The Cry of National Liberation: Recent Soviet Attitudes Toward National Self-Determination

“You know,” Khrushchev characteristically proclaimed in a message to the African People's Conference meeting in Accra in December 1958, “that on the national question the Soviet Union is invariably guided by the principle of the right of nations to self-determination, and that it has always supported and still supports the struggle of peoples to obtain or strengthen their national independence and freedom.” The idea of national self-determination, fathered by political theorists like Mazzini and Wilson, is, of course, Western in origin. But in an age of nation-building in the Afro-Asian world, skillful Soviet use of this concept presents Western diplomacy with a formidable and continuing challenge in the East. The purpose of the present inquiry is to examine briefly how Soviet spokesmen have attempted to manipulate this Western idea, particularly in the great assembly halls of the UN where representatives of East and West constantly intermingle.