The Soviet Nationality Reader

The Disintegration In Context

Rachel Denber

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9780367318994
• eBook ISBN: 9780429975462
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

Setting the context for the crisis that has fragmented the former USSR, this reader presents key essays by notable Western scholars who have shaped the debates within the field of Soviet nationality studies. Focusing first on the historical development of the Soviet multiethnic state, the discussions then turn to specific problem areas, including federalism, elites, economy, language policy, and nationalism. An introductory essay by the editor discusses how the works in teh book contribute to our understanding of the current disintegration and analyzes opposing perspectives in the debates. Intended for use as a textbook in undergraduate or graduate courses on Soviet nationality problems or Soviet and post-Soviet domestic politics, this anthology will be valuable for students and professors alike.

General Introduction

The Soviet government, presiding over more than a hundred nationalities, always sought to discourage nationalism, to maintain a firm grip on centralized power, and to avoid the interethnic violence that racked other multiethnic states. At the same time, however, it ruled a federation structured along ethnic lines. Thus, despite their totalitarian-authoritarian nature, past Soviet regimes had to choose whether and how to accommodate the economic and political claims of the nationalities.

While these issues long produced tensions in the USSR, after Mikhail Gorbachev began reforming the Soviet political and economic systems, radically breaking with the legacies of Leonid Brezhnev and Joseph Stalin, they developed into a full-blown crisis. As an unintended result of Gorbachev's programs, the central government proved unable to prevent bids from republics for sovereignty or outright independence from the Soviet Union.

In 1988, nationalist movements in various republics began demanding more republic autonomy; several republics later formed governments (in most cases competitively elected) that rejected Moscow's authority to rule. Beginning in 1989, six republics declared their intention to secede from the Soviet Union,¹ and nearly all republics insisted on the preeminence of republic laws over USSR (Union) laws. These developments threatened the Soviet Union's very integrity, and, consequently, Moscow lost not only its capacity to dictate policy to the republics but virtually all control over events in most non-Russian republics and in even the Russian Soviet Federated Republic (RSFSR). Gorbachev could no longer rely on the precepts of "socialist internationalism" to justify Moscow's domination of the republics, and the use of violence and coercion to punish breakaway republics grew increasingly unsuccessful. The failed coup in August 1991 caused the final collapse of Moscow's authority, leaving power in the hands of republic governments.

This crisis, though devastating, should not eclipse the importance of how pre-Gorbachev regimes managed for seventy years to prevent the Soviet nationalities problem from seriously threatening the USSR's political stability. This is no mean feat in a country as ethnically diverse as the Soviet Union. Russians, Ukrainians, Uzbeks, Belorussians, Kazakhs, Azerbaijani s, Armenians, Georgians, Moldavians, Tadzhiks, Latvians, Lithuanians, Turkmens, Kirghiz, and Estonians are among the most numerous nationalities, but the Soviet Union is also home to more than ninety other nationalities— from the numerous Tatars, Chuvash, and Bashkirs to the dozen or so smaller nationalities that count fewer than 2,000 members each.² The major nationalities have fifteen union republics bearing their names. These are the main components of the Soviet federation, endowed by the USSR Constitution with a broad array of formal rights to self-determination and self-rule. Within these fifteen union republics lie twenty autonomous republics, eight autonomous provinces, and ten autonomous areas, which are the homelands of some of the smaller nationalities.

Soviet regimes have historically tolerated only limited expressions of national diversity, yet the peoples of the Soviet Union embrace diverse cultural traditions. They practice a variety of religions (including Eastern Orthodox, Islam, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, and Judaism) and speak a wide array of languages from different language families. Russian is spoken primarily in the Russian Republic but is considered by Moscow as the lingua franca throughout the Union. The languages in the western part are Ukrainian and Belorussian (also belonging to the Slavic family), Estonian (of the Finno-Ugric language family), Moldavian (a Romance language close to Romanian), Lithuanian, and Latvian. To the south of Moscow but west of the Urals, Udmurt, Mari, and Mordvin are spoken. The peoples of the Caucasus speak Georgian, Armenian, and a few languages of the Turkic and Iranian families, including Ossete and Kurdish. Many other Turkic languages are spoken in Central Asia, southern Siberia, and in the Urals, including Uzbek, Kirghiz, Kazakh, Azerbaijani, Karakalpak, Tatar, Meskhitian, Chuvash, Yakut, and Gagauz (which is also spoken by the Gagauz minority in Moldavia).

In spite of this national and linguistic diversity, the USSR was hierarchically ruled until the Gorbachev era by a single entity—the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU). The philosophical foundation of the Party's rule was that the elimination of class divisions would lead to ethnic harmony, and the Soviet Union's federal structure expressed this idea in constitutional terms. The Party based its political domination of the republics on the principle of democratic centralism, or subordination to the highest unit of administration, i.e., Moscow.

The philosophical, constitutional, and political approaches of the pre-Gorbachev regimes to national diversity generated serious tensions but did not necessarily lead directly to the disintegration of the superpower. The Soviet Nationality Reader is intended to help the student understand how past Soviet regimes dealt with the nationalities question and how their legacy contributed to the present nationalities crisis. The book also assesses the effect that Gorbachev's reforms had on the unraveling of this system of rule and his government's attempts to cope with the crisis it unwittingly unleashed.

This volume offers material on many aspects of the nationalities question, aims to include diverse scholarly views that have enduring relevance, and seeks to impart a sense of the major issues and conflicts in academic debates concerning the Soviet nationalities. Part I provides a historical overview of the emergence of the Soviet Union and introduces the main concepts of Leninist and Stalinist ideology that guided later policy. The material in Part II outlines the development of Soviet federalism and suggests the particular problems federalism faces in a multinational socialist state.

The remainder of the anthology assesses particular policy problems, all of them affected by the important problem of control. The Marxist-Leninist approach to politics and the economy called for a strict centralization of control through Party and government institutions in Moscow, but both the country's federal structure and its national diversity inhibited the efficacy of such central control. Finding suitable elites and political cadres to administer the republics, then, was imperative (Part III). Likewise, the centralized, Stalinist command economy served Moscow's interest in industrialization, but it aggravated interethnic tensions and did not eliminate conflicts between the republics and Moscow over the distribution of resources, regional development, and local economic autonomy (Part IV). To prevent a Tower of Babel of more than a hundred languages, Moscow implemented a language policy that encouraged the use of Russian in order to provide an effective means of communication throughout the country. This policy, however, clearly clashed with the interests of non-Russians, for whom language is a sensitive matter, involving strong emotional and historical ties (Part V).

All Soviet leaders since Lenin proclaimed the goal of eliminating nationalism; many Western academics argue that the final goal of many of the country's nationalities polices was to prevent national consciousness from becoming a force that could be marshaled into an oppositionist movement. Part VI evaluates the extent to which nationalism threatened the stability of the Soviet regimes prior to Gorbachev and discusses the nationalist movements that brought about the Soviet Union's federal crisis. Finally, Part VII assesses Gorbachev's reform program, how it contributed to the federal crisis, and the measures Gorbachev took to resolve that crisis.

II

The Soviet nationalities question refers to ethnopolitics and the issue of self-determination, "Ethnopolitics" generally describes the political activities—mobilization, use of resources, planning, stratagems, and the like—of elites and masses of different nationalities who make specific claims vis-à-vis other national groups and Moscow and who may or may not seek independence. It also encompasses a set of regime strategies—in addition to coercion—to prevent national groups from seeking independence, to respond to national claims, and to solve the problems generated by the Soviet Union's widely diverse ethnonational composition and federal structure.

Combined, the problems impinge upon Moscow's capacity to rule with complete independence. Moscow had to implement policies concerning the recruitment of political leaders in the republics, the promotion of republic elites into the central government and Party bureaucracies, which languages would be spoken in the republics, which languages would be taught in schools, and how to make regional economic development more equal. These policies, and the responses to them, often pitted the major nationalities, represented by the union republics, against the "center." The nationalities question also encompasses the issue of how the Soviet nationalities have historically tried to gain more control over their destinies and emphasizes Moscow's interest in eliminating nationalism, or at least in minimizing its effect on politics.

At the time of the formation of the Soviet Union, many nationalities wanted to form independent states, but the Bolsheviks employed tactics ranging from enticement to coercion to convince them to join the Soviet Union (see Chapter 2). Stalin's policies halted quests for national autonomy and cultural independence, but after his death the republics once again sought greater autonomy in policy-making (see Chapter 3). Nikita Khrushchev and Brezhnev had to deal with increasingly bold expressions of nationalism from the minorities and with more demanding political claims from the republic elites. This situation continued throughout the early part of the Gorbachev reform period; after 1988, however, the relaxation of coercion permitted the emergence of radical demands for independence. The Khrushchev and Brezhnev periods witnessed rising national tensions, but the Gorbachev period gave rise to a real nationalities crisis.

Most of the chapters in this volume are devoted to pre-Gorbachev nationalities problems in order to define the context in which the USSR's nationalities crisis has unfolded. A rich and useful scholarly literature is now appearing on the evolution of this crisis.³ Some parts of this literature are represented here (mainly in Parts VI and VII, which deal most directly with the current crisis), but the material in this book is by no means a comprehensive sampling. All the literature included here should encourage the student to understand the origins of the Soviet Union's federal crisis not only as the "unintended consequence"⁴ of Gorbachev's reforms but also in terms of what he inherited from the Brezhnev era.⁵

III

Since the fundamental crisis of governability confronted Gorbachev's government with problems that differed significantly from those of the Brezhnev era, his response to the nationalities problem also differed from that of his predecessors.⁶ During the Brezhnev era, the regime had firm faith in Marxist-Leninist ideology, which subjected the understanding of nation and nationalism to class analysis. The nations was viewed as an epiphenomenon of bourgeois society, and the victory of socialism in the USSR meant that national differences would gradually disappear. Members of the USSR's diverse nationalities were proclaimed to be embracing class rather than national identity and to have a stronger sense of Soviet patriotism than of loyalty to their respective ethnonational groups. As part of the construction of a communist state, the effort to erase wide economic disparities across the USSR would supposedly provide the material basis necessary for members of national groups to abandon their national loyalties and emotional ties (see Chapter 10).

The formula "national in form—socialist in content," inherited from Lenin's approach to the Soviet federation, explains how national diversity in social life could supposedly persist under socialism. National republics and federal forms of economic and political organization could continue to exist because they helped to fulfill socialist goals and to implement policies conceived in Moscow; national cultures could flourish—primarily in the teaching of national languages, folk dances, and other harmless manifestations—so long as they carried the message of socialism (see Chapter 13). The national question—the problem of self-determination and autonomy—was therefore solved: National integration (internationalization) was taking place voluntarily, or so the regime claimed.

The quasi-totalitarian regimes of Brezhnev, Yuri Andropov, and Konstantin Chernenko were politically stable.⁷ Coercion kept most expressions of nationalism underground and in the samizdat ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Editor's Note
• Map
• General Introduction
• About the Book and Editor
• About the Contributors