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Assimilation and Soviet Nationalities Policy

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Assimilation and Soviet Nationalities Policy Soviet Nationalities Policy and Assimilation Forthcoming in Rebounding Identities: The Politics of Identity in Russia and Ukraine (Cambridge University Press), edited by Blair Ruble, Nancy Popson and Dominique Arel. Dmitry Gorenburg Harvard University [email protected] In recent years, students of Soviet and post-Soviet nationalism have developed a consensus that Soviet nationalities policy unwittingly strengthened ethnic identity among minority populations in the Soviet Union. This view overly simplifies the actual thrust of Soviet nationalities policy in the post-Stalin period. The Soviet government pursued a dual course toward its minorities, enacting assimilationist policies at the same time as it maintained and even strengthened the ethnic institutions that were established in the 1920s. The slogan “national in form, but socialist in content,” symbolizes this dual approach. The national “forms” of ethnic republics, titular control of regional governments, and separate political and academic institutions for these republics all acted to reify and maintain ethnic identities. At the same time, the Soviet government enacted policies that favored the use of Russian. Officially, Russian was labeled the language of interethnic communication, but speaking Russian became an essential element of participating in Soviet society. Since language use is generally a zero-sum decision, promoting one central language inevitably led to a decline in use of competing national languages. And since language, in turn, is a key component of ethnic identity, the shift in language use away from national languages led to an increase in ethnic assimilation of members of non-Russian minorities. While the institutionalization of ethnicity did reinforce ethnic identity among certain segments of the minority population, the assimilation policy had a remarkable effect in a relatively short period of time. The ethnic institutions established by Soviet 1 policies strengthened the ethnic identity of many members of groups that had official homelands within the Soviet Union by privileging ethnic identity attributes over those of class, location, or religion.1 The effects of these policies were variable, depending on location and type of homeland region. These institutions operated locally, within the homelands, so that members of minority groups who lived elsewhere in the Soviet Union were particularly vulnerable to assimilation. The number and strength of ethnic institutions within the Soviet ethnic republics also varied depending on the republic’s status in the Soviet Union’s four-tier ethno-federal hierarchy. (Gorenburg 2003) Inhabitants of union republics, which had the most extensive networks of ethnic institutions, were on average less vulnerable to assimilation than inhabitants of autonomous republics, provinces, or districts, which were permitted to have progressively fewer ethnic institutions. Finally, the extent to which ethnic institutions prevented the assimilation of particular individuals depended on the extent to which these institutions played a significant role in people’s lives. For example, native language education and native language print media were more prevalent in rural than in urban areas. Theaters and academic institutes catered to city dwellers, but were used primarily by those with a connection to the countryside (Gorenburg 2003). Other than variation in the extent of ethnic institutions, the factors that influenced the extent of variation in the level of assimilation included the number of Russians in the region and their settlement patterns, the extent to which Russian was known and used among that nationality prior to the nation-wide shift in favor of Russian language education and use, and the extent of linguistic differences between Russian and the national language of the republic. 1 For more on identity categories, and the attributes that make up these categories, please see Arel’s introduction to this volume. 2 This paper begins with a critical discussion of the consensus that has recently emerged in the scholarly community on the impact of Soviet policies on assimilation and develop an alternative perspective that links Soviet nationality policies and trends in assimilation of minorities. In the following two sections, I develop a model of the assimilation process and present data that demonstrates the extent of assimilation in the Soviet Union by 1989 and describes the trends in assimilation from 1959 to 1989. I conclude by discussing the political consequences of assimilation during the late Soviet period. Identity Promotion, Assimilation or Both? The views of Western scholars on Soviet nationality policies have changed over time. In the 1970s and 1980s, most scholars believed that the Soviet government was engaged in an extensive and deliberate program of Russification that was aimed at destroying minority languages and cultures (Conquest 1986). This viewpoint was consistent with the dominant paradigm of the Cold War, which portrayed the Soviet Union as first and foremost a repressive state that aimed to eradicate all differences among its citizens in its efforts to create a “new Soviet man.” With the end of the Cold War and the concurrent explosion of nationalism in the Soviet Union and throughout the former Communist world, this dominant view was replaced by its opposite. The current dominant perspective among Western scholars is that not just the policies but even the very structure of the Soviet state strengthened ethnic identity among Soviet minorities. In this section, I show that this new conventional wisdom has gone too far in neglecting the extent to which the Soviet state was successful in assimilating part of its non-Russian population even as it strengthened the ethnic identities among other non-Russian Soviet 3 citizens. I argue that scholars must recognize the tension between identity promotion and assimilation that was an inherent part of Soviet nationality policy throughout the Soviet Union’s existence. But first, let me set out the argument of those who see the Soviet state as predominantly engaged in the promotion of ethnic identity. In the words of Ronald Suny (1993), the Kremlin “foster[ed] the development in many republics of native cultures, encouraging education in the local languages, and promoting, through a peculiar form of affirmative action, cadres from the dominant nationality.” This argument was initially formulated by Suny and Yuri Slezkine (1994), and is perhaps must succinctly articulated by Rogers Brubaker (1996). Suny argues that the policies of nativization strengthened the national identities of the dominant ethnic groups in Soviet ethnic republics. (1993, 155-6) This outcome was not the intended consequence of Soviet policy, but did result in making national identity the most important form of identity for Soviet citizens. This situation came about because Bolshevik efforts to create a federation that was national in form but socialist in content resulted in the institutionalization of ethnicity through ethnic republics and passport identification. This institutionalization, it is argued, strengthened ethnic identification among minorities by forcing a single and unchangeable ethnic identity upon each person and by establishing incentives for individuals to identify as members of a minority ethnic group within their titular republic. The personal ethnic identity was enshrined in the internal passport, which listed nationality. Personal nationality was noted in almost all official transactions, was transmitted by descent, and was formally unchangeable across generations except for the offspring of interethnic marriage, who could choose either of the parents’ nationalities when they received their passports at the age of 16 (Brubaker 1996, 31). The incentives 4 provided by ethnic republics included preferential treatment in education and employment, native control of most ethnic republics, and policies designed to promote native cultures. (Brubaker 1996, 29, Slezkine 1994, 450, Suny 1993, 155) These scholars argue that as a result of this combination of personal and territorial institutionalization of ethnicity, minority ethnic identities were strengthened throughout the Soviet Union. Rogers Brubaker notes that the Soviet state, “established nationhood and nationality as the fundamental social categories.” (1996, 23) Similarly, Suny argues that, “Identification with nationality was for most non-Russians a far more palpable touchstone than the eroded loyalty to social class.” (1993, 121) This view that the Soviet Union fostered ethnic identification by institutionalizing ethnicity represents the new conventional wisdom among students of Soviet nationalities policy. Scholars who follow this line of reasoning tend to underestimate the success of Soviet efforts to assimilate minorities. Brubaker, for example, argues, “The regime had no systematic policy of ‘nation-destroying.’ It might have abolished national republics and ethnoterritorial federalism; … it might have ruthlessly Russified the Soviet educational system… It did none of the above.” (1996, 37) Suny, while aware of the policies that “pulled non-Russians toward acculturation, even assimilation,” (1993, 125) argues that Soviet nativization policies on the whole strengthened minority ethnic identities. (1993, 155) Another recent study argues that minorities “experienced little linguistic Russification during the postwar period,” (Kaiser 1994, 295) despite presenting census tables that provide contradicting evidence.2
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