Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia

one of the first acts of the Soviet state, confirmed by the Sovnarkom (Council of People’s Commissars) of the RSFSR on Nov. 2 (15), 1917. The declaration strongly condemns the policy of provoking one people against another, a policy carried out by the tsarist government and subsequently by the bourgeois Provisional Government in the case of the peoples inhabiting Russia. This policy of oppression of peoples was contrasted with the policy of voluntary union of the peoples of Russia. The declaration proclaims the following fundamental principles of the Leninist policy on peoples: equality and sovereignty of the peoples of Russia; the right of the peoples of Russia to free self-determination, including secession and the formation of an independent state; the abolition of all privileges and restrictions based on ethnic or ethnic-religious distinctions; and the free development of national minorities and ethnic groups inhabiting the territory of Russia.