The Vepsians: An Administratively Divided Nationality

Abstract

The administrative division of late imperial Russia made few concessions to minority populations, who often found themselves divided among several provinces. The Bolshevik ascendancy to power changed the situation; Vladimir Lenin's “federal compromise” marked a breakthrough from the tsarist unitary practice to a system of governance which, at least on paper, made allowance for the ethnocultural diversity of the population. The chief designers of the Bolshevik nationality policy believed that a federal arrangement would offer a framework for controlling undesirable national sentiments during the transitional stage when class identities would gradually replace ethnic attachments. However, it turned out that for non-Russian groups the national-territorial autonomous units were not simply empty containers, free of cultural and emotional meaning, in which their political socialization would occur. These units became an integral part of their national identity; ethnicity obtained “legal” territorial roots and the various territorial units began to function as vessels of ethnic consciousness.