to gain from the oppression and plunder of the workers of the conquered lands. Before the war the bourgeoisie made a practice of bribing the leaders of the working class with the lure of the profits derivable from colonial plunder and from the oppression of backward and weakly nationalities. The workers of the more advanced European lands, acting on the instigation of the most highly paid members of the working class, acceded to the proposals of the capitalists, and allowed themselves to be talked over by the jingo socialists into accepting the belief that they too would have a fatherland if only they would acquiesce in the plunder of the colonies and of the partially dependent nations. The worker who, under capitalism, proclaims himself a patriot, is selling for a copper or two his real fatherland, which is socialism; and thereby he becomes one of the oppressors of the backward and weak nations.
58. The equal Rights of the Nations and the Right to Self-Determination; Federation.
The Communist Party, declaring a relentless war upon all oppression of man by man, takes a decisive stand against that oppression of subject nationalities which is indispensable to the existence of the bourgeois system. Even more relentlessly do communists resist the slightest participation in this oppression on the part of the working class. It does not suffice, however, that the proletariat of a great and strong country should repudiate all attempts at the oppression of the other peoples which the bourgeoisie or the aristocracy of its own land has crushed. It is also essential that the proletarians of oppressed nations should not feel any mistrust of their comrades who belong to the lands of the oppressors. When the Czechs were oppressed by the German bourgeoisie of Austria, the Czech workers looked upon all Germans as their oppressors. Our tsarist government oppressed the Poles, and the population of Poland has continued to cherish mistrust of all Russians; not merely of the Russian tsar, the Russian landlord, and the Russian