In the Theses presented to the Second Congress of the Third
International (July 1920), there is a very interesting article by
Lenin called "First Sketch of the Theses on National and Colonial
Questions" (_Theses_, pp. 40-47). The following passages seemed to me
particularly illuminating:--

The present world-situation in politics places on the order of
the day the dictatorship of the proletariat; and all the
events of world politics are inevitably concentrated round one
centre of gravity: the struggle of the international
bourgeoisie against the Soviet Republic, which inevitably
groups round it, on the one hand the Sovietist movements of
the advanced working men of all countries, on the other hand
all the national movements of emancipation of colonies and
oppressed nations which have been convinced by a bitter
experience that there is no salvation for them except in the
victory of the Soviet Government over world-imperialism.

We cannot therefore any longer confine ourselves to
recognizing and proclaiming the union of the workers of all
countries. It is henceforth necessary to pursue the
realization of the strictest union of all the national and
colonial movements of emancipation with Soviet Russia, by
giving to this union forms corresponding to the degree of
evolution of the proletarian movement among the proletariat of
each country, or of the democratic-bourgeois movement of
emancipation among the workers and peasants of backward
countries or backward nationalities.

The federal principle appears to us as a transitory form