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The Bolsheviks and the National Question, 1917-1923 Jeremy Robert Charnock Smith "THE BOLSHEVIKS AND THE NATIONAL QUESTION, 1917-1923" ilavq*; % PhD. Thesis The School of Slavonic and East European Studies University of London - 1 - ProQuest Number: 10018671 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest. ProQuest 10018671 Published by ProQuest LLC(2016). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ABSTRACT This thesis examines the formulation and execution of policies towards the various nationalities of the Soviet Republics from the October revolution of 1917 until the formation of the Soviet Union in 1923. Most of the Russian and Western literature on this question focuses on the process of the reincorporation of the non-Russian regions of the former empire into the new Bolshevik-led state. Accordingly, there is a general assumption that the purpose of Bolshevik national policy was to gain the short-term support of the national minorities in the struggle to win the civil war. By examining the material newly released from the Soviet archives in addition to the material previously available, I have concluded that the goal of Bolshevik nationality policies was to "raise the cultural level" of the non-Russians and to eliminate the inequalities arising from economic and historical conditions. The central policies pursued were: the creation of formally independent or autonomous republics and regions; the maintenance, as far as was practicable, of the ethnic homogeneity of these territorial national units by means of rearranged borders and movements of population; the development of a cadre of national communist leaders including the incorporation of sympathetic nationalists into the republican communist parties; encouraging a flourishing national culture through the education system, the use of native languages in the press and administration, and the selective promotion of both historical and new "socialist" cultural traditions; and the development of industry and agriculture in non- Russian areas. The final objective of all these measures was to create and encourage a strong sense of national identity based mostly, but not exclusively, on national territorial units, and through that national identity a loyalty to the Soviet state. - 2 - CONTENTS List of Tables p.4 Abbreviations Used in the Footnotes p.6 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION p.7 CHAPTER 2: MARXISTS, BOLSHEVIKS AND THE NATIONAL QUESTION p.24 CHAPTER 3: THE CASE FOR NATIONAL AUTONOMY - CAUSES AND PROCESSES p.59 CHAPTER 4: BUILDING NATIONHOOD - BORDERS AND STATE RELATIONS p.115 CHAPTER 5; "KORENIZATSIIA” - NATIONAL COMMUNIST LEADERSHIPS p.177 CHAPTER 6: "CULTURAL AUTONOMY" - EDUCATION, LANGUAGE AND CULTURE p.234 CHAPTER 7: THE GEORGIAN CRISIS AND THE FORMATION OF THE SOVIET UNION p.279 CHAPTER 8: THE TWELFTH PARTY CONGRESS AND THE SULTAN-GALIEV AFFAIR p.342 CONCLUSION p.383 BIBLIOGRAPHY p.392 - 3 - TABLES 4.1: Nationality of Workers in Each Republic and Autonomous Region of the USSR in 1926 p.173 5.1: Students at the Ten Main Communist Universities on 1st January 1924 p.226 5.2: Members and Candidate Members of the Communist Party, Compared to the size of Each Nationality as a Proportion of the Entire Population of the USSR in 1926/1927 p.229 5.3: Proportion of CPSU Members and Candidate Members of the Titular Nationality in the National Republics and Regions in 1927 p.230-31 5.4: Percentage of Nationals on Raion, Volost, Okrug and Uezd Ispolkoms in 1927 p.232 6.1: Native Language Education For non-Russian Children in the Republic of their own Titular Nationality in December 1927 p.255 6.2: National Language and Mixed Language Education for Children of the Titular Nationality in the Autonomous Regions in December 1927 p.256 6.3: Four Year Schools in the Byelorussian SSR in December 1927 p.257 6.4: Seven Year Schools in the Byelorussian SSR in December 1927 p.257 (cont.) - 4 - 6.5: Children of National Minorities Receiving Education in their own National Languages in December 1927 (%) p.258-9 6.6: The Growth of Yiddish Schools in Byelorussia, Ukraine and the RSFSR in the 1920's p.262 6.7: Proportion of Turko-Tatar Literates understanding the New Turkic Alphabet in 1928/29 p.271 - 5 - ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE FOOTNOTES RTsKhlDNI Rossiiskli Tsentr dlia Khranenila i Izucheniia Dokumentov Noveishei Istorii GARF Gosudarstvennii Arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii ZN Zhizn natsional'nostei Stalin I.V. Stalin, Sochineniia (Moscow, 1946 ff.) Lenin V.I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii 5th Edition (Moscow, 1958 ff.) Where other editions of Lenin's works have been referred to, this is clearly indicated in the notes. - 6 - CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION At the end of 1991, shortly after I embarked on research on the Bolsheviks and the national question, communism collapsed and the Soviet Union split into 15 parts. It seemed natural enough that, if the Soviet state was to fall apart, it should do so along national lines. At the turn of this century, however, it would have been hard to point to the existence of many of the nationalities which in 1991 asserted their sovereignty against Moscow. The Ukrainians and Byelorussians were not recognised as separate nationalities by the administrators of the Russian empire. The Byelorussian population was distinguished by its language, but showed little sign of national consciousness. In Central Asia the numerous tribes that roamed the steppes or dwelt in villages were often divided for convenience according to language, religion or agricultural methods, but could in no way be described as nations in the modern sense. The emergence of national consciousness and territorial states for many of the nationalities of the former Russian Empire is a product of this century, and especially of the first decade of Soviet rule. The borders of the 15 states were mostly drawn up in this period and their titles and standard languages decided on. Had the Bolsheviks never come to power, or had they chosen to pursue a different set of policies, there is every possibility that the geopolitical map of Europe and Asia would be very different today. - 7 - Wider access to the archives of the former Soviet Union has opened up a wealth of material on the whole period. It is now possible to present a much more accurate picture of Bolshevik thought and practise on the national question. Even without this material, the paucity of recent literature on overall aspects of national policy makes a new study long overdue. Much of the western literature on this question deals with the experience of one nationality or a group of nationalities. Of the works dealing with the nationalities question as a whole in this period the most comprehensive and influential remains Richard Pipes' The Formation of the Soviet Union, first published in 1954.^ Since this book appeared, its broad analysis has been accepted in most subsequent works on the national question and general works on the Bolsheviks in this period. As his title suggests. Pipes' prime concern is to describe the process by which the Bolsheviks gained control of the territories not immediately engulfed by the October revolution and inhabited principally by non- Russians (collectively referred to by Pipes as the borderlands); his secondary aim is to analyse the reasons the Soviet Union came to take the form it did. For Pipes the national question is seen by the Bolsheviks purely as a question of power; "Lenin looked upon national problems as something to exploit, and not as something to solve.Although Pipes treats Lenin's theory of self-determination as a serious development in ^ Richard Pipes, The Formation of the Soviet Union; Communism and Nationalism 1917-1923 (Revised edition, Cambridge, Mass. 1964). ^ Idem, p.49. - 8 - the Marxist tradition, he then dismisses it as "entirely inadequate" as a solution of the national question in Russia, as it offered the national minorities "no choice between assimilation and complete independence", neither of which they desired.^ Pipes argues that Lenin had completely failed to foresee the strength of the centrifugalist forces which would tear the Russian empire apart along national lines, and that faced with this reality he had no hesitation in resorting to the immediate use of force to violate the principle for which he had struggled so hard in the European Marxist movement and within his own party; utilizing Bolshevik organizations established in the borderlands in the days of the Provisional Government, and the Russian troops which to a large extent followed Bolshevik leadership, he overthrew wherever possible the newly formed national republics. The dissolution of the Byelorussian Rada; the attempted coup in Transcaucasia; the invasion of the Ukraine; as well as the suppression of the Moslem governments of Kokand, Crimea, the Alash Orda, and the Bashkir republic....were all a complete violation of the principle of national self-determination.= As Pipes views the principle of self-determination as the beginning and end of Bolshevik nationality policy, once the principle has been dismissed in this way there is little more to be said on Bolshevik aims in this field until the debate on autonomisation and federation in 1922. ^ Pipes, p.49. ^ Idem, p.108. - 9 - Thus, while admitting that the principle of self- determination may have had some success in winning the support of a certain section of nationalists towards the Bolsheviks, Pipes rejects the possibility that their eventual victory in the borderlands can be ascribed to a positive national programme.
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