22 SOCIAL SCIENTIST interests', for glossing over the class interests of the proletariat and for the intellectual enslavement of the workers.8 Marxism-Leninism, however, never examines the national question in terms of any absolute criteria, but always in concrete historical terms and as an issue subordinate to the overall problems of the developing class struggle. It is to the interests of this struggle, said Lenin, that we must subordinate the demand for national self-determination. It is this that makes all the difference between our approach to the national question and the bourgeois-democratic approach. The bourgeois democrat (and the present-day socialist opportunist who follows in Ins footsteps) imagines that democracy eliminates class struggle, and that is why he presents all his political demands in an abstract way, lumped together, 'without reservations', from the standpoint of the interests of the 'whole people5, or even from that of an eternal or absolute moral principle. Always and everywhere, the social democrat ruthlessly exposes this bourgeois illusion, whether it finds expression in an abstract idealist philosophy or in an absolute demand for national independence.4 Drawing the Line Lenin repeatedly emphasized that "we must link the revolutionary struggle for socialism with a revolutionary programme on the national question.'5 The Marxist-Leninist solution of the question must be based on th.e consistent working out of evolutionary democracy. "The proletariat,55 said Lenin, "cannot be victorious except through democracy, i. e., by giving full effect to democracy and by linking with each step of its struggle democratic demands formulated in the most resolute terms.555 The democratic essence of the Marxist solution of the national question is "the demand for political and civil liberties and complete equality.556 This kernel of the Marxist approach to the national question was formulated by Lenin in this manner: The national programme of working-class democracy is: absolutely no privileges for any one nation or any one language; the solution of the problem of the political self-determination of nations, that is, their separation as states by completely free, democratic methods; the promulgation of a law for the whole state by virtue of which any measure (rural, urban, or communal, etc., etc.) introducing any privilege of any kind for one of the nations and militating against the equality of nations or the right of a national minority, shall be declared illegal and ineffective, and any citizen of the state shall have the right to demand that such a measure be annulled as unconstitutional, and that those who attempt to put it into effect be punished.7 "The awakening of the masses55, Lenin explains, "from feudal lethargy, and their struggle against all national oppression, for the sovereignty of the people, of the nation, are progressive. Hence, it is the Marxists bounden duty to stand for the most resolute and consistent democratism on