Did Marx and Engels have a theory about the nation? What stance did they take on national movements? How did they combine these with the philosophy of history, the analysis of capitalism, and the strategy of world revolution? And how did they influence their successors?

With these questions as a starting point, we see the fathers of historical materialism addressing the national movements of Poland, Ireland, the small Slavic peoples of the Habsburg Empire, as well as China and India. They clashed at the First International over these issues with representatives of other revolutionary currents, the followers of Proudhon and Bakunin.

We later observe the parties and leaders of the Second International discussing whether the proletarians had acquired a homeland. And whether future socialist states could have their own colonies. Bernstein believed in socialism in a single - national - state. Kautsky insisted on the perspective of world revolution and analyzed how nations continually change forms.

We witness the parties of the Second International clashing over the Principle of National Self-Determination. Rosa Luxemburg rejected the independence of her country, Poland, and disagreed with the participation of socialists in the national movement. Otto Bauer and the Austro-Marxists wisely analyzed the national phenomenon, driven by their need for a solution that would keep the territory of their country united, with its many different nationalities.

Lenin grasped the deeply political character of nationalism through the analysis of the imperialist stage of capitalism and attempted to transform it from an obstacle into an ally of the revolution. Stalin defined the nation to respond to the Austro-Marxists and their proposed solution to the national question, eventually partially agreeing with them.

Lenin clashed with Stalin over the adherence to the Principle of Self-Determination in Ukraine and Georgia. And Trotsky envisioned the United States of Europe. For the first time in Greek, an analytical description of the trajectory of the national question in the thought and revolutionary strategy of the Marxist classics, through extensive excerpts from their original texts.