American Academy of Political and Social Science Ethnicity in the Soviet Union Author(s): Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone Source: Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 433, Ethnic Conflict in the World Today (Sep., 1977), pp. 73-87 Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. in association with the American Academy of Political and Social Science Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1043229 . Accessed: 17/09/2013 04:36 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Sage Publications, Inc. and American Academy of Political and Social Science are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.119.168.112 on Tue, 17 Sep 2013 04:36:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ANNALS,AAPSS, 433, September1977 Ethnicity in the Soviet Union By TERESA RAKOWSKA-HARMSTONE ABSTRACT:In the Soviet Union, ethnicity is the major force for change. It is a multiethnic society, where the Russians constitute the ruling majority. The country's political system recognizes the ethnic principle in a federal state structure, but the real power is exercised by a unitary and highly centralized Communist party. The ruling ideology of Marxism-Leninism postulates class-based internation- alism as the basis of Soviet national integration. Ethnic antagonisms, inherited from Russia's colonial past, were submerged in the Stalinist period, but growing ethnic self- assertion by non-Russian groups became visible in the sixties and seventies, under the impact of accelerated moderniza- tion and other policy decisions, such as the development of ethnic cultures. Quantitative and qualitative hegemony of the Russians has been a major catalyst. New Soviet educated elites are the spokesmen for ethnic interests, which are aggregated within national republics. Ethnic conflict man- ifests itself in all spheres of political, social, economic, and cultural life, but is played by systemic "rules of the game." There is no open separatism or ethnic warfare. Ethnic forces press for an evolution toward greater autonomy, but if it is denied, there may be an explosion. Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone is a Professor of Political Science at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Educated at Montreal's McGill University, Radcliffe College, and Harvard University, she also taught at Douglass College, Rutgers University, and, as a Visiting Professor, at McGill and George Washington University. A Director of the Institute of Soviet and East European Studies at Carleton in 1972-74, she is the author of Russia and Nationalism in Central Asia; the Case of Tadzhikistan and other contributions on Soviet national relations and politics of Eastern Europe. 73 This content downloaded from 128.119.168.112 on Tue, 17 Sep 2013 04:36:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 74 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY HE international and popular an open conflict of a kind present Western image of the Soviet in many other multiethnic societies Union rarely recognizes the multi- throughout the world. The very ethnic and formally federal character nature of the Soviet political system of the Soviet State. The usual per- precludes that. Marxist-Leninist ide- ception is that the Soviet Union ology, which is the source of legiti- is synonymous with "Russia." This macy for the monopoly of power is so, first, because in the Soviet the CPSU exercises in the country, Union the Russians are the dom- denies the existence of conflicts inant nation, quantitatively and quali- other than those based in class tatively, their historical hegemony exploitation, and postulates, ex ca- having survived intact the 1917 thedra, that with the achievement Revolution and the transition from of socialism the class and ethnic Imperial Russia to the Soviet "in- conflicts in the USSR have both ternational workers'" state; second, disappeared. The theory is that the because the highly centralized na- unity of the Soviet nations and ture of the Soviet political system, nationalities stems from the class- run by the unitary Communist Party based "proletarian internationalism" renders the federal constitutional (all Soviet citizens, of whatever state structure largely irrelevant for nationality, are the "working people") the purposes of international Real- and that the "national problem" politik. Only rarely is one reminded in the Soviet Union has been solved of the federal nature of the USSR, precisely because of the duality of as in the case of Soviet demands the Soviet political system. The to grant full United Nations' status national character of each ethnic to all of its constituent national group is safeguarded in the con- republics, or an attempt to have stitutional national form, but their one or another republic acting as a overriding class-based unity, the sovereign state in the international socialist content, is expressed by the arena for selective (and transient) leading role of the CPSU-the foreign policy purposes,' which in "toilers"' vanguard and the leading the sixties and seventies, for ex- force in society. Consequently, any ample, resulted in a higher profile open ethnic self-assertion which for the Soviet Muslim republics. transgresses the limits of the "national But, as the flow of exchanges and form-socialist content" formula is data between the Soviet Union and suppressed. But the dichotomy also the West has increased in the post- opens up the avenues for "legitimate" Stalin era, the phenomenon of eth- self-assertion. nicity (the old-fashioned term used The nature and appearance of in the Soviet Union is "the national ethnic conflict in the Soviet Union problem") and the presence of are, therefore, different than in other ethnic conflict there, have become more "open" societies. On the one increasingly visible. hand, the systemic constraints pre- The ethnic conflict in the Soviet vent expression of open separatism Union does not take the form of as well as open ethnic warfare. For this reason there is no agreement among experts whether the highly 1. See Vernon V. Aspaturian, Process and visible of ethnic self- in Soviet Foreign phenomenon Power Policy (Boston: Soviet ethnic Little, Brown and Company, 1971), chs. 14 assertion by major and 19. groups can be defined as nationalism. This content downloaded from 128.119.168.112 on Tue, 17 Sep 2013 04:36:48 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ETHNICITY IN THE SOVIET UNION 75 On the other hand, the legal frame- the major force for change in the work of the system and its ideological Soviet Union. It presents no immedi- premises not only allow the pur- ate threat to the stability of the suit of ethnic autonomy, but also pre- system, but in the long-run the empt the option of a return to an im- build-up of centrifugal ethnic forces perial state based on Russian na- may well contribute to a major tionalism, even though de facto the change in the nature of the Soviet new "Soviet" value system and state as it is today, and may even lead patterns of behavior are permeated to its eventual disintegration. At pre- -for historical reasons-by the sent, the ethnicity-generated change Russian political culture content. is slow and evolutionary, even as In the Soviet Union, therefore, the forces pressing for it are acceler- the forces of ethnicity find their ating. There has been a degree of expression within the system and grudging and conditional recogni- the ethnic conflict is regulated by tion for ethnic demands in Moscow the rules imposed by it. The Russians but no real accommodations, largely, and the Ukrainians or the Uzbeks, one suspects, because the leader- for example, do not fight in the ship cannot find adequate solution streets; on the contrary, professions to the problem and any changes in of "unbreakable unity" and "fra- the present system may open the ternal ties" fill the Soviet media, floodgates of nationalism. Should resound in conferences and assem- there be a violent change in the blies, provide the message in the status quo, however, ethnicity may arts, and form the keynote of official well trigger a revolutionary change. pronouncements. Yet, at the same The subject is too complex to be time the whole fabric of Soviet explored fully in a short article. society is permeated, subtly but Here an attempt is made to dis- unmistakably,by ethnic antagonisms cuss the dimensions and the na- and competition between the dom- ture of the ethnic conflict in the inant Russians and all others in Soviet Union, with special emphasis political, economic, social, and cul- on its sources of growth and the tural life. dynamics of ethnic interaction as All available evidence indicates they evolve under the "rules of the that the rate of growth of the na- game" imposed by the system. tional self-assertion of major Soviet ethnic groups exceeds their rate of SALIENT VARIABLES assimilation into a common Soviet value system. The problem, while Background not officially acknowledged, is rec- The colonial of the heritage Imperial ognized by Soviet leadership. In Russia continues to affect the words of one of relations the key Polit- between the Russians and non- bureau ethnic leaders, antagonisms Russians in the Soviet Union even constitute one of the three main The obstacles on today. Russian colonial expan- the "road to building sion extended into areas communism."2 In the geograph- opinion of ically contiguous, but followed a this writer, the ethnic conflict is now familiar pattern of pursuit of eco- nomic and interests 2.