 3, 1918 it was adopted at the meeting of the Central Executive Committee. A commission was selected to edit the Declaration. The amended version of the Declaration of Rights of Working and Exploited People was adopted at the III Congress of Soviets on January 12 and in this form was the first part of the RSFSR Constitution of 1918. In the first two paragraphs there are the following basic positions: 1) Russia was declared as a Republic of Workers', Soldiers‘ and Peasants‘ Soviets. All power, centrally and locally, is vested in these Soviets. 2) The Russian Soviet Republic is established on the basis of a free union of free nations, as a federation of Soviet national republics.
Thus, at the III All-Russian Congress of Soviets, the supreme organ of the proletarian dictatorship, the federal structure of association of the Soviet national republics (RSFSR) was finalized, as a basis for the future establishment of a World republic of Soviets. The position of the Bolsheviks on the national question was expressed also as regards the recognition of the national statehood of the peoples of the Russian Empire, including those which did not have the historical and political experience of such independence. This was reflected in the subsequent creation of the Soviet republics Ukraine, Belarus and the Transcaucasian Federation, in Turkestan, as well as providing broad autonomy to Bashkirs, Tatars, Kazakhs, the peoples of the Volga and the North Caucasus.