> --- BTW, when the Bolshies were talking about national > self-determination inside Russia, weren't they mainly talking about > developed "nations" like Ukraine or Georgia? Did they write much on > peoples like the Chechens, Avars, Chukchi, Chuvash, Ingush, etc.? There > are over 100 distinct nationalities in Russia (I did a search on > marxists.org on "Chechnya" in the Lenin section and got nada; in > Trotsky's, I got one where he quotes someone else.
Lenin grouped all the Caucauses nations together in social terms. In his 1921 "To the Comrades Communists of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, Daghestan, and the Mountaineer Republic", he warned against the kind of steamroller methods that Stalin would make infamous: "You will need to practise more moderation and caution, and show more readiness to make concessions to the petty bourgeoisie, the intelligentsia, and particularly the peasantry." http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1921/apr/14.htm
