Syllabus
1) Introduction 2) Michael Walzer, Exodus and Revolution, Basic Books, New York 1985, pp. 1-40. 3) M. Walzer, ibid., pp. 99-152. 4) Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1843/critique-hpr/intro.htm 5) Moses Hess, Rome and Jerusalem, in Arthur Hertzberg (ed.), The Zionist Idea.
A Historical Analysis and Reader, Atheneum, New York 1981, pp. 116-140. 6) Mark Mazower, The Governing the World. The History of an Idea, 1815 to the Present, Penguin Books 2013, pp. 31-64. 7) Friedrich Engels, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/revolutioncounterrevolution-germany.pdf 8) Otto Bauer, The Question of Nationalities and Social Democracy, Chapter 1, in Gopal Balakrishnan, (ed.), Mapping the Nation, Verso, Now York 1996, pp. 39-77. 9) Rosa Luxemburg, The National Question, https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1909/national-question/ 10) Nachman Syrkin, The Jewish Problem and the Socialist Jewish State, in Arthur Hertzberg (ed.), The Zionist Idea.
A Historical Analysis and Reader, Atheneum, New York 1981, pp. 330- 351. 11) Ber Borochov, The National Question and the Class Struggle, https://www.marxists.org/archive/borochov/1905/national-class.htm 12) Y. V.
Stalin, Marxism and the National Question, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/1913/03.htm 13) Lenin, Theses on the National Question, https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/jun/30.htm 14) Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire. Nation and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939, Cornell University Press, Ithaca 2001, pp. 1-27
Annotation
In the Europe of the 19th century, the idea of collective emancipation took on two forms, depending on how the subject and kind of oppression were specified: Was it a class or a nation? Was the oppression socio-economic or ethno-cultural? Since the Spring of Nations in 1848, movements of class and national emancipation co-existed and overlapped. At some times they were in synergy, at other times they were competing with one another.
To sort out their relations (both theoretically and practically) was particularly urgent in Central and Eastern Europe, especially (even if not exclusively) within the multinational empires of Russia and Austria-Hungary. The course will begin by excavating the roots of an emancipatory imagination in the Biblical book of Exodus.
Then, it will offer a selection of theoretical statements on the relations between the social and national question by major leftist thinkers and activists, most of whom lived and worked in Central and Eastern Europe. It will close with Stalin and Lenin whose solution of the relation between class and nation had an important practical impact on the character of the European communist states of the 20th century such as USSR, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia.