ACTIVITIES OF THE RSFSR NARKOMNATS (PEOPLE’S COMMISSARIAT OF NATIONALITIES) ON CREATION OF NATIONAL AUTONOMIES

Abstract

The national question was one of the most painful in the multi-ethnic Russian Empire, it sounded especially acute at the beginning of the XX century. In order to attract representatives of different ethnic groups to its side, the new Soviet state pursued a purposeful policy of implementing national-state construction. It should be emphasized that in the historical realities of 1918-1920s such a solution to the national question, which was implemented by the Soviet government, was unique. In no other country in the world at such a level (granting nations the right for self-determination up to separation and formation of their own state), the issue has not been raised or resolved. That is why the Bolsheviks did not have the opportunity to adopt anyone’s experience in this area, which should be attributed to one of the objective reasons for the mistakes made by Moscow in implementing this process. The article is devoted to the study of the experience in national-state building in the RSFSR, which was conducted under the leadership of the People’s Commissariat for Nationalities. The current work on preparing conditions to form autonomies in specific regions of the country (strengthening the Soviet authorities, conducting the policy of education and indigenization, publishing textbooks and organizing education in schools in national languages, etc.) was implemented by special not only functional, but also territorial Narkomnats departments such as, for example, Chuvash, Mari, Votsky ones, etc. Based on the analysis of materials from archival funds and generalization of research literature, the article shows the role of Narkomnats and its national departments in creating national-territorial autonomies in the RSFSR. In the opinion of the authors, it is necessary to continue the work on further studying the history of establishing individual autonomous associations that have not received proper coverage in the historiography of the problem to date. These, for example, include the autonomy of the Crimea and the Volga Germans. In this article, the authors dwell in more detail upon the activities of the Chuvash Department of Narkomnats, the choice of which is due to several reasons. Firstly, the work experience of this department turned out to be quite successful (it was established in May 1918, abolished after autonomy proclamation in June 1920), since in a relatively short period of time it was able to prepare the necessary prerequisites for autonomy establishment. Secondly, in 2020, the Chuvash people celebrated the 100th anniversary of statehood, in connection with which the interest in this page of the history of Chuvashia began to attract the attention of modern scientists again. The study makes no claims to be exhaustive, but makes a certain contribution to the coverage of the issue.