The Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia (Russian: Деклара́ция прав наро́дов Росси́и, romanized: Deklaratsiya prav narodov Rossii) was a document promulgated by the Bolshevik government of Russia on 15 November 1917 (2 November in Julian calendar) and signed by Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin.
Content
The document proclaimed:
Equality and sovereignty of peoples of Russia
Right of peoples of Russia of a free self-determination, including secession and formation of a separate state
Abolition of all national and religious privileges and restrictions
Free development of national minorities and ethnographical groups populating the territory of Russia.
The meaning of the Declaration is still disputed in Russian historiography. In 1917 the Bolshevist thinking was still largely idealistic, dominated by vague ideas of "universal happiness". Also, at that moment Bolsheviks believed that the World revolution was imminent, so they did not care much about loss of territories. However, in the Western literature, it is often argued that in fact Lenin and Stalin agreed to capture mostly the territories they had no sovereignty over since Russia had lost them to Central Powers in 1915 and 1916. Many historians suggest that the purpose of the document was to limit the public dissent after Russia lost most of its western areas to the advancing German Empire and try to complicate the matters behind the front lines.
The declaration was an attempt to rally some ethnic non-Russians behind the Bolsheviks. Latvian riflemen were important supporters of Bolsheviks in the early days of Russian Civil War and Latvian historians recognize the promise of sovereignty as an important reason for that. The anti-revolutionary White Russians did not support self-determination and, as a result, few Latvians fought on the side of the White movement. Intended or not, the declaration's provided right to secede was soon exercised by the nations in the western parts of the former Russian Empire, part of which had already been under German army's rather than Moscow's control. After the collapse of the Central Powers in late 1918, however, Soviet Russia began attempting to establish Soviet power in as many states as possible. In 1918, the Red Army launched a military campaign in the west, invading and occupying Belarus and then advancing against the three Baltic states. In January 1919 the Red Army invaded Ukraine and in July 1920 invaded Poland. In the south, the Red Army invaded the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic in April 1920, then invaded the Republic of Armenia in September, and finally invaded the Democratic Republic of Georgia in early 1921, even though Soviet Russia had nominally agreed to Georgia's independence in the Treaty of Moscow.
The following countries declared their independence soon after the Bolsheviks' declaration, establishing themselves as non-Communist states. Although the role the declaration played in their independence movements is doubtful, it eased Soviet Russia's recognition of their independence. Except for Finland, all of these areas were outside of Russian sovereignty following the Austro-German successes in the World War I and were officially ceded in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
Bolsheviks never formally rejected the idea of self-determination, but the Soviet Constitutions (of 1924, 1936 and 1977) limited the right of secession to the constituent republics only.