NATIONALITES OF RUSSIA: LEGACIES AND REVENGE

Depending on their theoretical and methodological approaches, political orientations and ethnic engagements, scholars and politicians  give different interpretations to the meaning and content of ethnic phenomenon, to the history of interethnic relations and causes of ethnic conflicts in Russia and other areas of the former Soviet Union. The dominant paradigm among the Russian and foreign experts is that of the "disintegration of an empire" and of the "national revival" of the peoples of the former USSR. Such a concept presupposes that the major reason behind the USSR's disintegration as multiethnic state was the diminished status and discrimination of the non-Russian peoples whose culture and indentity were forcibly deformed to conform to the official concept of the "merging of nations" and of constructing a single "Soviet people".

The inspiration and main conclusion drawn by the supporters of such an approach (which we shall term "radical-democratic") consists in that the Soviet Union had been the last empire on the Earth of the late 20th century and that like all the empires of the past it had to disintegrate to obey the laws of history. As an historian Yurii Afanasyev has put it, "the USSR is neither a country nor a state. The Eurasian territory thus mapped is a world of worlds comprising different cultures and civilization, ... and the USSR as a country has no future" (1). The main amongst the factors of disintegration is the insuperable urge on the part of each people to attain its national sovereignty and to realize its right to self-determination. The latter is a historical regularity that has realized itself in all the other regions of the world but not on the territory of the USSR because of the totalitarian regime there.  “The Soviet Union is a last empire which is covered by the world process of colinization started since the end of the Second World War... Our state was developing artificially and it was based on violence” (2). 

On the whole, this concept leans upon some strong arguments and in many respects it is difficult to call it in question. First, the USSR, like its predecessor - tsarist Russia, was an empire-type state entity whose history was marked by numerous conquests, territorial expansion, colonial methods of rule, and cultural assimilitation of ethnic groups by the dominant Russian language and culture. Second, the communist regime had a long record of crimes and contemplated acts of violance against the former Soviet nationalities as committed particularly during the period of Stalinism. Among these crimes there were acts of genocide in the form of mass deportations and repressions, annexation and liquidation of sovereign state entities, disastrous destruction of the environment and undermining of the traditional subsistance systems of a number of ethnic groups as entailed by inefficient methods of economy and by the realization of military programmes. Third, the Soviet State pursued a semi-official Russian-language policy in the form of the "international" communist ideology and suppressed any attempts to establish cultural autonomy by any of the ethnic minorities if these attempts were not sanctifies by the power of the central or peripheral elites. Fourth, the Center and the ruling communist bureaucracy strictly regulated the daily life of the citizens, violating their rights and freedoms and ignoring the interests connected with ethnic culture and values.

Thus there were sufficient reasons for the disintegration of the USSR and for the ethnic crisis in the post-Soviet space. But is it that having taken place, this crisis goes on and deepens further in the conditions of liberalization and democratic reforms? Why is it, moreover, that the ethno-national movements and disintegration have not been initiated by the most discriminated groups as might have been expected? Why is it again that ethnic conflicts, wars and purges did and do take place not between the dominant people - Russians and those who are obtaining their "national independence" but mostly between or towards minorities? And, at last, why is it that the processes of "national revival have turned so soon from allies of democracy to its opponents and have acquired the forms of narrow ethnic nationalism and of post-totalitarian xenophobia and violance? No answers to these questions are supplied either by the imperial model or by its later modifications as explaining the conflicts of today by a conspiracy of some pro-imperial conservative forces, by the agony of a disintegrating monster-state or by the degeneration of national democracies (3)

Among Russia's scholars in social sciences there is also one other trend to explain the history of the so-called nationality question in Russia and the today's ethnic problems. I term this approach tentatively as protectively conservative as it consists essentially in finding distortions or faults admitted in the domain of nationalities politics, in the departure from some "ideal" principles or in some irresponsible political improvisations of recent years by neophyte politicians (4). The weak point of such arguments is the same simplification in approaching the complex phenomenon of ethnicity, and trivial positivism that was and remains characteristic of the Marxist-Leninist theory of nations and of its academic variation.(5) In this chapter we suggest our own interpretation for the historical background of ethnic problems in Russia.

Ethnic map of Russia as a field of the Bolshevik’s experiment

The revolution of 1917 took place in a huge country - by the end of the 19th century the territory of Russia was 22.5 mln square kilometres - among whose population 1897 Census registered 146 languages and dialects as reflecting approximately the total number of Rossian (i.e. nationalities of Russia). The multiethnic composition of the State's population has evolved in the course of a few centuries' territorial expansion in the form of both military expansion, colonization and development of new lands as initiated by the State whose role was played first by the Moscow Principality and then by the so-called Russian centralized State.

The main ethnic component dominant at the political center was composed of Eastern Slavic tribes whose cultural basis gave rise later to the ethnic communities of Russians, Ukrainians and Byelorussians. However, from the earliest stages in its formation the Russian State's population included into its composition Finnish, Baltic, Turkic and other non-Slavic groups. The ethnic mosaic grew particularly complex after the 16th century addition of the Volga area to Russia and after her thrust unto Siberia began. In the 17th century added to the State's composition were Ukraine, West Siberia and a part of the Caucasus, and in the 18th-19th centuries joined by force or through the use of peaceful means were East Siberia, Caucasus and Central Asia. As of 1897 the population of the Russian empire was 125.7 mln people (6).

With relation to "inorodtsi" (the term was applied to denote non-Slavic populations, particularly, non-Orthodox ones) the policy of Russian monarchy was that of social oppression and cultural assimilation. Widely practised was confication of lands inhabited by authochthone in favour of the State, landlords and monasteries, the latter being the main means of spreading Orthodoxy among the "inorodtsi". There existed a system of various taxes and requisitions applied to this category of the population as well as a practice of non-equivalent goods exchanges, i.e. there existed all the well-known forms of colonial policies which had been used by the states of the Old and New Worlds during their formative periods both in the Middle Ages and in Modern times. Unlike the classic European empires Russia was specific in that the home country was not separated by any geographical territories from the peripheries she colonized. Moreover, the ethnic periphery was extremely diverse in the levels of modernization of its population and in the political consolidation of that population. Siberia and the Far East were inhabited mostly by different and small groups of hunters and gatherers, but the same territory was the place of formation of the early States of a number of Turkic and Mongolian peoples (Siberian Tatars, Yakuts, Buryats). By the time of their joining Russia Central Asia and Transcaucasus had had a long tradition of statehood and developed civilizations whose cultural and political community rested in their formation on dynastic, religious or regional principles.

The so-called indirect method of government was applied rather widely in the Russian empire: some of the areas and cultural communities inhabiting them possessed different degrees of autonomy and self-government. Serfdom and universal military service applied mainly to the Russian population. A few centuries of inter-ethnic communication and contacts resulted in a high measure of mutual cultural influences and integration especially between the Slavic and Turkic peoples. Many representatives from the periphery became incorporated into the social-class elite of Russia as such. Local nobility, political and religious leaders retained social control over their co-tribals and had a special alliance with the All-Russian ruling elite. In the second half of the 19th century the Russian empire's periphery saw a growth of national movements echoing in spirit the East-European social-democratic ones which embraced the peoples within the range of the three major imperial entities: the Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and Russian (7).

WWI and the Versailles treaty put an end to two empires which were supplanted then by a number of new "national" states. A similar process began in Russia too: after the overthrow of the monarchy there in Februry 1917 Finland and Poland acquired their political independence. In the early years of the Bolsheviks' advent to power independence was proclaimed by the Ukraine, Transcaucasian republics (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Abkhazia) and the Baltic countries (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia). Movements for autonomy sprang up and widened among the major peoples of the Volga area (Tatars and Bashkirs). The role of initiators of these movements and of ideologists of nationalism was played by local intelligentsia which had been educated in Petersburg and Moscow or else at some secular or religious centers abroad. The social democratic programmes and ideas of Austrian Marxism concerning the question of nations and national self-determination became popular among that part of the population. Russian Social Democracy also paid much attention to this question. It was back in 1913 that Stalin wrote his work "Marxism and the question of nationalities" and offered his definition of a nation as "a historically developed and stable community of people that has emerged on the basis of the community of their language, territory, economic life and psychological make-up as manifest in the community of culture... Absence of at least one of these traits is enough for a nation not to be a nation" (8).

In contrast to their political opponents whose slogan was "one and indivisible Russia", the Bolsheviks were in support of national movements among the non-Russian peoples. The very first document adopted at the 2nd All-Russia Congress of Soviets October 25, 1917 declared that the Soviet power "shall provide all the nations that inhabit Russia with the genuine right to self-determination" (9). November 2nd, 1917 the "Declaration of rights of the peoples of Russia" was promulgated as signed by Lenin to include the following major provisions: a) equality and sovereignty of the peoples of Russia; b) the right of peoples of Russia to free self-determination up to separation and formation of independent states; c) abolition of every and any national and national-religious privileges and restrictions; d) free development of national minorities and ethnographical groups inhabiting the territory of Russia. Immediately after the Declaration the government published an appeal "To all the toiling Mouslems of Russia and the East" which promised Mouslem peoples respect to their religion and rights and called upon them to support the socialist revolution (10). Within the first Soviet government a special body was set up - People's Commissariat for the Affairs of Nationalities (Narkomnatz) - which was headed by Stalin.

The Bolsheviks' declarations and intentions found enthusiastic support on the part of the nationalistic movements of the country's periphery and provided the new power with the support it needed from among the non-Russian population. It was probably the fact that having declared itself to be an internationalist movement, Marxism in Russian actually included into its programme the doctrine of ethnic nationalism, which explains the rather easy accession of Bolsheviks to power and the victories they won over their opponents in the years of the Civil war. Two major postulates of the doctrine were particularly attractive in the polyethnic country. First, recognized as the basis for a nation was an ethnic group with a set of inalienable characteristics, including its own territory, community of economic ties, common language and distinct socio-psychological mentality. Although Lenin used the term rather loosely, Stalin made the said definition later a canon which remains predominant in the public ideology and political practice even to this day. Second, as a condition for the existence and development of a nation was recognized the presence or absence of its own statehood within whose territory members of a relevant group are declared to be representatives of an "aboriginal nation" and the rest of the citizens - a "non-aboriginal population".

The doctrine's utopism is comparable with the utopia to establish full social equality, for ethnicity cannot serve as exclusive basis for statehood or even for the state's internal division. At the same time this doctrine enables representatives of one group or, more correctly, its elite to formulate its right to secession or to an exclusive status within a given state, especially with reference to such questions as access to power and resources and established of official culture institutions. Such a challenge to Bolsheviks was formulated at once within the framework of their own doctrine and thrown to them by the nationalist parties in the Ukraine, Armenia, Georgia, Baltic Sea area and in other regions of the country. The process of disintegration of the former Russian empire and of the formation of new states was interrupted in the course of the Civil war when the victorious Red Army reestablished Soviet power over almost all of the territory with the exception of the Baltic Sea area.

As they consolidated their power the Bolsheviks actually eliminated the right to secession from their programme and labeled the supporters of the idea to form independent national states as "bourgeois nationalists". Since then on, by the way, the term "nationalism" has taken firm root in the Soviet lexicon as the synonym to chauvinism and racism carrying a dinstinctly negative connotation with it. The term continues its existence in this capacity even in the Russian political language of today and diverges thus from the polysemantic term "nation" as used in the world's literature (11).

To bourgeois nationalism they opposed "proletarian internationalism" which meant essentially that the solidarity of the toiling people of Russia in the name of the common revolutionary cause required that they be united within a single state. Lenin wrote: "We want the largest state possible, the closest union possible and the greatest possible number of nations living next to the Great Russians: we want this in the interests of democracy and socialism, in the interests of drawing into the struggle of the proletariat the greatest possible number of toiling people of different nations" (12). The Bolsheviks decided to realize the right to national self-determination within the borders of a single state. Such a state was to be built on the principles of "socialist federalism" as different from "bourgeois federalism" in that the internal division of the state was to be based not on the simple principle of administrative territories but on the principle of "national statehoods'. It was already in January 1918 that the 3rd All-Russia Congress of Soviets announced that "the Soviet Russian Republic was established on the basis of free nations as a federation of Soviet national republics" (13).

It was from that moment that a giant social experiment of the so-called "national state building" began with the aim of creating, to use the words of the American historian R.Suny, "the only state in the world built on the ethnic principle" (14). For the sake of its realization the first Soviet Census of the population was held in 1920 and included into its programme specifically a question about nationality, i.e. about ethnic belonging of the respondents (prior to that the official counts of persons in Russia were taken on religious or linguistic principles). It was thus for the first time that the practice of official state registration of ethnic belonging was introduced and allowed one exclusive identity only: every citizen was to indicate his/her nationality after one of his/her parents, i.e. to indicate it in line with the blood kinship principle. Later on this practice of social racism was consolidated by the introduction of a passport system in 1934 according to which every citizen's passport had to have an obligatory entry on the nationality of its owner which he/she had no right to change thereafter. While surviving to this day in the post-Soviet space, this practice stands in contradiction to the very nature of ethnicity, the latter being frequently mobile and multiple in character, especially, among the ethnically mixed population.

From its very beginning the project met with its main difficulty, i.e. with the impossibility to draw actually administrative boundaries along the ethnic ones: from the territorial point of view the country's population in many of its areas was ethnically mixed and the boundaries of ethnicity itself were extremely shifting which made it impossible to determine distinctly even the very nomenclature of Soviet nationalities, saying nothing about outlining their "own" territory for them. Having been drawn upon to do the work of fixing "national boundaries, ethnographers and other experts undertook to territorialize ethnicity and gave a powerful impetus to the development of ethnic cartography in Russian ethnography since. In the final analysis, however, the following two priorities were taken into account: advantages for a formerly oppressed nation, for whom "its own" statehood was being created, and the interests of economic development in the case of national republics and regions under formation. That was exactly why territories with predominantly foreign ethnicities were included into the boundaries of many national units formed. Not the least important in their role were some purely volitional and subjective factors that is sympathies and aversions of the Kremlin's leaders and of Stalin himself, before all, as well as possibilities for lobbying and pressure from below on the part of local elites. 

Let us consider just a few instances of such "building". Thus, early in 1918 in virtue of the initially prevalent opinion about a reportedly high degree of merging between Bashkirs and Tatars a decision was adopted to form the Tatar-Bashkir republic. However, in March 1919 a decree was promulgated to form Bashkiria as an autonomous republic but at that time its territory was embracing but the eastern regions with their predominantly Bashkir population (the so-called Malaya Bashkiria /Bashkiria Minor/). In 1922 the republican boundaries were expanded up to their modern size. However, within these new borders which included all of the more or less significant Bashkir populated areas, the Bashkirs themselves became a minority numerically inferior to the Russians and Tatars there. Established as the capital of the republic was an industrial center - the city of Ufa with practically no Bashkir inhabitants at the time. A no less interesting situation developed in the case of the Armenian enclave in Azerbaijan- Nagornyi Karabakh. The long and heated debates concerning its belonging were resolved in the long run by the Caucasian Bureau of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) /Russian Communist party of Bolsheviks/ which had been threatened by the head of the Government of Azerbaijan N.Narimanov to stop the deliveries of kerosene from Baku. a consequential role was played also by the position of Turkey the then leader of which Kemal Ataturk who was bent on achieving rapprochement with the Bolshevist regime.

The process of creating ethno-national units was most intensive in 1918-1922. After the proclamation of the Russian Soviet socialist republic (RSFSR) in 1918 Soviet power was established 1920 in the Ukraine and Byelorussia and the government of the RSFSR recognized their independence, having signed bilateral agreements with them. 1920 Soviet republics were established in Azerbaijan and Armenia and in 1921 in Georgia. In 1922 these republics were amalgamated into the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet republic.

Within the new states in their turn new ethno-territorial units began to appear because the numbers of aspirants to have "their own" statehood proved to be much greater than the Bolsheviks probably supposed first. In this way one more innovation of the "socialist federalism" was born - a kind of hierarchy of ethno-national units of the Russian "matreshka"-type. In order to substantiate it later a special political theory about different in their developmental levels types of ethnic communities was elaborated. The larger (i.e. numbering more than 100 thousand members) and higher modernized groups were termed as nations and the smaller ones as "narodnost(i)" (a derivative from the Russian word "narod" with the diminutive meaning of a nationality or a people). The former had the right to their own statehood in the form of a Union or an Autonomous republic while the latter were entitled to have some lower forms of national-administrative status. However, even in this case much was dependent on the resedential compactness of a given group, the degree of its political consolidation and on some other factors frequently subjective too. Moreover, in a number of areas the ethnic principle could not be observed strictly especially where the more powerful basis for collective identity was supplied through many centuries not by the ethnic culture but by religion, dynastic or regional belonging . Such was the situation, for example, in Central Asia and North Caucasus.

1918 within the RSFSR the Turkestan Autonomous republic was set up as outlined by the borders of the former Turkestan territory which was inhabited by numerous ethnic groups with a complex tribal structure. 1920 saw the establishment within the RSFSR of the Kirghiz which was later called Kazakh Autonomous republic. The same year, after the overthrow of the power of the Khan of Khiva and of the Emir of Bukhara, the Khorezmian and Bukhara republics sprang up to be recognized initially as sovereign states by the RSFSR's government.

1918 in the North Caucasus created first was the Soviet Terskaya oblast (Terst region) which included the territories inhabited by the Tersk Cossacks, Kabardinians, Ingush, Chechen and other peoples. In 1920 the Kalmyk autonomous oblast came into existence. 1921 the so-called "raskazachivanie" (i.e. the dispossession of the Cossacks), which meant deportation to Siberia of the Cossacks unloyal to the new regime, was followed by a new reorganization: The Terskaya oblast was supplanted by the Gorskaya autonomous republic from whose composition were detached almost immediately three independent autonomous oblasts: Kabardino-Balkarskaya, Karachai-Cherkesskaya and Chechenskaya ones. In 1924 the Gorskaya republic was liquidated and on its territory the North-Ossetian and Ingush autonomous oblasts and Sunzhenskii okrug (territory) were formed with one common administrative center at the city of Vladikavkaz. In 1928 within the composition of the Stavropol krai (territory) the Cherkess autonomous oblast was set up. In 1921 the Abkhazian autonomous republic has appeared and later it joined Georgia under the treaty. Two more autonomies aroze within Georgia: for the southern Ossetes and for the Islamized Georgians (Adjars).

The establishment of Soviet power in Central Asia and in the North Caucasus was accompanied by cruel repressions and mass migrations of a part of the local population to the countries of the East and the West. The areas were left by a few hundred thousands of people who were mostly representatives of the aboriginal elites and ordinary participants of the armed basmatch and mokhadjir movements. They have made up a numerous diaspora of these peoples abroad. These diasporas has been completely isolated from the country of exodus for many decades and with the process of liberalization representatives of abroad communities started to play important and contradictory role full of sympathy to radical scenarios and of revenge motives.

In the early years of the Bolsheviks' government in the Volga riverand the Urals areas a few autonomies of different levels were formed for the Germans, Bashkirs, Tatars, Chuvash, Mordvinians, Mari and Komi. In 1921 on the territory of the Crimea the Crimean autonomous republic was organized. In the North and in Siberia a few national entities of different levels emerged too: the Karelian autonomy, the Buryat autonomous oblast, the Yakut autonomous republic, the Oirat autonomous oblast, the Nenetz and Khanti-Mansi national okrugs and others.

In December 1922 the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) took shape and in 1924 the first Soviet constitution was adopted (15). However, the process of raising ethnicity to the status of statehood within the former USSR did not come to the end at that. During the 1920s the fixing of national-territorial boundaries in Central Asia continued: on the basis of the Turkestan, Khorezmian and Bukhara republics a few new republics with their borders brought closer to the ethnic ones were formed for the Uzbeks, Turkmen, Tajiks, Kirghizes and Kazakhs. Up to 1936 their status and territories changed several times. Howeverd, the attempts to achieve ethnic homogeneity of the population failed all the same. A significant portion of the Uzbeks remained to live in Kirghizia and Tajikistan, the Tajik-populated regions around Bukhara and Samarkand were included into the Uzbek republic, and because of some economic reasons included into the composition of the Kazakh republic were northern regions whose population was predominantly Russian.

In the 1930s numerous other national-territorial entities came to existence, their appearance accompanied with new changes in borders and statuses. The USSR's constitution of 1936 registered the State's structure as consisting of eleven Union and twenty Autonomous republics but soon the Constitution suffered changes too. The 1939 Pact of Molotov-Ribbentrop enabled Stalin to annex western Byelorussia and western Ukraine as well as Bessarabia. The latter's territory together with the Moldavian autonomous republic, which was in the composition of the Ukraine before that, constituted a new republic. In 1940 joined to the USSR were three Baltic states and in 1944 - Tuva. By the time of the disintegration of the USSR its composition included 53 national-state entities: 15 Union and 20 Autonomous republics, 8 autonomous oblasts and 10 autonomous okrugs.

The history of national-state building in the USSR has left in the memory of its peoples numerous traumas and conflict-charged problems which came to be manifest later in the conditions of the "perestroika" era. However, it is not that easy to evaluate such a large scale project aimed at realizing the doctrine of ethnic nationalism from the positions of today.

Between the policy of repressions and prestige

This kind of an experiment proved to be possible within one single state only because of the totalitarian regime there. Stalinism was ruthless and unmerciful to any manifestations of an initiative not sanctioned from above and to any displays of local nationalism. But the main specific feature of Soviet policy with relation to nationalities was its double-faced nature and contradictedness, a huge gap between the idea and its actual implementation, between the expectations and the practical results. This duplicity made itself felt as early as in the first years of the Bolsheviks' rule. In June 1923 a conference of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) with the responsible workers of the national republics and oblasts was held in Moscow. On Stalin's initiative the conference's agenda included discussion of the question about Sultan-Galiyev - Chairman of the Federal Land Committee and a prominent Tatar political leader. By that time some of the republics had already begun realizing certain steps and measure to affirm their real sovereignty particularly in the sphere of economy. Bashkiria, Tataria, Chuvashia and Turkestan demanded more independence in managing their stocks of land with the allowance for local conditions. The central government did not want to share power with the republics and those who supported their demands were accused of nationalism. Sultan-Galiyev was included into this category and false accusations about maintaining ties with the enemies of Soviet power were put forward against him. Sultan-Galiyev became the first noticeable victim of Stalinist provocations: after the removal from his posts he was arrested and shot in a few years. The conference put an end to any discussions on the question of nationalities in the country and ushered in a long history of ruthless repressions against leaders of the national republics. Victims to those repressions were many outstanding political figures and workers of culture of the Ukraine, Caucasus and Central Asia.

At the same time, however, the same conference adopted a programme of steps and measures to develop economy and culture in the national republics, to enlarge political representation of non-Russian nationalities, and a number of other useful and positive decisions (16). That was especially true with relation to the so-called policy of "korenization" (nativization) (17) which remained for many years one of the priorities on the Kremlin's programme. The policy provided for expanding education and training for managerial workers, economic executives and intelligentsia from among the "native nationalities" in the republics. This new elite was to effect the system of indirect government and to bring the Communist doctrine into life under the strict control from the Center. Similar systems were practised rather widely in many colonial empires (18). Through the use of repressions and privileges the regime was actually able to exercise effective control over the periphery in the course of many decades.  

But it would be erroneous to consider the nationality politicies as separate from the general context of struggle for power in Kremlin. As can be seen from the materials of the 1923 Conference in the first years of the Bolshevist rule Stalin was in favour of creating some state forms for smaller ethnic groups to weaken the positions of representatives of the larger ones who could be serious opponents to him in the struggle for control over the center. The struggle against "Sultan-Galiyevism" was spearheaded in fact not so much against the Turkic peoples as against the growing tension between the representatives of Moscow and Kiev as well as against his opponents in the central leadership. The analogy drawn by Stalin in 1923 between the Mensheviki and the "nationalism of the country's outskirts" (19) and the appeal to fight the latter were meant to help him and his supporters consolidate their indisputable authority within the party and the country, and in the end the plan worked.

Through all the period of their government the policy of Bolsheviks in the question of nationalities was characteristically subordinate to the basic ideological doctrine to create homogeneous in their social nature "socialist nations" of toiling people which would have, according to the very theory, no contradictions between themselves but, on the opposite, a process of their rapprochement was to begin. The "homogeneity" was to be achieved with the help of severe repressions against "bourgeois elements" among the very nationalities. During the years of the Civil War and immediately after classed among such elements were the groups of Russian Cossacks - a specific socio-cultural layer of the population mostly of the Russo-Ukrainina ethnic origin that formed in the course of a long historical period along the southern periphery of the state and had some specific political functions and a specific way of life.

The repressions against Cossacks began back in 1919, and according to the estimates of experts their victims totaled approximately 1,250,000 persons. In April 1921 alone, seventy thousand Cossacks of both sexes and of all ages were deported by force from the North Caucasus to Kazakhstan and Siberia. That was the first major act of genocide against a culturally different group of population. Apart from being merely criminal on the whole, it exerted an extremely negative effect on the sphere of interethnic relations for many and long decades, like any other acts of force against entire peoples. In the deportation zones and in the country as a whole old grudges, contradictions and rivalry between different groups revived especially in the conditions of social deprivations and tyranny of the authorities of different levels. In the case of the Cossacks, for instance, it was inevitable that the memories the mountainous peoples of the North Caucasus kept about the cruelties of the Caucasian war of the last century, in which the tzarist government used Cossacks to "subdue" and colonize the Caucasus, revived anew. It was with cynical simplicity that Stalin himself explained the situation in his speech at the Congress of the peoples of the Terskaya oblast on November 17, 1920; "Soviet power tried to protect the interests of Cossacks from violation... But the Cossacks behaved themselves more than suspiciously. They were looking somewhere else all the time and wouldn't trust Soviet power... Soviet power was patient for a long time but any patience has its limits... There was no way but to take some severe measures against them, some Cossack settlements at fault had to be deported and repopulated by Chechens. The mountainous people have taken it that now the Terek Cossacks could be offended with impunity... If the mountainous people do not stop the excesses Soviet power will punish them with all the strictness of the revolutionary power" (20). These "punishments" were really not long in coming but on a different occasion.

The most serious act of genocide committed were the deportations and organized hunger in the course of the campaign to disposes the kulaks and to effect mass collectivization. Being realized in the 1920s and 30s, the policy affected, before all, the regions of the Ukraine, south Russia and today's Kazakhstan. Its victims were, before all, representatives of the larger peoples, i.e. Ukrainians, Russians, Kazakhs, but the antikulak struggle and repressions were taking place all over the country and victimized many peoples from the Azerbaijaninas to the small peoples of the North (21). In 1932-33 from Kuban area with its most prosperous rural population alone two million people were deported. During the period of forced collectivization of 1931-32 in Kazakhstan 2.5 million Kazakhs died of hunger or left the places of their residence because of the destruction of the traditional mode of nomad economy and social ruin. Many of them migrated to China.

Immediately after the "complete victory" of the kolkhoz system, i.e. from the mid-1930s purely ethnic deportations began. On many occasions their aims could hardly be explained by anything else but mad geopolitical fantasies of the "leader of the peoples" or his maniacal suspiciousness. Some of the considerations present were to use the labour force for industrial projects. An undeclared but highly probable aim of deporting a whole number of nationalities was also the authorities" idea to simplify the internal ethnic mosaicity of the country which would not fit the scheme of forming "socialist nations" on the basis of national state formations. Sometimes deportations or provoked by official enthusiasm resettlements were aimed and realized in order to repopulate the places depopulated as the result of previous repressions. Behind some of the deportation, especially in the case of smaller ethnic groups from national republics, stood the initiative of local authorities which shared willingly the policy of ethnic intolerance.

The first purely ethnic deportation was realized with relation to the Koreans of the Far East. An organized departure of the Koreans from the Far East to Kazakhstan was carried out first in 1935, and in 1937 all of them together with the Chinese were moved by force to different areas of Siberia and Central Asia under the pretext of the necessity to "strengthen the border". The secret decision of the Soviet government of September 8, 1937 "On the resettlement of the Koreans" had it that "the resettled Koreans shall be transported by trains as economically formed collectivities, taking agricultural equipment and fishing tools with them (!)". There was no explanation in the decision as to how the maritime Korean fishermen could engage in fishing in the desert and steppe areas of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan (22). In 1937 some part of the Kurds and Turks were deported from the Transcaucasian republics, and in 1939-40 mass deportations began from the newly joined areas of Bessarabia, West Ukraine, West Byelorussia and Baltic Sea regions.

The outbreak of the war with Germany served as the ground to deport the Germans residing in the Volga areas. A decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of August 28, 1941 offered the following explanation which confirms once again our remark concerning the irrationality of the acts of Stalin and possibilities for his regime to practise unlimited terror: "According to the reliable data obtained by the military authorities, among the German population residing in the areas of the Volga river, there are thousands and dozens of thousands of saboteurs and spies who must make explosions upon a signal from Germany in the areas populated by the Volga Germans.

No one of the Germans living the Volga area has reported the Soviet authorities about the presence of such a great number of saboteurs and spies among the Volga Germans - it follows then that the German population of the Volga areas hides in its midst enemies of the Soviet People and Soviet Power" (23). Similar versions concerning "collaborationism" were also used for further deportations in the war period of 1941-45. Totally deported from the North Caucasus were the Karachai people (Dec.1943), Ingush and Chechens (Feb.1944), Balkars (March, 1944). Deported in December 1943 were Kalmyks, in May 1944 - Crimean Tatars, in November 1944 - Meskhet Turks and Khemshids from Georgia, in June 1944 - Greeks from the Crimea. The territorial autonomies of the repressed peoples were abolished and their lands were either redistributed among other republics and oblasts or some new administrative units were set up in their stead. Repressions and deportations continued after the end of the war too.

By the time of the death of Stalin in 1953 the total number of deportees with the statues of so-called special migrants constituted 2,753,356 people, including 1.2 million Germans, 316 thousand Chechens, 84 thousand Ingush, 165 thousand Crimean Tatrs, 100 thousand Lithuanians, 81 thousand Kalmyks, 63 thousand Karachai people, 52 thousand Greeks, 50 thousand Meskhet Turks, 45 thousand Moldavians, 40 thousand Letts, 20 thousand Estonians (24). These figures do not account for those imprisoned, shot or died of hunger and diseases.

The conditions of life of the "special migrants" were hard and humiliating. These people were used mostly to perform physical labour, they were limited in their civil rights and were denied the possibility to practise their cultural and religious customs and traditions, to teach their children in their native languages, to be engaged in managerial and pedagogical work. Their young people were restricted in access to higher education. The most sever restriction that survived up to 1957 and for some peoples (Crimean Tatars, Ingush) up to the very recent years was prohibition for them to return to the places of their former residence. Most of the deportees could return to their native places soon after 1956 following a series of governmental decisions to remove restrictions from the "special migrants". The Checheno-Ingush, Karachai-Cherkess, Kabardino-Balkarsk and Kalmyk autonomous republics were restored although far from always in their previous borders. Some of the Kalmyk territory remained in the composition of the Astrakhan oblast and part of Ingushia - in the composition of North Ossetia. 

In the years of the Stalinist regime the repressed peoples lived through a tremendous physical and moral trauma - the trauma of humiliation and loss of their collective dignity which fact together with some territorial problems have been projected directly onto the modern political situation and served as one of the major causes of the aggravation of interethnic relations and conflicts. The problem of the repressed peoples was aggravated because of the limited character of the rehabilitation measures and their slowness and, in some instances, because of a disguised or open counteraction against these measures on the part of various forces and some layers of the population. It was only on November 14, 1989 that the Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopted its Declaration "To recognize as unlawful and criminal the repressive acts against the peoples subjected to forced resettlement" and April 22nd 1991 and Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation adopted the law "On rehabilitation of the repressed peoples".

However, before undertaking an analysis of the modern period in the history of the nationality question in Russia let us consider the second line in the ideology and political practice of the Soviet regime which helps to understand deeper the essence of the processes taking place in the country in the past and the nature of the present day's problems. We have already mentioned the deep contradictoriness of the Bolsheviks' aim in the nationality question: on the one hand, they pursued a hard policy of repressions and hypercentralized power, and on the other - they were carrying out a policy of national-state building as accompanied with support for prestigeous institutions and elites as one of the means to preserve the state's integrity and to exercise totalitarian government.

Although guided by the motifs of prestige and propaganda, the Soviet regime spent much efforts and resources to substantiate the declaration about "complete resolution of the nationality question". Encouraged in the republics and among the numerically small peoples were the development of education (their own written languages and textbooks have been developed for 57 ethnic groups) and culture in its professional forms (music, theatre, literature, cinema) as well as the development of the attributes of national statehood (Academies of sciences, professional unions of creative workers and mass information media, publishing, higher education). It was already in the pre-war years that as a result of the nativization policy amongst the major Soviet nationalities there formed their own intelligentsia and managerial personnel as well as influential party bureaucracy (25).

The 1960s and 1980s were a special period in the history of the Soviet nationalities. During that period the gap was practically liquidated that existed in the social structure of the main ethnic groups as a result of preferences in the sphere of education and urbanization processes. The average educational standards and, especially, the percentage of persons with university diplomas and scholarly degrees in the national republics grew considerably higher than the All-Union indices, i.e. much higher than among the main population of the country - Russians (26).

The social expectations and the real power of the peripheral elites that grew up in this connection were supplemented in some instances by the operation of some conflict-pregnant demographic factors: the numerical growth of a majority of the non-Russian (or, more exactly, of the non-Slavic) peoples was much ahead of that of the Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians and of the peoples of the Baltic Sea area. During the period between 1979 and 1989 the size of the Russian population in the USSR increased by 5.6%, Ukrainian - by 4.2% and Byelorussian - by 6%. During the same period the numerical growth among the Uzbeks and Turkemn was 24%, Kirghizes - 32%, Tajiks - 45% and Azerbaijaninas - 24%. The 1970s were marked by the beginning of the process of growing ethnic homogenization in the majorit y of the republics in favour of their titular nationalities. The main reason for this development was the departure of Russians from areas of Central Asia and the Transcaucasus. However, in such republics as the Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Byelorussia, Latvia and Estonia the share of Russians increased, on the contrary. In the former case it was only natural that the claims and competitiveness on the part of the titular groups to control the institutions of power and distribution of resources grew up. While in the latter case it was the growing anxiety to lose the dominant majority in their "own" republics and become subject to an even greater degree of acculturation in favour of the Russian culture.

A contradictory influence was exerted on the ethnic situation by the Soviet state's economic policy too. From the very first years of the Bolshejviks' government there existed an official aim to liquidate the economic backwardness of the national republics. In the agricultural areas industrial enterprises were built specifically for the purpose to ensure the growth of the working class which was considered by the regime to be its main stronghold. During the post-war period most modern units of industrial production were located in the republics to assist in the accelerated urbanization of the population. However, such measures did not interfere with the introduction in some republics of the monocultural agrarian economy which has had a detrimental effect on the surrounding medium as it was, for example, in the case of cotton-growing in Central Asia.

On the whole, the unitary strategy of development and the inculcation of the single Russian-language ideology from the Center resulted in the formation of similar socio-professional structures and many common cultural and value orientations among the Soviet nationalities (27). The emergence of the doctrine on the formation of the "single community of Soviet people" in the country was not an accident. However,dramatic differences in the cultural traditions, levels of industrial development, demographic behavior and in the political culture have survived all through the Soviet period. As correctly noticed by some authors "the attempt to introduce a monolithic and homogeneous super-structure into an extremely diverse mosaicity of cultures has met with a considerable opposition and in many regions of the country has yielded but very modest results. What is very importantly is that the Soviet politics has preserved and enlarged the gap in the development levels between the Union republics" (28). 

While the central power was remaining strong enough and able to control the composition and activities of the local administrations, while suppressing at the same time any attempts at organized nationalistic movements, it was in a position to secure tolerance and agreement on the part of the key social groups with the idea and reality of the existence of a single polyethnic state. But as soon as the power and the single ideology weakened the very foundation of the nationalities policy turned to be undermined. Ethnicity as the foundation of group solidarity and ethnic nationalism as a political doctrine threw their challenge to the existent status-quo. In many respects that was an unexpected answer to the programme of reforms and liberalization formulated from above by M.Gorbachev. It was a kind of "national answer" to the nationalities question. It was the summing-up result of the previous social engineering and at the same time a grand improvisation as created by people and politicians in the course of multivariant history.

Ethnic policy from Gorbachev to Yeltzin

When Michael Gorbachev was starting liberal reforms in the Soviet Union nobody could foresee what an explosion of ethnic problems was in store for the country. One of the reasons of such a development of events was the multiple role ethnicity and nationalism play as the most easily accessible and understandable foundations for group mobilization and action in the circumstances of the break-up of the centralized power and communist ideology. Another cause of this unexpected turn of events was the rather contradictory and voluntary nature of the nationality policies conducted by the political leaders in response to the ethnically formulated challenges. The political traditions of communism combined two characteristic features in themselves as detrimental to the exercise of a democratic mode of government in polyethnic societies: first - a doctrine and practice of ethnic nationalism, and second - a hypocritical policy of double standards which combined both seemly declarations and suppression by force.

As is well known, the first serious challenge to the policy of gradual decentralization initiated by .Gorbachev came from the Baltic republics where the nationalist movements embarked on the path of secession from the Soviet Union. Their example was followed by the movements for independence in Georgia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine and Moldova. These conflicts between the Center and the periphery were mostly of a vertical and purely political character but they were accompanied also by some sporadic displays of intercommunal violence and political conflicts at the lower levels - between non-Russian titular nationalities and local minorities in several republics (Meskhet Turks in Uzbekistan; Armenians in Azerbaijan; Gagauzes, Ukraininas and Russians in Moldova; Uzbeks in Kirghizia). The deported peoples, which lost their political status in Stalin's time (Crimean Tatars, Volga Germans and others), or, more exactly, the leaders and activists of their movements began formulating programmes to restore "their own" statehood.

The Center proved to be poorly prepared to undertake serious steps, to conduct negotiations and make concessions necessary as an answer to the said challenges. The Center's reaction was mainly impulsive and oriented mostly to the policy of force and secret repressions. While some leaders of the Communist party and expert-scholars were trying to transform the official policy with relation to nationalities and to include the revised approaches to the political platforms and juridical documents (preparing, for example, a new Union agreement with the republics) the adherents of the use of force were suppressing the rising opposition in Tbilisi, Baku and Vilnius. Even the local actions of minorities as, for example, in Nagorni Karabakh were used in some instances to manipulate the situation in the regions, all of this not without an approval from the higher echelons of power, include M.Gorbachev personally. Such an inconsistent and unclear policy served only to provoke more dissatisfaction and destroyed illusions concerning the ability of the Center and the Communist regime to provide more authoritative powers and freedom to the "non-dominant" nationalities and peripheral territories.

The ethnic policy of the "perestroika" period proved to be a grant failure and the fact was exploited by Gorbachev's opponents as the main argument to abolish the Soviet Union. This event can be considered at the same time as a great achievement of the leaders of the main non-Russian groups who were able to dismember the USSR peacefully. The irony of the situation is that the initiator of the disintegration was the Russian leader Boris Yeltzin who signed an agreement with the leaders of the Ukraine and Byelorussia on the creation of the Commonwealth of Independent States despite his earlier promises not to destroy the Soviet Union. It was a gigantic political improvisation not preceeded and its possible consequences. B.Yeltzin and his nearest advisers were prisoners of the same so-called Marxist-Leninist theory of the nationalities question which knows the only solution to the problems of polyethnic societies: national self-determination up to and including the right to secession (29). The new leaders of Russia have inherited the deeply contradictory views of their predecessors on these question and have repeated much of the same contradictory policy. In the process of struggle for presidency Boris Yeltzin gave outspoken promises to give the "ethnic territories" of Russia "as much sovereignty as you can swallow" and to restore all the abolished ethnic autonomies. In April 1991 the Supreme Soviet adopt the Law on rehabilitation of the repressed peoples which provided a juridical basis for the claims of many groups. But no procedures to implements the Law's provisions into life and no appropriate resources have been provided for.

It is obvious that ethnic conflicts have not disappeared with the disintegration of the Soviet Union. In some regions they have evolved into protracted wars and ethnic cleansings. The war in the Nagorni Karabakh area has taken 13,000 human lives and made one million people refugees. Furthermore, twenty five million Russians have found themselves in the position of "new minorities" within the "newly independent countries"; they are frequently treated as second-rate citizens and became open to acts of violance there. The situation has become one of the main and unexpected consequences of the "removal" of ethnic problems as well as one of those main suppositions of Yeltzin's team which has turned to be erroneous. Dmitri Saims explains this in the following way:"... when the Soviet Union took the path of disintegration, the attitude to the "nearest foreign countries" was based on desired expectations and considerations: because all the post-Soviet nations had been in their time victims to the Communist regime they would be able to cooperate harmoniously with due attention for each other's interests. Moreover, there was an obvious hope that Russia as the far more powerful among the new independent states, will be readily accepted as the first among the equals" (30). But the reality proved to be different. Under the impact of events the Minister of foreign affairs Andrei Kozyrev was obliged to state in the end that the government intends "to firmly defend the interests of the Russian-speaking population and support it everywhere as necessary" (press-conference at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Nov. 22nd, 1993).

But the most alarming factor for the reformers was disintegration of the Federation. Many of its twenty constitutent republics decided to exploite the paralysis of central authorities in Moscow and take their own path. Tatarstan chose the line of hard political debates and did not recognize the Federal constitution and Law. Beginning from 1992 the federal organs of authority in Russia began taking serious steps to overcome difficulties in the ethnic questions. In March 1992 all the subjects of the federation, except the Chehchen and Tatar republics, signed the Federal agreement in the Kremlin which distributed powers of authority. The fact of signing was presented as the major success of the national policy of B.Yeltzin which would prevent disintegration of Russia. In reality, however, the Federal agreement reflected once again the double-faced character of the policy orientated to the things desired: to declare the republics "national states" but to blockade their aspiration with the help of the bureaucracy of the Center and directives.

In spring 1993 the Federal authorities began to depart from ethnic nationalism and started introducing some elements of polyculturalism and territorial federalism into the political process. The new Constitution of Russia as adopted in the course of the elections of December 12th 1993 confirmed the existant structure of the state consisting of 63 administrative territories (i.e. of 63 krais and oblasts) and 21 ethno-territorial entities (republics and autonomous oblasts). But at the same time the special status of the republics was called into question because all the units of the federation have been provided with equal rights and powers and omitted from the text was the conflict-provoking provision concerning "sovereignty". Since then the republics are defined not as "national states" but as "states". However, in the daily life of politics the former term survives and is even used at such a high level as it was done then by Minister for nationalities affairs and regional policy Sergei Shakhrai in his writing about prospects of the Russian federalism (Nezavisimaya gazeta, 26 February 1994).

In his annual message to the new elected Federal Assembly B.Yeltzin deserted in 1994 the past tradition of ethno-nationalism. It's worth stressing that for the first time in the Soviet and post-Soviet history the country's leader spoke about great contradictions in the previous national policy. "A great number of national (one should read: ethnic) problems is caused by the contradiction between two principles underlying the basis of the state system of the Russian Federation: i.e. between the national-territorial and administrative-territorial ones. Today, when the distribution of powers between the federal organs and the subjects of the federation is taking place, this contradiction has become absolutely clear. In the contemporary conditions there is a historical necessity to combine the two principles. At the same time this contradiction will be decreasing due to the new meaning of nation as co-citizenship, registered in the Constitution" (Rossiiskaya gazeta, 25.02,1994).

References:

1. Afanasiev Y. // Time, 12 March 1990: 52.

2. Starovoitova G. Nationality Policies in the Period of Perestroika: Some Comments from a Political Actor. -  From Union to Commonwealth: Nationalism and Separatism in the Soviet Republics. Eds.: Lapidus G., Zaslavsky V. Cambridge University Press, 1992, p.119-121.

3. See, for example: Chervonnaya S.M. Abhazia: poslekommunistichesraya Vandeya (Abkhazia: post-Communist Vandee) M., 1993.

4. See: Cheshko S.V. Ideologia raspada (The Ideology of Break-up). Moscow: Institute of Ethnology and Anthropology, 1993;  Razdelit li Rossia uchast’ Souza SSR? (Will Russia share the Fate of the Soviet Union?) Eds.: Bagramov E. at el. Moscow:       1993.

5. See chapter 1.

6. On the history of ethnic population of Russia and USSR see works written by Brook S., Kabuzan V., Kozlov V., Urlanis B.

7. Gellner E. Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983; Hobsbawm E. Nations and Nationalism Since 1780: Programme, Myth, reality. Cambridge University Press, 1990.

8. Stalin.I. Works. Moscow: Politizdat, 1951-1952, vol. 2, p. 296-297.

9. Lenin V. Polnoie sobranie sochineni (Complete Works), vol.35, p.11.

10. Ibid., p. 113; Dekreti Sovetskoi vlasti (Decrees of Soviet Power), vol.1. Moscow: Politizdat, 1957, p. 40.

11. See bibliography to chapter 4.

12. Lenin V. Polnoie sobranie sochineni (Complete Works), vol. 30, p. 379.

13. Istoria nazional’no-gosudarstvennogo stroitel’stva v SSSR (History of National-State Building in the USSR).  Ed, by D. Chugaev, Moscow: Misl, 1968, p.94.

14. Suny R.  Nationalism and Ethnic Unrest in the Soviet Union. - “World Policy Journal”, Summer 1989, vol.6, no.3, p.17. On ethnic boundaries see: Barth 1969.

15. On of the best work on the issue is still Pipes R. The Formarion of the Soviet Union: Communism and Nationalism, 1917-23. Cambridge: Harvard University press, 1954.; See also: Kozlov V. Nazional’nosti v SSSR (Nationalities of the Soviet Union). Moscow: Statistisc, 1982.

16. See recently published minutes of the meeting: Taini nazional’ni politiki ZK RKP (Secrets of the nationality policy of CC of RCP). Moscow: Insan, 1992.

17. On kerenization policy see: Yakubovskaya S. Obrozovanie I razvitie sovetskogo mnogonazional’nogo gosudarstva (The Formation and development of the Soviet multinational state). Moscow: 1966; Dahshleiger G. Social’no-ekonomicheskie preobrazobeniya v aule I derevne Kazahstana (Socio-economic transformations in rural Kazakhstan), 1921-1929. Alma-Ata, 1965; Lieber G. Soviet Nationality Policy, Urban Growth, and Identity Change in the Ukrainian SSR, 1923-1934. Cambridge University Press, 1992.

18. Clientilism system was a subject of many research.

19. Taini ..., p.84.

20. Stalin I. Works, vol.4, p. 117.

21. Conguest R. The Haverst of Sorrow. Soviet Collectivization and the Terror Famine. London: Hutchinson, 1986.

22. Deportazii narodov SSSR (Deprtations of the Peoples of the USSR), 1930-1950. Part 1. Moscow: Institute of Ethnology and Anbthropology, 1992, p.32.

23. Ibid., p.34.

24. Argumenti I fakti, 1989, no.39, p.8; Bugai N. K voprosu o deportazii narodov SSSR v 30-40h godah.- “Istoria SSSR”, 1989, no. 6, p. 135-144..

25. See: Sovremennie etnicheskie prozessi v SSSR (Contemporary Ethnic Processes in the USSR). Ed. by Y.Bromley.Moscow: Nauka, 1977.

26. Drobizheva L. Duhovnaya obchnost narodov SSSR (Spiritual commonality of the peoples of the UUSR). Moscow: Nauka, 1981; Simon G. Nationalism and Policy Toward the Nationalities in the Soviet Union. Boulder: Westview, 1991.

27. See: Social’no-kul’turni oblik sovetskih nazii (Socio-cultural Profile of Soviet Nations). Ed.by Arutunyan and Y.Bromley. Moscow: Nauka, 1986.                                                                                                                                                                   

28. From Union to Commonwealth: Mationalism and Separatism in the Soviet Republics. Ed. by Lapidus G. and V. Zaslavski. Cambridge University Press, 1922, p.3.

29. See, f.e.: Connor w. The National Question in Marxist-Leninist Theory and strategy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.

30. Simes D. The Return of Russian History. - “Foregn Affairs”, vol. 73, no.1, p.78.