The Russian Revolution and Stalinism by Graeme Gill & Roger D Markwick

Author:Graeme Gill & Roger D Markwick [Gill, Graeme & Markwick, Roger D]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Russia & the Former Soviet Union, Political Science, General, Political Ideologies, Communism; Post-Communism & Socialism, World, Russian & Former Soviet Union
ISBN: 9781000375992
Google: wAAaEAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 55826207
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-04-25T13:38:06+00:00

Doubting Soviet nationality policy

The first reason for doubting the existence of a Soviet nationality policy is the official Soviet use of the term. Following publication of the 1919 programme of the Russian Communist Party (RCP) (Programma 1919), official statements—speeches, Party programmes—consisted of little more than platitudes concerning the ‘friendship of peoples’, expressed in varying forms. The 1961 Party programme, for instance, talked of ‘a further drawing together of nations and achieving their complete unity’. Soviet nationalities were ‘all united in one family by common vital interests and together march towards the single purpose—communism’ (Programme 1961). The programme went on to acknowledge that national distinctions were not going to disappear imminently, leaving little in the way of concrete guidance as to what policies communists and Soviet institutions should pursue with regard to nationality (Titov 2009). Towards the end of the Soviet era the 1985 draft of Gorbachev’s new Party programme did not depart much from this formula, referring to the ‘further flourishing of nations and ethnic groups and their steady drawing together’ (Nahaylo & Swoboda 1990, p. 236). Both programmes, like most earlier statements, were declarations of an idealised understanding of the current situation, not a guide to action.

The second reason for questioning the relevance of ‘Soviet nationality policy’ and seeing it as little more than an empty phrase is the frequency with which it is prefaced with the words ‘contradictions of … ’. It is not unreasonable to suppose the policy was riven with contradictions, given the official stress on simultaneously preserving difference while striving towards unity implied in the two Party programmes cited above. The phrase ‘contradictions of nationality policy’ (or something very close to it) can be found in the writings of such prominent scholars as Mark Beissinger, Dmitry Gorenburg, Henry Huttenbach, David Laitin, Peter Rutland and Valery Tishkov, as well as being repeated by authors who do not specialise in nationality policy (Osipov 2016). For example, a scholar who understands Soviet nationalities issues probably better than anyone, Ronald Suny laid out the nature of this presumed contradiction in stark terms in an early work: ‘these contradictions went unresolved in official nationality policy and were reflected in the formula designed for the arts “national in form, socialist in content”—and in the confusion over whether the goal of Soviet policy was to solidify the national or to assimilate the minorities’ (Suny 1989, p. 300). Apparently, one and the same policy may have had two goals, which were each the diametric opposite of the other—to promote national difference, and to eliminate it.

The treatment of different nationalities in different ways at different times and by different levels of the Party or state was indeed a feature of the Soviet system. My argument here is not that such contradictory trends did not exist, but that it does not make sense to ascribe them to a policy or set of policies. As I shall go on to show, individual decisions were taken with regard to altogether contingent influences which had nothing to do with any general guidelines over nationality.

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