Roman Galenkin (Halienkin)
Is a conscious subject, whose current cultural-national identity is a product of the objective logic of socio-economic development, obliged to make a conscious break with it and return to his historical roots, as soon as he realizes that this development in the past was oppressive in nature and deprived his ancestors of a voluntary socio-political choice of their own identity?
In other words, we need to answer how Marxist-Leninist thought resolves the conflict between objective historical pressure and the subjective will of the individual in the process of national self-determination. To do this, we will turn to the works of the outstanding Bolshevik theorist Mykola Skrypnyk, who provided the most thorough resolution of this issue.
In resolving this problem, Mykola Oleksiyovych proceeded from the fact that national identity is not something simple or unambiguous, but consists of a dialectical interaction of two key factors: objective historical origin and subjective individual self-determination. He sharply criticized the society of his time for not yet being able to distinguish this correctly, confusing ethnic roots with a person’s living consciousness. During discussions, Skrypnyk clearly demonstrated this gap through specific examples: on the one hand, Mykola Gogol, who by origin was Ukrainian, but consciously «recognized himself as Russian»; on the other hand, the Bolshevik Heorhiy Lapchynsky, who «considers himself Ukrainian by nationality, while by origin he is Russian,» and who learned the Ukrainian language already in adulthood[1].
That is, in Skrypnyk’s coordinate system, «origin» (what is given to a person by the historical past of their lineage) and «self-recognition» (how the individual defines themselves in the present) are different, often autonomous attributes. By recording this gap between roots and current consciousness, Skrypnyk demonstrated that a person’s contemporary identity is a mobile structure, irreducible to dry questionnaire data, and directly depends on which factor prevails at a specific historical moment.
As a consistent Marxist, Skrypnyk developed this analysis on the foundation of historical materialism: individual consciousness and human psychology do not arise by themselves; they are determined by their social existence. This is precisely why, in exploitative societies, he decisively questioned the very category of «voluntary» national identity. Skrypnyk proposed abandoning the naive, petty-bourgeois view of assimilation as a purely «subjective-individual phenomenon»—that is, as a situation where a person supposedly simply «of their own free will» decides to change their language or culture. Instead, he called for viewing assimilation as a large-scale socio-political phenomenon, where individual will is directly subordinated to the prevailing economic and state structures. According to Skrypnyk’s logic, true «voluntariness» of choice is an illusion in capitalist society if the very «socio-political choice» is preemptively closed off to the citizen. When «entirely objective conditions compel him toward assimilation,» any talk about the consciousness of choice loses meaning, because the capitalist labor market, state bureaucracy, and economic development simply leave the individual no other strategies for survival and social advancement[2].
To illustrate this structural compulsion, Skrypnyk offered a universal and very precise example from the everyday life of minorities: if a Jew wishes to send his children to a national school or wants to read books in his native language, but «such [a school or books] does not exist, because they are not there,» then the «voluntariness» of his Polonization or Germanization, as declared by bourgeois law, «becomes highly questionable.» The space of the dominant nation’s culture absorbs the individual not because that culture is «more attractive,» but because the colonial system has artificially cleared away any alternative. Skrypnyk emphasized: one can speak of the objective conditions for the voluntariness of assimilation only when society provides the citizen with a real material opportunity «to voluntarily choose, from among schools and books, precisely those which he deems most suitable for himself.» As long as the dominant nation, through its socio-economic and institutional monopoly, deprives the oppressed peoples of this infrastructure, the individual consciousness of billions of people remains trapped in the grip of an imposed identity—which is the result not of free choice, but of concealed, systemic violence (denationalization)[3].
Skrypnyk then reveals exactly how this mechanism of non-voluntary assimilation operates within the concrete historical reality of bourgeois society. For a Marxist-dialectician, the assessment of the clash between two cultures—the dominant and the oppressed—cannot rest on abstract, classless categories such as the «beauty,» «richness,» or «refinement» of a language. Skrypnyk decisively rejects the position of the «aesthete or ivory-tower scholar,» who evaluates culture by its static achievements[4]. From the standpoint of historical materialism, any cultural «height» is relative, and what is decisive for analysis is the dynamics of socio-economic life and the laws of capitalist development.
In bourgeois society, the culture of the dominant nation is almost always objectively «higher» in terms of its material base. Skrypnyk illustrates this with a historical analysis of Czechoslovakia [the Czech lands] during the period of the 1870s–1880s, where the dominant German culture prevailed over the oppressed Czech culture. German culture embodied the new capitalist city as opposed to the backward feudal Czech village. Moreover, behind this dominant culture in the cities of Bohemia there already stood an advanced class—the industrial proletariat—which even adopted its first internationalist slogans in the German language. It would seem that the objective logic of the economy was working toward the complete assimilation of the Czechs. Yet Skrypnyk points to the iron law of capitalism: the future belongs not to the culture that is dominant and developed today, but to the one behind which lies the hidden dynamic of economic development. Characterizing this process, he emphasized:
«In the 1860s, 1870s and 1880s, for the Czechs this was a period of genuine, stubborn, cruel, in all spheres of life, at every step struggle of two cultures—Czech and German. Such a definition was demanded by the socio-economic development of the bourgeois country. In a capitalist country, the new culture of a new young nationality can define itself only in struggle against the old, entrenched, state culture of the ruling nation. The self-determination of the Czech nation in the bourgeois capitalist Austro-Hungarian state took place and could take place only by opposing one bourgeois culture to another. The new young Czech culture self-determined by arising and fighting against the old state German culture. Wishing for the opposite would be superfluous.»[5].
According to Skrypnyk, the main law of the capitalist order is that the culture of the oppressed nation, despite all the initial dominance and «height» of the ruling culture, inevitably receives a chance for historical revanche, but it can develop only «through struggle.» Since capitalist modernization sooner or later elevates and draws the broad masses of the oppressed people into economic life, their culture begins its objective forward movement[6]. This is a movement behind which stands the very dynamic of history, which is why the future ultimately belongs to it, and not to the culture of the oppressors. However, within the bourgeois order, this process is never peaceful or automatic. The ruling nation uses its monopoly, and its proletariat, having succumbed to the ideological influence of its own bourgeoisie, often pursues not its own class cause, but defends the dominant position of its language. Therefore, the emergence of the oppressed culture onto the historical arena under capitalism always takes the form of fierce confrontation, where every step toward the liberation of identity literally has to be wrested from the dominant system.
Summarizing the entire dialectical logic of Mykola Skrypnyk, we come to the conclusion: under the conditions of the capitalist order and its colonial legacy, there is no and cannot be any abstract «peaceful coexistence» of cultures or «abstract-voluntary» national choice for a person. What bourgeois society shyly calls «natural integration» or «a free transition to another language» is in fact the result of total, structural coercion that leaves no alternative. National existence under capitalism is an arena of uncompromising struggle between the dominant nation, which maintains its socio-economic monopoly, and the oppressed nation, which is objectively trying to force its way to historical life. And it is precisely in the crucible of this fierce struggle that millions of people emerge, whose life trajectories have become a living illustration of this conflict: people who by their historical origin are, for example, Lusatian Sorbs, but who, by the objective logic of the economic development of the dominant system, were forced to become (and to «voluntarily» recognize themselves as) Germans.
Now we come directly to the resolution of our dilemma in the practice of socialist construction. After elucidating the general laws of capitalist assimilation and the struggle of cultures, Skrypnyk moves on to a concrete analysis of the legacy of the Russian Empire, and he thinks not within the framework of a single republic, but on the scale of the entire Soviet Union. The central problem for him becomes the millions of people across the vastness of the USSR who, by their current national identity, already consider themselves Russian, but have Ukrainian roots.
Analyzing the condition of these people, who through the colonial logic of the past changed their national marker and consciously recognized themselves as Russians despite their origin, Skrypnyk gives them the following characterization:
«These are the consequences of the Russian colonization policy of tsarism.»[7]
From the standpoint of petty-bourgeois or bourgeois logic, the change of identity to Russian was considered a «voluntary choice» of individual will. But from the standpoint of materialist dialectics—this is the highest, completed form of ideological alienation. The economic pressure of the empire, the need for social mobility, migration to industrial sites, and the absolute absence of Ukrainian institutions forced these people to renounce their own «I» for the sake of survival. That they today identify themselves as Russians is not an expression of their freer will, but a perfected product of the colonial structure, which simply erased their roots, substituting them with the language and code of the dominant nation.
However, Soviet power, in Skrypnyk’s view, had no right to reconcile itself with this historical distortion—the legacy of the capitalist struggle of two cultures. The Bolshevik Party was obliged to eliminate the consequences of the past. Skrypnyk saw the path to healing this colonial trauma in a clearly formulated general party strategy, which extended to all whom imperial development had managed to record as belonging to the dominant nation:
«As the general line regarding Ukrainians who were Russified in the preceding historical epoch, the party recognized the line toward their reattachment to Ukrainian culture and the Ukrainian language, which should take place gradually, non-violently, with the absolutely necessary attention to their cultural needs (see the speech of Comrade Kaganovich at the plenum of the Central Committee in 1926 and at the beginning of 1927).»[8]
And here we return from the general to the personal. Let us pose this question bluntly:
What must a conscious person (let alone communists) do, if they know for certain that their current cultural-national identity is not the fruit of their free choice, but the violent legacy of Russian tsarism, Soviet or Chinese social-imperialism, or American or any imperialism? How should they act, aware that the question of national identity under capitalism is an arena of cruel, unequal struggle, which their parents, grandfathers, and grandmothers objectively lost to the reactionaries, capital, and the state bureaucracy?
Finding themselves alone with this realization, the subject enters a situation of deep internal crisis, where the former comfort of the formed «I» collapses under the pressure of historical materialism. The old identity, which previously seemed natural, suddenly exposes its forced, systemic seams. At this moment, the person faces a choice:
On the one hand, the iron inertia of the present operates—the familiar linguistic space, established cultural codes, everyday comfort, and social ties. All of this is part of real life here and now, and renouncing it requires a colossal inner effort and conscious self-reflection. On the other hand, on the scales lies the mute knowledge that this everyday comfort is a direct consequence of historical defeat. This is the understanding that the dominant culture which the person uses was imposed on them through the clearing away of alternatives, the closure of schools, economic pressure, and the deprivation of subjectivity.
This crossroads inevitably transforms the question of national self-determination from an abstract discussion into a field of acute ethical and class struggle within consciousness itself:
Is the current «I» a product of my own will, or am I merely passively continuing the will of those reactionary forces that once broke the resistance of past generations?
Does the preservation of the current identity of the dominant nation mean tacit acknowledgment that the colonial violence of the past won definitively and irreversibly?
Where does the boundary lie between my personal psychological comfort and my responsibility to the objective dynamic of history, which always demands struggle?
Every conscious subject is forced to resolve this equation on their own. Skrypnyk’s dialectics merely tears away the veil of illusions from «voluntary assimilation,» showing that there is no neutral position in this confrontation. When the mechanism of oppression becomes visible, continued existence within it ceases to be an unconscious fact of biography—it becomes a conscious political act. And yet, in what manner the subject will respond to this challenge of history—whether they will dare to enter into their own, internal «struggle at every step» in order to restore the severed connection with the oppressed, or whether they will leave everything as it is—this is a decision that matures exclusively in the crucible of their own personal subjectivity.
28.06.2026
[1] M. O. Skrypnyk. Articles and Speeches. Volume 2. Part 2. On the Theoretical Foundations of Elucidating Assimilation Processes. P. 135.
[2] M. O. Skrypnyk. Articles and Speeches. Volume 2. Part 2. Toward the Theoretical Foundations of the Elucidation of Assimilation Processes. Pp. 138–139.
[3] Ibid
[4] M. O. Skrypnyk. Articles and Speeches. Volume 2. Part 1. Theory of the Struggle of Two Cultures. Pp. 104–107.
[5] Ibid
[6] Ibid
[7] M. O. Skrypnyk. Articles and Speeches. Volume 2. Part 2. Current Tasks of Socialist Construction of National Policy in Soviet Ukraine. P. 113.
[8] M. O. Skrypnyk. Articles and Speeches. Volume 4. Part 1. On National Policy in Labor Schools. P. 292.