The Soviet Union, by the time of its creation, was the first modern state that had to confront the rising issue of nationalism. With a progressive nationality policy, it systematically promoted the national consciousness of its ethnic minorities and established for them institutional forms comparable of a modern state. In the 1920s, the Bolsheviks, seeking to defuse national sentiment, created hundreds of national territories. They trained new national leaders, established national languages, and financed national cultural products. This was a massive historical experiment in governing a multiethnic state. Later under Stalin, these policies had to be revised to comply with emerging domestic and international problems, which resulted from those once progressive policies.
This paper will present the issue of Russian nationalism and nationality policy in the Soviet Union. The analysis will be based on six different monographs dealing with the issue at different periods of Soviet history. Each has a different approach and at times a different thesis on Russian nationalism or an interpretation of the political events accompanying the Soviet nationality policy.
First, on the following pages, I will give a brief summary of the six books discussed in this paper. Then, I will tell the main thesis of each book and underlie it by the author’s arguments. In the conclusion, I will compare the book’s arguments in a historiographical manner and see where similarities between the arguments exist, where the books complement each other and at which points they disagree with each other. At the end, I will try to give a comprehensive overview of the issue discussed, due to the frame and limited space of this paper.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Eric Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign Against Enemy Aliens During World War I
Richard Pipes, The Formation of the Soviet Union: Communism and Nationalism, 1917-1923
Jeremy Smith, The Bolsheviks and the National Question, 1917-1923
Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939
David Brandenberger, National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity, 1931-1956
Yitzhak Brudny, Reinventing Russia
Conclusion
Objectives and Themes
This historiographical analysis investigates the complex relationship between Russian nationalism and nationality policy throughout the Soviet era, from 1917 to 1991, by evaluating six influential academic monographs. The work aims to map how the Soviet state utilized nationalism—often inconsistently—as a pragmatic tool for mobilization, legitimacy, and state-building, and explores the unintended, often radicalizing, consequences of these state-sponsored ideological shifts.
- The evolution of Soviet nationality policies from early revolutionary pragmatism to Stalinist centralization.
- The role of "National Bolshevism" and the tactical use of Russian imperial identity in Soviet state-building.
- The tension between soft-line institutional indigenization and hard-line state security and ethnic purging.
- The emergence of nationalist intelligentsia movements in the post-Stalin era and their eventual opposition to the regime.
- Historiographical comparisons of diverse scholarly interpretations regarding the nature of the Soviet Union as a multinational empire.
Excerpt from the Book
Eric Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign Against Enemy Aliens During World War I
Although Lohr analyzes Russian nationalism and nationalities policy under the Romanovs during the First World War, he makes some thoughtful conclusions about the influence and effects of those policies for the Soviet Union that succeeded the tsarist Empire. Lohr says that to a certain degree, the wartime expansion of the tsarist state resulted out of its claim to control and manage the population and the economy. He concludes, that this was an important precedent for the same extensive claims that the Soviet state later employed.
“The campaign against enemy minorities contributed to strengthening the national state through the expansion of documentary control over the population, greater police and state oversight of foreigners and immigrants, the creation of a network of inspectors, administrators, and liquidators to oversee and control corporations and economic transactions, and the transfer of many businesses and properties to state institutions. The campaign shows how the old regime introduced these and other state practices that would ultimately become central to the Bolshevik revolutionary repertoire, from the nationalization of private property to the identification, purge, and removal of enemy populations categories.”
The tsarist regime campaign of nationalizing the Empire was an attempt to mobilize the patriotic feelings among the population, to make the imperial state more national, and rally popular support behind the country’s war efforts. The government’s policy of deportation and expropriation was also a major project to sort, define, and categorize individuals according to their ethnicity, immigrant status, or citizenship, and thereby decide if those entire population categories were to be considered enemy aliens or internal enemies. This process constituted for the first time the sense of nationality and ethnicity as a function of wartime practices that the Soviets later would practice for their purposes as well.
Summary of Chapters
Introduction: Outlines the historical context of the Soviet Union as a modern multiethnic state and introduces the six monographs selected for this historiographical analysis.
Eric Lohr, Nationalizing the Russian Empire: The Campaign Against Enemy Aliens During World War I: Examines how the tsarist state’s wartime practices of identifying "enemy aliens" established bureaucratic precedents that were later adopted by the Bolshevik regime.
Richard Pipes, The Formation of the Soviet Union: Communism and Nationalism, 1917-1923: Analyzes the Bolsheviks' federalist strategy as a tactical compromise to regain control over peripheral territories during the Civil War.
Jeremy Smith, The Bolsheviks and the National Question, 1917-1923: Focuses on the improvised and often conflicting development of Soviet nationality policies and nation-building efforts from the center.
Terry Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939: Details the practical implementation of "indigenization" (korenizatiia) and its eventual reversal under Stalin as the regime shifted toward hard-line state security.
David Brandenberger, National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity, 1931-1956: Explains how the state pivoted to an ideology of "National Bolshevism" to mobilize the population by invoking Russian imperial history.
Yitzhak Brudny, Reinventing Russia: Traces the emergence of nationalist intellectual movements in the post-Stalin era and the failure of the Brezhnev regime to manage the resulting nationalist opposition.
Conclusion: Synthesizes the common themes across the analyzed texts, highlighting the perpetual fluctuation between institutional nationalism and state-led repression throughout Soviet history.
Keywords
Soviet Union, Russian Nationalism, Nationality Policy, Historiography, Bolsheviks, Stalinism, National Bolshevism, Korenizatiia, Indigenization, Ethnic Cleansing, State-building, Marxism-Leninism, Tsarist Empire, Identity, Patriotism.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the central focus of this research paper?
This paper provides a historiographical analysis of the relationship between Russian nationalism and the Soviet Union's nationality policies between 1917 and 1991, primarily by synthesizing the arguments of six major historical monographs.
What are the primary themes discussed in the work?
The core themes include the use of nationalism as a tool for political legitimacy, the evolution of state-led identity formation, the contradictions between revolutionary internationalism and Russian chauvinism, and the recurring pattern of state-sponsored cultural movements turning into anti-regime opposition.
What is the main research objective?
The objective is to determine how and why the Soviet state employed Russian nationalism as a pragmatic mechanism for governance and social mobilization across different historical periods, and to evaluate how historians have interpreted this phenomenon.
Which scientific methodology is applied?
The methodology is comparative historiography. The author evaluates six different secondary sources (monographs), summarizes their central theses, compares their arguments, and identifies both commonalities and areas of scholarly disagreement.
What does the main body of the work cover?
The main body systematically reviews each of the six selected books in chronological order, starting with the pre-revolutionary imperial practices discussed by Eric Lohr and concluding with the late-Soviet period analyzed by Yitzhak Brudny.
How is the work characterized by its keywords?
The work is characterized by terms such as "National Bolshevism," "korenizatiia," "state-building," and "nationality policy," reflecting its focus on the intersection of political ideology and administrative practice in the Soviet state.
How does the author characterize the shift from soft-line to hard-line policies?
The author describes this as a "continuous interplay" where the state utilized soft-line policies to foster native elites and local cultures, while simultaneously employing hard-line methods like purges, deportations, and state-security crackdowns when the central regime's power felt threatened.
What is the significance of the "National Bolshevism" concept according to Brandenberger?
It represents the Stalinist state's ideological "about-face" in the 1930s, where traditional Russian imperial history and heroes were rehabilitated to replace failing Marxist slogans as a means to foster mass loyalty during wartime.
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- M.A. Pouyan Shekarloo (Autor:in), 2009, Russian Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1917-1991, München, GRIN Verlag, https://www.grin.com/document/144892
