“Before the revolution, the Bashkirs had no written language. The mullahs and the educated people read and wrote in Arabic, the language of the Quran. Within 10 years, they created not only a written language out of a mixture of Russian and Latin letters, but also translated many works of world literature into the Bashkir language, so that children could read them in their own language.”

The position of the WSWS against all nationalism contradicts completely the Marxist perspective of the right of self-determination for smaller nations. The protection of culture and language has reached a crisis point in which languages and cultures die regularly as a result of economic forces under capitalism and, equally important, abandonment by socialism under the influence of blatant social chauvinism and defencism of “due process.”

From the footnotes: “Solomon Mikhoels died in a car accident that is widely considered to have been an NKVD murder. In 1952, at the height of the post-war anti-Semitic purges, most of its prominent members were arrested and many were killed.”

The WSWS must accept the possibility of murder that appears accidental, at least to state investigators from the same state that committed the murder. To erase the possibility from journalism endangers the lives of many public figures and the public at large, since the murder of public figures will usually accompany any atrocity which the authority seeks to keep secret.

In general, this important figure from the history of the Left Opposition should remind us that the cultural advancement and political insight produced by the Left Opposition rises above any cheap maneuvering by the nano-bureaucracy. The money of the ICFI, much of it arriving from Saddam Hussein’s government in Iraq, has corrupted its political leadership to the point where only a new faction can begin to take action against the abuses carried out by the leadership against the membership, that is the advanced sections of the working class. This faction should receive official recognition by the ICFI executive committee and have the right to investigate and charge fines for violations of codes of conduct and violations of members’ constitutional and human rights.