Russia, Ukraine, and the Breakup of the Soviet Union

Roman Szporluk

• Publisher: Hoover Institution Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780817995430
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Russische Geschichte

This book chronicles the final two decades in the history of the Soviet Union and presents a story that is often lost in the standard interpretations of the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the USSR. Although there were numerous reasons for the collapse of communism, it did not happen—as it may have seemed to some—overnight. Indeed, says Roman Szporluk, the root causes go back even earlier than 1917. To understand why the USSR broke up the way it did, it is necessary to understand the relationship between the two most important nations of the USSR—Russia and Ukraine—during the Soviet period and before, as well as the parallel but interrelated processes of nation formation in both states. Szporluk details a number of often-overlooked factors leading to the USSR's fall: how the processes of Russian identity formation were not completed by the time of the communist takeover in 1917, the unification of Ukraine in 1939–1945, and the Soviet period failing to find a resolution of the question of Russian-Ukrainian relations. The present-day conflict in the Caucasus, he asserts, is a sign that the problems of Russian identity remain.

1Nationalities and the Russian Problem in the USSR: A Historical Outline

I

The first All-Union Congress of Soviets met in Moscow on December 30, 1922, and adopted a declaration establishing the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It was a federal state, not restricted to any nation or area.¹ The new government was formed during 1923 and the Union’s constitution was adopted in 1924. Many felt at the time that not only had a solution finally been found to the nationalities problem of the Russian Empire, but that the USSR would become the prototype of the future organization of mankind. In the communist doctrine of the following years, the Soviet Union was seen as the model for a world proletarian state. Even the establishment of other communist-ruled states in Eastern Europe after World War II did not immediately lead to the abandonment of this idea.

Only after Stalin’s death did the Soviet model lose its initial universal significance. The doctrine of “different roads to socialism” implied that other communist states did not have to follow the Soviet model and had the right to build socialism and communism independently from the USSR. According to this view, prominent in Eastern Europe between 1956 and 1968, the Soviet Union was a multinational state that had resolved the nationality problems of the nations of the former Russian Empire but was not necessarily a suitable model for others, not even in Eastern Europe.

Nineteen sixty-eight, the year when the USSR and its four allies intervened in Czechoslovakia, marked a change. According to the “Brezhnev doctrine” (the theoretical justification given for this act), the nations of Eastern Europe were now said to be a permanent part of a larger unity—the Socialist Community—of which the USSR was both the strongest and the most advanced component. What followed was a doctrinal reassessment of the Soviet experience, which was again elevated to the rank of universal (obshchee) as opposed to specific or particular (chastnoe) importance. This new stress on the Soviet experience as the model for the solution of the nationalities question throughout the world was particularly evident in publications honoring the fiftieth anniversary of the USSR.

Strangely enough, none of the other twelve communist-ruled states has so far adopted the Soviet formula of national relations in its internal organization. Most have retained the old ethnic designation of their states. Romania, for example, despite its large minorities, remains a Romanian national state. China likewise considers itself a national state first of all, though it formally recognized the local autonomy of its minorities. At one time, before they won power, the Chinese Communists had considered adopting the Soviet concept of national self-determination and a federal structure for China, but instead they chose a unitary structure similar to that which Stalin unsuccessfully proposed for Russia in 1922.² Two socialist states, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, have adopted supranationalism and thus their “idea” resembles the theory on which the USSR was founded. Their actual organization, however, departs from the Soviet model in a fundamental respect. In the Soviet Union, the Russian nation functions as “the leading nation,” with Russian as the privileged language, and the other nations and languages are in a subordinate position. The Serbs and Czechs do not enjoy a position analogous to that of the Russians in the USSR.

The departure from the internationalism that the Bolsheviks proclaimed in 1917 and practiced until the early 1930s was, in large measure, predetermined by the actual balance of forces between the Russians and non-Russians in the post-1917 decade. The actual revolution that transformed the nations of the USSR into subnations in relation to the Russians (or prevented the emergence of some peoples to full nationhood) took place in the 1930s when the elites of the non-Russians were physically decimated and Russian language and culture firmly assumed a privileged position.

II

It was within the framework of the pre-socialist society of the Russian Empire that Lenin advanced the slogan of the self-determination of nations. Before 1914, Lenin treated nationality as a problem to be handled in the course of, or after, a democratic revolution that had yet to be completed in Russia.³ Independence for the nationalities (along with the abolition of monarchy, land reform, and secularization) was viewed as one of the tasks to be accomplished by this bourgeois revolution in Russia and Eastern Europe. Like other Marxists, Lenin felt that the nationalities question in the advanced capitalist countries was no longer an important issue, though Ireland was considered an exception.

Some of Lenin’s fellow Marxists thought that his ideas contradicted the class approach expected of a proletarian leader. Lenin, however, held that so long as remnants of feudalism survived, the program of independence for the nationalities (which he never considered a proletarian demand) was a progressive one, within the limits of bourgeois society. If in a future revolution some peoples of Russia opposed tsarism from a nationalist position, they would still be fighting tsarism and aiding progressive forces. Lenin did not advocate this attitude for workers, however. He only asked the Russian workers to support the right of non-Russian nationalities to separate themselves from Russia, thereby breaking with those Russian nationalists who wished forcibly to preserve the unity of the Empire. Non-Russian workers, on the other hand, were to demonstrate their renunciation of nationalism by not advocating separation from Russia and by working instead for socialism, side by side with Russian workers. Since socialism was by nature international, it was self-evident to Lenin that separation into independent national states would not take place under socialism.

Lenin felt that federalism, as a solution to the national question in the pre-socialist, democratic stage, would maintain divisions within the working class along ethnic lines. He did not exclude granting broad language rights to different regions of the state, but opposed making nationality the basis of political organization. Total political separation or complete political unity within the state would free the proletariat from nationalist influences. In this respect, he was essentially in accord with Engels, who argued that national independence for those nations that desired it would strengthen the socialist forces within them.⁴

What happened after the October Revolution was another matter, the Bolsheviks argued. Since various peoples of the former empire had established their national states in 1917–18, federalism under a Soviet regime and with Russia as the leading force was clearly a step toward unity. More importantly, the new Soviet federalism was as different from federalism as it was understood in the bourgeois world as the Soviet conceptions of free elections, democracy, and rights of the individual were different from those of the capitalist world. Besides, the Bolsheviks refused to introduce any form of federalism (that is, decentralization of decision-making power) into the party, the “driving force” of the Soviet state. Similarly, the army and the political police remained strictly centralized. To accept this kind of federalism required no serious revision of Lenin’s original position favoring centralism.

Once the Bolsheviks had replaced the government of the capitalists with a government of workers and peasants, separation from Soviet Russia became clearly reactionary because it prevented the introduction of socialism into the “borderlands.” Having dispersed the popularly elected Constituent Assembly, because it represented a political institution over which they did not have absolute control, the Bolsheviks likewise refused to respect the desire of Armenia or Georgia for independence.

Since, in Russia, it was the Communist party and not the Constituent Assembly that determined the course the country should adopt, the question arose as to who was entitled to determine the proletarian will of the various Soviet nationalities. Would national Communist parties be allowed to act on behalf of their nations? This was the hope of some Communists, but Lenin refused to allow the formation of independent Communist parties in the national republics. The only concession made was in response to the separation of Ukraine and other provinces of European Russia from the new Bolshevik state, a situation imposed on Moscow by the peace of Brest-Litovsk. This development led to the renaming of local organizations in non-Russian areas as “Communist parties.” However, they were not given any autonomy from the center. This change of label was also a concession to the mood of the popular masses among whom formal symbols of national independence had won a certain popularity during the revolutionary period. Evidence that this autonomy was only nominal can be found in the Bolshevik refusal to allow the Ukrainian Communists to join the Communist International independently of the Russian party. They were reminded that their party was a regional branch of the Russian Communist party. In the final analysis, the Central Committee in Moscow was the sole spokesman for the national sovereignty of all nations of the Soviet state.

This does not mean that Lenin desired to maintain inequality among the nationalities. Rather, he desired the party to remain above all nationalities and wanted to prevent, in particular, the reassertion of Russian nationalism. But how could the party overcome a Russian national orientation when, in its composition, it was mainly Russian and those of its members who were not Russian by origin were more often than not thoroughly Russified? The Bolsheviks had their main strength in the Russian areas, since they were proletarian and urban-oriented. Furthermore, the historical and political traditions of Russia identified political power with Russian nationality. On the other hand, those parts of the former empire that in many ways had been more developed economically and politically, such as Finland, Poland, Latvia, and Estonia, did not emerge from the war and revolution as part of the Soviet world.

The hopes that the revolution would extend to Germany, Hungary, and other countries were soon disappointed. The identification of Russia with communism, which Stalin completed in the 1930s, began as early as the peace of Brest-Litovsk (which for a short time reduced Russia to its ethnic borders in Europe) and the march on Warsaw in 1920. “The International will pass … but the boundaries will remain,” wrote V. Shulgin, an anticommunist Russian nationalist, in 1922.⁵ His sentiments were shared by thousands of the ex-tsarist officers and officials who joined the Soviet cause because they considered the Bolsheviks the only force capable of saving the territorial unity of what they considered Russian lands.

Since so many of the former tsarist officials had entered the Soviet apparatus, Lenin feared that this element, which remained chauvinist in its attitude toward the non-Russians, might also make itself felt in the party. His notes, dictated on December 30–31, 1922 (precisely when the Congress of Soviets was proclaiming the establishment of the USSR), articulated those fears in unequivocal terms.⁶ Still, Lenin failed to devise an effective method of curbing Russian nationalism. He believed that communism destroyed the conditions that give rise to nationalism and therefore he treated nationalism as a survival of the past. In the words of Richard Pipes, Lenin failed to recognize that nationalism “reflected also specific interests and strivings that could not be satisfied merely by tact but required real political and other concessions.”⁷

If Lenin underestimated its seriousness under Bolshevik rule, he understood that nationalism was potentially a great force in Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe, and for this reason he warned the party against a revival of a specifically Russian image of the Soviet state.⁸

III

Even after the Red Army, with the help of local Communists, had established Soviet regimes in Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, and Belorussia, as well as in the Moslem areas of Central Asia, most of the republics (except those that were included in the Russian republic) formally constituted independent states and their relations with Moscow were regulated by treaties.⁹ By virtue of these treaties, the Russian government gradually assumed the authority over military and economic matters, transportation, and communications that it had de facto enjoyed from the moment the Soviet regime was established in the area. The formerly separate republics preserved such formal attributes of sovereignty as the right to maintain diplomatic relations with foreign countries. Soviet Ukraine, for example, maintained diplomatic relations with Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Germany, and was a party to the treaty of Riga (1921), which established the eastern boundary of Poland.

In practice, the authorities of the Russian republic violated the agreements regulating their relations with the other Soviet republics and treated them as mere subdivisions of Russia like Bashkiria or Daghestan, which had been formed as autonomous, not independent, socialist republics within the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR). In 1922, Stalin, then Commissar of Nationalities in the RSFSR government, proposed to transform Ukraine, Belorussia, Armenia, Georgia, and Azerbaijan into autonomous republics of the RSFSR.¹⁰ The implications of the Stalin proposal were far-reaching. Both domestically and internationally they amounted to the restoration of a single Russian state on the entire territory ruled by the Communists. The communist state would bear the name of Russia (Rossiia) and combine the areas inhabited by ethnic Russians (russkie or velikorossy) and those inhabited primarily by non-Russians, who would be granted a national minority status within Russia.

Stalin’s plan was accepted by a special commission dealing with the problem of relations between the republics, but it was firmly rejected by Lenin, who immediately saw that it amounted to a formal restoration of the Russians to a privileged position that would be opposed and resented within the Soviet state. It would also weaken the appeal of communism as a friend of national liberation movements in the outside world. Lenin’s counterproposal, which was formally accepted, envisaged the formation of a new federal structure above the RSFSR and the other independent Soviet republics. The new formation was to be devoid of any ethnic connotation in its name, since it constituted a supranational state. Russia would join the new state as one of its component parts, an equal of Ukraine, said Lenin.¹¹

When the constitution was actually adopted, the federal government was granted broader powers than Lenin had envisaged in his December 1922 notes and the Russian republic secured a majority of seats in both chambers of the federal legislature.¹² This was made possible, in part, by the failure to elevate such advanced nationalities as the Tatars to the status of a Union republic (Tataria, to this day, remains a part of the RSFSR) and the refusal to adopt a proposal that would have restricted the representation of a single republic in the second chamber to not more than two-fifths of the total membership. Yet, despite its restrictions, the new federal system recognized the principle of national equality and independence (that is, the Union republics reserved the right to secede from the Union). It granted the national republics a constitutional recognition as permanent elements of the Soviet state organization and thus contributed to the rise and strengthening of the national consciousness of the Soviet peoples. Pipes argues that the ...