DEVELOPMENT OF OUTLYING NATIONAL AREAS DEVELOPMENT NATIONAL OF OUTLYING AREAS , Prison of Nations Union o~ Equals Common! Cause Emancipation of Women National in Form and Socialist in Content Health Comes First The Future of the Outlying National Areas We want a voluntary union 0/ nations-a union which precludes any coercion 0/ one nation by another­ a union founded on complete. confidence, . on a clear recognition 0/ brotherly unity, on absolutely voluntary consent. (~) COlO3 COBETCKWX COLUfAJU1CTW~ECKWX PECfiY6JJ"K L'UNtON DES REPUBUOUES SOCIALISTES SOVIETIOUES THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS DIE UNION SOZIALISTISCHER SOWJETREPUBLIKEN F or centuries the world's progressive people dreamt of the time when the nations would forget their feuds and join in one great family. This dream first came true in multinational Russia after the victory of the Great -October Socialist Revolution of 1917, which gave power to the working people. Several days after the Revolution the Soviet Government adopted -the Declaration of Rights of the Peoples of Russia, drawn up by Lenin. The Declaration proclaimed new principles of relations_ between nations, of a kind history had never known b~fore, it proclaimed full democra­ tiiZation, the right of peoples to equality, so­ vereignty, free self-determination and did away with all national privileges and restrictions. But before this equality could be translated into reality, it was necessary to overcome the economic and curtural backwardness of -the country's many nations and nationalities and establish all-round cooperation and brotherly mutual aid between them. Such relations could only be achieved through a voluntary union of nations on a democratic basis-on the bilsis of freedom and equality. Lenin had come to the conclusion that the most rational and just form of such a union would be a multinational socialist state based on the principles of autonomj and federation for .- the _ smaller nations-the Union of Soviet So~iali-st R~puplics. This little pamphlet tells how Lenin's ideas concerning the development of the outlying national areas were put into practice. Prison of Nations Pre-revolutionary Russia was a multinational power inhabited by over a hundred different nations and nationalities. The worjcing people ~f the vast empire were oppressed by the Russian tzar, by his military and civil administration. The small nationalities suffered from twofold oppression: from the Rus­ sian monarchy and their own national exploiters. The laffer enjoyed( the active support of the clergy of many religior:ls and foreign capitalists, notably the French, Belgian, British, German and American capitalists, who controlled many of RtJssia's key industries. Thus, as soon as rich oilfields were dis­ covered in Azerbaijan and lat!,r, near the town of Grozny, the American and European mono'" polies used every pretext, but most often direct economic pressure, to get control of these riches and to extract millions in profits, while the Caucasians who worked the mines eked out a meagre existence. Workers in the outlying national areas put in, as a rule, a 17-18-hour day for which they received a mere piffance. The life of farm la­ bourers in pr~-revolutionary Russia's E~stern out­ lying areas was probably the hardest of all. There men earned 86 roubles a 'year, women­ 56 roubles and adolescents-33 roubles whereas economists estimated that an adult had to spend 98 roubles per .annum on food alone. As a' re­ sult workers were perpetually in debt with the' boss. The peoples of the Eastern outlying areas' were subjected to a most cynical kind of exploi­ tation. Prices for consumer goods and food im­ ported to these areas wer!! exorbitantly high while prices for the exported primary goods were extremely low. Thus sugar and tea cost four times as much there as in Central Russia, 7 a 7-rouble samovar sold for 14 roubles, a 2-rouble iron pot sold for 50 roubles. Tax-col­ lecting and usury were a curse. Foreign, Russian and local industrialists and big landowners seized the be'st land, driving off the indigenous population into desert and mountainous areas. With the permission of the Russian authorities especially 1arge areas of land were handed to foreign concessior1ers by the Emir of Bukhara on the eve of World War I. The lot of the small peoples of Siberia was utterly unbearable. Taking advantage of the backwardness of the local population, enter­ prising businessmen made fabulous fortunes by bartering trinkets, salt and hunting gear for gold, fine furs and precious stones, _On top of economic oppression there was the political diSfranchisement -and cultural back­ wardness of the peoples of the national out'­ lying regions in pre-revolutionary Russia. It was easier for the landowners and capitalists to keep in subjection people who were ignorant. This explains why in pre-revolutionary Tajikistan, for example, only one person in 2,000 people was literate. -Kh. Salibayev, Honoured Teacher of the Tajik SSR, recalls the following episode: "It happened some 50 years ago in my native village. At the height of winter a - villager whose surname I do not remember, - but whose first name was Sharif, received a -letter f~om his brother in Fergana. He had left the village, _in search of a better life, and for a long time nothing was heard from him. Then came the long-awaited letter. The joy of the relatives knew no bounds. But they were illiterate and could not read it. Sharif went from house to house looking for a man who could read. But alasl None of the 300 adult villagers could read. Sharif took the scrap of paper and began to cry. The peasants consoled him and advised him to go to the neighbouring village which was situated beyond a high mountain pass. And that is what he had to do'" Many peoples in the multinational outlying 8 areas had no written language. Tbe Northern peoples. such as Chukchi, Evenki, Nanaitzi, ete., were absolutely illiterate and lived in utter ignorance. The overwhelming. majority of the people in Central Asia and other national. outlying regions, too, were illiterate. Three quarters of the popu­ lation in pre-revolutionary Russia· could neither read nor ·write. Hunger and cold, exhausting labour, poor sanitary·conditions contributed to the outbreaks of .such appalling dfseases as plague, cholera, smallpox, typhus. The. situation was further ag­ gravated by poor health- ~·ervice. Thus, in what is now Uzbekist~n; there was one doctor per 50,000 inhabitaots.. 'MaIJY nationalities in the North did not even know there was such a thing as qualified medical aid. The death rate wa~ higher than in most European countries, in the USA and Japan. In 1913,. it stood at 2.91 per cent. Child mor­ tality was especially high, with nearly two mil­ lion children (a. ·quarter of all babies born) dying before the age of one. To keep the numerous .peoples in subjection the bourgeois and landowners' Government of Russia re.sorted to inciting national hatred. Brutal exploitation, hunger and national op­ pression, disease and ignorance· were the lot of millions in pre-revolutionary -Russia, which was justly called a, prison of the peoples. 9 Before the revo- l\"> lution women in Ceittral Asia had to wear veils over their faces. Tilling the land' in Central Asia in 1910 Kazakh coal mi­ ners, Karagan­ da, 1903.. A fisherman's home on ihe Barents Sea at the beginning of the century. Union of Equals On the eve of the October Revolution the Communists in Russia faced the formidable task of creating new relations between the nationa­ lities inhabiting the vast country. The difficulty lay in the fact that capitalism had pushed na­ tional mistrust and alienation to the hilt. The Great October Revolution of 1917 gave power to the working people., The Second Con­ gress of So-.:iets which was held in those me­ morable days proclaimed Russia a Republic of the Soviets of Workers', Soldiers' and Peasants' Deputies. The Declaration of Rights of the Peoples of Russia, 'which renounced the old policy of ex­ ploitation and of setting one nationality against another and proclaimed the policy of "volun­ tary and honest unior, of the peoples of Russia," was, along with the Decree on Peace and Decree on Land, one of the first major documents' of the Soviet Government. The Declaration set down the bed-rock principles of Soviet national policy: equality and sovereignty of the peoples. of Rus­ sia, their right to free self-determination including secession and formation of Independent states. All national and religious privileges, which had over the centuries become prevalent and lega­ lized by Russian tzarism, were now cancelled. All the peoples, large and small, inhabiting. Russia, enjoyed equal rights. A People's Commissariat for Nationalities was formed under the Soviet of People's Commissars (Soviet Government) charged with practical di­ rection of the policy concerning the nationa-' lities. Finland, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Tuva, a small mountain country on the border between Mongolia and China, later availed themselves of the right to self-determination to secede from the young Soviet Republic. 12 In the early months or" the Revolution and in the course of the Civil War the heroic struggle of workers and peasants of the national outlying areas led to the f~rmation of the first Soviet Republics: the Russian, Ukrainian, Byelo­ russian and Transcaucasian, the latter being a fe­ deration of Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia. The road of the Soviet Republics to state­ hood was a complicated one. However, they all . wanted to unite to fight counter-revolution and foreign intervention. The forming of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1922 was telling proof of the suc­ cessful implementation of the Declaration ot Rights of the Peoples of Russia.