[medo-bear]

except that those autonomous regions and republics very much existed. in some cases they formed the legal basis for independent states existing today: lithuania, estonia, ukraine, belarus, moldova, kazakhstan, etc. moreover their existence was dictated by communist ideology

   The socialist revolution may begin in the very near future. In that event the proletariat will be faced with the immediate task of capturing power, of expropriating the banks and of introducing other dictatorial measures. In such a situation, the bourgeoisie, and particularly intellectuals like the Fabians and the Kautskyists, will strive to disrupt and to hinder the revolution, to restrict it to limited democratic aims. While all purely democratic demands may—at a time when the proletarians have already begun to storm the bulwarks of bourgeois power—serve, in a certain sense, as a hindrance to the revolution, nevertheless, the necessity of proclaiming and granting freedom to all oppressed nations (i.e., their right to self-determination) will be as urgent in the socialist revolution as it was urgent for the victory of the bourgeois-democratic revolution, for example, in Germany in 1848, or in Russia in 1905

- V.I. Lenin