The Case for National Autonomy — Causes and Processes

Abstract

In March 1917 the Provisional Government had guaranteed the equal rights of Russian citizens of all nationalities and religions in regard to residence, property, employment, commerce, military and state service, education and language ¹ Beyond affirming these general rights the Provisional Government did not, however, propose any concrete territorial rights beyond those committees generally set up to carry out limited local government, or create any institutions directed specifically at taking care of the needs of the national minorities. Such matters were, of course, likely to come up for discussion at a future meeting of the Constituent Assembly. After the October revolution the new Soviet government in its ‘Declaration of Rights’ confirmed these general rights and also invited ‘each nation to decide independently at its own plenipotentiary Soviet Congress, whether and on what basis to participate in the federal government and in the other federal Soviet institutions’.² The Constitution adopted at the Fifth All-Russian Congress of Soviets on 10 July 1918 went some way towards clarifying the basis of this relationship in its article 11:

The soviets of districts distinguished by a particular way of life and national composition can be united into autonomous district unions, at the head of which … stand district congresses of soviets and their executive organs. These autonomous district unions enter on the basis of federation into the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic.³