evidence: Some, even on the left, claim that fighting for national liberation is a diversion from "real" class struggle. That was not the position that Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin took. [...] Lenin looked at how to use the fight for national liberation to destroy empire entirely. He was for the right of oppressed nations to self-determination. [...] Lenin saw this in the Irish uprising of 1916 against brutal British repression. He followed that in oppressor countries, the emphasis should be on weakening the home imperialist state by backing the national liberation moment.