Soviet Policy on Nationalities

Abstract

Unfortunately, our understanding of this problem is clouded by a welter of contradictory and mutually exclusive interpretations. Let us look at a few illustrations. In a book published at end of i946, a prominent sociologist, with a number of volumes on Russia to his credit, wrote that Comintern was dead and that it could not be revived; that nationalism was stronger than ever U.S.S.R., but that this nationalism was not imperialism, i.e. [it was not] tendency to conquer peoples which do not belong to historically delimited of He concluded that in turning nationalist once more, Russia proved that very depths of her she never had abandoned her way, which on surface seemed lost 1917. Whatever precise meaning attached by that author to historical way and national soul of a Russia only one-half of whose population consists of Russians, less than a year after his statement was published Soviet leaders made a hollow mockery of his prediction. They set up Cominform and foisted Communist political control on peoples Eastern Europe, which by no stretch of imagination can be considered to belong to the historically delimited territory of Russian nation. A little earlier, another well-known interpreter of Soviet scene, a prolific writer on U.S.S.R., posed question of her withdrawal