Written in the midst of the fighting, while he was directing the campaigns of the Red Army, Trotsky lays down the historical justification of the actions of the Bolsheviks to reply to criticism by Karl Kautsky, a renegade from Marxism.
Lenin uses his theories to anaylze the question of the right of nations to self-determination, specifically and historically in Russia, Norway and Poland, and he discusses national oppression, colonialism, chauvinism and opportunism.
