Position 1: Rebuttal

The policy of self determination espoused by the Bolsheviks for instrumental purposes has been mentioned as engendering a permanence to ethnic diversities, consequently creating a bulwark against state dissolution. 

It is true that the exposure of capitalist relations does not necessarily negate nationalist tendencies which emerge in the context of economic decadence. However, the latter tendencies are utilised to prevent revolution necessarily by the propertied class and this creates a contradiction given the Soviet policy in the 1920s. However, it does not preclude the broader contradiction of capital itself. 

If we look at the category of the nation state as contingent against universal social relations synonymous with capitalism such as class then we can allude to the socialists adoption in the Labour party in the early 20th century of a religious interpretation applied to the industrial context of Britain as analogous and extrapolate a critique of position 1. 

Now the issue with this is that it makes socialism a moral project. A moral value cannot be deduced by a fact, it's a formal error to think otherwise. As such allusions to moral imperatives are arbitrary. 

When we say something is moral in an historical materialist sense we mean that it is a derivative of the social circumstances, which are in turn derivative of a mode of distribution which require norms to be established in order to maintain it's legitimacy.

For example, a system of relations now requires self sustenance free from welfare, presupposing the moral imperative that one should help themselves as others are responsible for their own demise (very much a laissez faire conception).

we can have non-realist cognitive statements of a moral/value which is derivative of say an economic context. So if I say we 'should' live within our means it can act as a vindication of fiscal discipline. This is how a Marxist views morality, it has an objective based on a contingent class interest but only in an objective material sense, not from a realist perspective. 

Trotsky speaks about British reformism in his book where is Britain Going? Macdonald and his peers see socialism as a a subordinate project to a command morality of making society conform to Christian ethics. The stark error is this: Christianity is itself culturally specific but MacDonald treats it as universal. It is a value system and consequently an arbitrary basis for socialist movements. Ethnic and national proclivities are the same - derivative of culture predicated on material circumstances and hence contingent, not universal. 

In regard to Christianity this shifts focus from class relations to ethical reform - a move that historically aligned with gradual parliamentary reform rather than revolutionary transformation. In respect to national identity it acts as a buttress against international solidarity. These ideological occurrences exist as false consciousness in defence of class interests. They are the contrivances of class interests and act to subdue an acknowledgement of the historical materialist and dialectical tendencies extant in class relations.  

The fact that self determination was used instrumentally by the Bolsheviks should not therefore negate the prospect of a dissolution of the state. As capitalism confronts it's contradictions society will change. After the Russian Revolution of 1917 a wave swept across central Europe from the corpses of the old empires and even up to Britain. These were betrayed by the social democrats but that kernel of class unity was displayed and hollowed out nationalist propensities. 

A policy of self determination compels one to see the revolution as the cause of autonomy while colonialism is synonymous with capitalist relations. As a consequence, the Soviet Union cannot only utilise self determination in the border regions to buttress support but also appeal to subordinated colonial outposts elsewhere. If one supposes a position where Russia weren't isolated after 1918 this voluntary federation would of made comrades across central Europe see the national antagonism as transient. 

However, this was not the case, Russia as an isolated and backward country necessarily had to implement the NEP and receded into bureaucratic centralisation under Stalin, reversing the gains of the republics under Lenin. This means the nationality policy became reified - from a tactical concession into a structural feature of the Soviet state precisely because of the Soviet Unions economic isolation facilitated abroad by the social democrats and consolidated later via Stalin's policy of socialism in one country. 

The Bolshevik policy of national self-determination functioned as a historically necessary but contradictory mediation: while intended to weaken imperial domination and enable voluntary socialist unity, under conditions of isolation it materially consolidated national identities and thereby postponed the historical tendency toward state dissolution. This however does not preclude it as antagonisms invariably emerge in a system of latent contradictions.