Lenin and the problem of nationalities

Abstract

In many ways there are parallels between the current crisis over the nationality problem in the Soviet Union and the situation in the early years of this century. The revolutions of 1905 and 1917-21 saw inter-ethnic conflict, both anti-Russian and between the minority nationalities themselves. The experience of war, revolution and civil war led to a sharp increase in national consciousness as the tsarist empire disintegrated. The dream of a new form of federation, or even of separation, began to seem a real possibility to the nationalist intellectuals in the subject areas of the empire. Today glasnost has led to similar hopes and similar social tensions. The fiction of the increasing fusion of national identities into ‘new Soviet man’ has been abandoned. Freer elections have given local people more control over their own destiny and local party bosses have been placed in an impossible position. This was made clear in their speeches to the Twenty-eighth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).’ The Georgian and Moldavian First Secretaries called for a ‘union of Communist Parties’, that is for federalisation of the party. The Lithuanian Communist Party had broken away from the CPSU as early as December 1989 after its electoral defeat by Sujudis, despite strong objections by President Gorbachev that ‘only a single CPSU . . . can be a truly consolidating political force in our multi-national state’.2 Stalinist centralisation has been rejected in the field of nationality policy as in those of politics and economics. Those willing to stay with a reformed party and a more truly federal Soviet Union are looking back to the period of the New Economic Policy for a ‘truly Leninist’ model of progress in this area, which could have produced an alternative road to socialism and ethnic harmony. The korenisatsiia policy of the 1920s which gave priority to local language and cultures, the use of local leaders and cadres, stemmed from Lenin’s moderate and cautious approach. Even nationalists wanting more complete separation can refer to his insistence on the right to self determination. But Gorbachev is equally correct in labelling any idea of federation of the party as un-Leninist. Lenin frequently cited the Bundas the prime example of the error ofallowing separatist socialist parties on nationalist lines. The only national party allowed by him before 1917 was Hiimmet, the all Muslim Communist Party of Baku, and that was seen as a special case. Socialist committees formed in Muslim areas duri;lg 1917 were firmly incorporated into a special section of the Russian Communist Party by Stalin as head of the Commissariat of Nationalities (Narkomnats). The Eighth Congress of the Communist Party in 1919 again emphasised the need for a united and centralised party structure.