[Marxism] Kosova and the right of nations to self-determination | Links

[Louis Proyect]

Jim Farmelant wrote:
>For those people who assert the right of self-determination
>as a fundamental principle, what do they think of
>the right of Southern states to secede from the
>United States back in the 1860s? If they
>didn't have such a right, why not?

And let's not forget that the Nazis were always raising a stink about 
oppressed German minorities. Should socialists have backed the right 
of Sudetenland to be free from Czech rule?

----

... And now we are faced with the final problem that must be solved 
and will be solved! It is the final territorial demand which I shall 
make of Europe, but it is the demand which I shall not give up and 
which with God's help I shall ensure is fulfilled.

The history of this problem is this: in 1918, in the spirit of "the 
right of nations to self-determination" Central Europe was torn apart 
and reshaped by some insane so-called statesmen. Without regard to 
the origins of the Peoples, their national aspirations, the economic 
necessities, Central Europe was fragmented and new states were formed 
arbitrarily. It is to this process that Czechoslovakia owes its existence.

This Czech state began with one single lie. The inventor of that lie 
was a man called Benes. This Mr Benes appeared at that time in 
Versailles and first of all assured his audience that there was a 
Czechoslovakian nation. He had to invent this lie in order to provide 
the limited number of his own countrymen with a somewhat larger and 
therefore justified importance....

... So finally through Mr Benes the Czechs annexed Slovakia. Since 
this state did not seem viable, they simply took three and a half 
million Germans in violation of their right to self-determination and 
their will to decide their own fate. Since even that was not enough, 
they had to add more than a million Magyars, then Carpatho-Russians 
and finally several hundred thousand Poles. That is the state which 
was later called Czechoslovakia, in flagrant violation of the right 
of nations to self-determination, against the unmistakable will of 
the nations whose rights had been violated. As I speak to you here, I 
naturally feel sympathy for the fate of all of these suppressed 
people. I feel sympathy with the Slovaks, the Poles, Hungarians and 
Ukrainians. However, I naturally speak only for my fellow Germans and 
of their fate.

Adolph Hitler, Sept. 26, 1938