Encyclopedia of Russian History
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and Lithuanians were deported from their republics, even greater numbers of Russians moved the other way over a number of years, especially into Latvia and Estonia, where the proportion of Estonians in the total population fell from 88 percent in 1939 to 61.5 percent in 1989. Under Khrushchev, large-scale internal migration was associated with the Virgin Lands campaigns and other policies, while the dominance of republican nationalities was further undermined by later waves of migration.
The changing demographic structure of the USSR might help to explain Khrushchev’s new emphasis on the “merger of nations.” If particular policies and the demands of modernization entailed a geographically more mobile population, it made sense for everyone to have command of a single language and to owe their primary loyalty to the Soviet state rather than to a particular republic or nationality. The sum total of Khrushchev’s policies, then, could be regarded as aiming at a more systematic Russification of the entire population than had ever been attempted by Stalin.
If this was the intention, at least in the short term the actual impact of Khrushchev’s policies was minimal in the Union republics. Schools continued to operate much as they had before. For the smaller nationalities of the RSFSR, the impact was more telling. The number of languages used in schools in the RSFSR declined from forty-seven during the early 1960s to seventeen by 1982, most of which were only used in the early grades before instruction switched to Russian. In the longer term, mother-tongue education eventually declined in the larger republics as well, especially Ukraine and Be-lorussia, and the constitutional status of republican languages was also undermined in a number of cases.
During Leonid Brezhnev’s tenure as general secretary of the CPSU (1964-1982), the republics were nonetheless subjected to less drastic policy and personnel changes than under Khrushchev. Typically, republican leaders remained in office for much longer, as illustrated by Uzbek first secretary Sharaf Rashidov, who retained his position from 1959 to 1983. This longevity allowed the republican leaders to build up their own networks of power, which were often associated with endemic corruption, but also meant they could pursue the interests of their republics without interference, so long as they did not cross acceptable boundaries. This happened in Ukraine in 1963, when First Secretary Petr Shelest was dismissed for allegedly pursuing a policy of over-zealous promotion of Ukrainian identity and culture. The regime continued to pursue Russification policies to an extent sufficient to provoke the creation of numerous underground nationalist groupings, which were to emerge at the head of much broader movements at the end of the 1980s.
GORBACHEV AND THE COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET UNION
Shortly after assuming the general secretaryship of the CPSU in 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev declared that the Soviet Union had decisively resolved the national question. Events were to disillusion him quickly. When he tried to replace the Kazakh first secretary, Dinmukhamed Kunaev, with a Russian, Gennady Kolbin, in December 1986, the response was widespread rioting on the streets of Alma Ata, the capital of the Kazakh Republic. Gorbachev’s reaction was to tread a more cautious line, repealing a number of unpopular language laws, and reforming the Council of Nationalities, which represented the republics at the highest level. Initially, he even gave encouragement to national-minded intellectuals in the Baltic republics, hoping to use them to help force through experimental market reforms in the region. But his failure to instigate an overall consistent policy towards nationalities only served to fuel the explosion of national unrest, which erupted in violent conflict between Az-eris and Armenians in Azerbaijan in 1988, and the emergence of national “Popular Fronts,” which arose in the Baltic republics during the same year and spread across almost all major nationalities by the end of the decade.
This eruption led to varying responses from Gorbachev, who at times seemed to be making concessions to the national movements, but at other times resorted to repression, leading to bloodshed by government forces in the Georgian capital Tbilisi and the Lithuanian capital Vilnius (although Gorbachev’s direct involvement in these events has never been established). The Popular Fronts won spectacular successes in Soviet elections and came to dominate the government in Armenia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Georgia. These republics declared first sovereignty, then independence. Other republics followed with declarations of sovereignty (meaning that their own republican laws would take precedence over the laws of the USSR). The decisive blow against the federal USSR came during the summer of 1990 when the RSFSR itself, led by Boris Yeltsin, declared sovereignty. In his rivalry
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with Gorbachev, Yeltsin was prepared to give every encouragement to national movements, including the Russian one.
Although a referendum organized by Gorbachev early in 1991 showed overwhelming support for maintaining some form of Union among most non-Russians, and Gorbachev himself was working on the terms of a new, much looser, Union Treaty aimed at holding the republics together at the time of the failed coup in August of that year, he was probably already resigned to the independence of the Baltic republics, and it was likely that other republics would follow them. The coup proved the final nail in the coffin as it encouraged other republican leaders to pursue their own paths, and the USSR was formally dissolved at midnight on December 31, 1991.
While the Bolsheviks and their successors were guided by general principles in their treatment of non-Russian nationalities, no single coherent nationalities policy existed for the Soviet period as a whole. Not only did the guiding principles change over time, but they were applied to different degrees to different nationalities, creating a picture far more complex than it is possible to describe here in detail. The size of the nationality, its proportion in the overall population of each republic, the historical strength of national identity, the existence of co-nationals or coreligionists outside the borders of the USSR, and their proximity to Moscow or strategic borderlands were all factors contributing to these differences. Perhaps most important of all, especially in the later Soviet period, was the closeness of individual leaders to the key figures in Moscow and their adeptness at the kind of bargaining that characterized the later years. Ultimately, one of the reasons for the demise of the USSR was the attempt to apply general nationalities policies to the three Baltic republics, which had a quite different historical experience from the other nationalities. But from the earliest days there was an inconsistency in the application of policies that favored national development on the one hand and the demands of a centralized, ideologically and culturally unified state on the other, causing tensions that contributed in no small part to the instability that preceded the downfall of the system. See also: COMMONWEALTH OF INDEPENDENT STATES; EMPIRE, USSR AS; KORENIZATSYA; NATIONALISM IN THE SOVIET UNION; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST; OFFICIAL NATIONALITY; RUSSIAN SOVIET FEDERATED SOCIALIST REPUBLIC; RUSSIFICATION; STALIN, JOSEF VISSARIONOVICH
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Allworth, Edward A., ed. (1998). The Tatars of Crimea: Return to the Homeland. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Altstadt, Audrey L. (1992). The Azerbaijani Turks. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press. Bennigsen, Alexandre, and Lemercier-Quelquejay, Chan-tal. (1967). Islam in the Soviet Union. London: Pall Mall. Bilinsky, Yaroslav. (1962). “The Soviet Education Laws of 1958-59 and Soviet Nationality Policy.” Soviet Studies 14:138-157. Bremmer, Ian, and Taras, Ray, eds. (1997). New States, New Politics: Building the Post-Soviet Nations. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Broxup, Marie Bennigsen, ed. (1992). The North Caucasus Barrier: The Russian Advance towards the Muslim World. London: Hurst. Carr?re d’Encausse, H?l?ne. (1992). The Great Challenge: Nationalities and the Bolshevik State, 1917-1930. New York: Holmes and Meier. Denber, Rachel, ed. (1992). The Soviet Nationality Reader: The Disintegration in Context. Boulder, CO: Westview. Fowkes, Ben. (1997). The Disintegration of the Soviet Union: A Study in the Rise and Triumph of Nationalism. London: Macmillan. Hu
ttenbach, Henry R. (1990). Soviet Nationaltity Policies: Ruling Ethnic Groups in the USSR. London: Mansell. Kaiser, Robert J. (1994). The Geography of Nationalism in Russia and the USSR. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kappeler, Andreas. (2001). The Russian Empire: A Multiethnic History. London: Longman. Karklins, Rasma. (1986). Ethnic Relations in the USSR. Boston: Allen and Unwin. Kreindler, Isabelle. (1986). “The Soviet Deportation of Nationalities: A Summary and Update.” Soviet Studies 38:387-405. Lenin, Vladimir Ilich. (1964). “The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination.” Collected Works. London: Lawrence and Wishart. Levin, Nora. (1990). The Jews of the Soviet Union since 1917. London: I. B. Tauris. Martin, Terry. (2000). “Modernization or Neo-Tradi-tionalism? Ascribed Nationality and Soviet Primor-dialism”. In Stalinism: New Directions, ed. Sheila Fitzpatrick. London: Routledge. Martin, Terry. (2001). The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1939. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Nahaylo, Bohdan, and Swoboda, Victor. (1990). Soviet Disunion: A History of the Nationalities Problem in the USSR. London: Hamish Hamilton.
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Nekrich, Aleksandr Moiseevich. (1978) The Punished Peoples: The Deportation and Fate of Soviet Minorities at the End of the Second World War. New York: Norton. Pipes, Richard. (1997). The Formation of the Soviet Union: Communism and Nationalism, 1917-1923, rev. ed. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Simon, Gerhard. (1991). Nationalism and Policy Toward the Nationalities in the Soviet Union. Boulder, CO: Westview. Smith, Graham, ed. (1996). The Baltic States: The National Self-Determination of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. London: Macmillan. Smith, Jeremy. (1997). The Bolsheviks and the National Question, 1917-1923. London: Macmillan. Subtelny, Orest. (1989) Ukraine: A History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Suny, Ronald Grigor. (1992). The Making of the Georgian Nation. London: I.B. Tauris. Suny, Ronald Grigor. (1993). The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Suny, Ronald Grigor, and Martin, Terry, eds. (2001). A State of Nations: Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tishkov, Valery. (1997). Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Conflict in and after the Soviet Union: The Mind Aflame. London: Sage.
JEREMY SMITH
NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST
At the end of the nineteenth century the huge Russian Empire extended from western Poland to the Pacific Ocean, from the Kola peninsula in the Polar Sea to the Caspian Sea and to Central Asia. It comprised regions with different climate, soil, and vegetation and a heterogeneous population with different economies, ways of life, and cultures. Among its inhabitants there were adherents of Christianity (of the Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Armenian variants), Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Shamanism. In ethnic terms, Orthodox Eastern Slavs (Russians, 44%; Ukrainians, 18%; and Belorussians, 5%), which officially were considered as three branches of one Russian people, predominated with two-thirds of the total population. Nevertheless Muslims, mostly speaking Turkic languages (11%), Poles (7%), Jews (4%), and dozens of other groups represented strong minorities and (with the exception of the Jews and other diaspora groups) majorities in their core regions.
The tsarist government never formulated a consistent nationalities policy. The policies toward the non-Russians of the empire were of great diversity according to its heterogeneity and the respective time period. Before the beginning of the age of nationalism (i.e., in Russia before the nineteenth century), even the term nationality is highly questionable. In the premodern period, national and ethnic categories were not considered important by the tsarist government. Russia was a supranational empire marked by the official term Rossyskaya im-peria, distinct from the ethnic term russkaya (Russian). Its main concerns were the loyalty of all subjects to the ruler and their social/estate status.
In the historiography on tsarist nationalities policies, these distinctions have not always been kept in mind. Historians of the non-Russian nationalities have drawn a rather uniform picture of an oppressive, colonialist, assimilationist, and nationalist policy that from the very beginning consciously aimed at destroying national cultures and identities. On the other hand the imperial Russian and later the Soviet historiography (after 1934) and some of Russian historiography after 1991 usually idealized tsarist rule and its “mission civilisatrice” among non-Russians. In Western historiography there are also controversies about the long-term aims of tsarist nationalities policies. One group advocates a general goal of cultural Russification, at least since the reign of Catherine II; others differentiate between epochs and peoples and usually restrict the term Russification to the short period between 1881 and 1905.
Although during the Middle Ages most Rus principalities, especially the city republic of Novgorod, had comprised non-Slavic groups (Karelians, Mordvins, Zyryans/Komi, etc.), it was the conquest of the Kazan Khanate in 1552 by Ivan IV that laid the ground for the polyethnic Russian empire and for a first phase of tsarist nationalities policies. In the war declared to be a crusade against infidels, the Russian troops killed or expelled all Tatars from their capital, and priests began to baptize Muslims by force. Violent protest movements of Tatars and Cheremis (Mari) were suppressed by military campaigns.
The broad resistance, however, caused a fundamental change of policies towards the population of the former Khanate. The tsar’s main goals-the
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maintenance of stability and loyalty and economic profit-were served better by pragmatism than by force. So the missionary efforts among Muslims and animists were stopped for more than a century. Moscow now guaranteed the status quo not only of the religions, but also of the land and duties of the taxable population (together with the Tatar tax, yasak) and of the landed property and privileges of the loyal noble Tatars. Many Muslim Tatars were co-opted into the imperial nobility, which already since the fifteenth century had included Tatar aristocrats. Muslim Tatar landowners were even allowed to have Russian peasants as their serfs, whereas Russian nobles were strictly forbidden to have non-Christian serfs. So in opposition to the majority of Russian peasants, enserfed during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Tatar, Mordvin, Chuvash, Cheremis (Mari), and Votiak (Udmurt) peasants remained personally free “yasak men” (yasachnye lyudi) and later state peasants. The lands owned by the Tatar khan and Tatar nobles who were killed or had fled to the East were occupied by the Russian state, Russian nobles, and peasants. They settled in significant numbers in the southern and southeastern parts of the former Kazan Khanate, where, as early as the end of the seventeenth century, Russians outnumbered the native peoples. The towns of the Khanate were also populated by Russians, and the trade and culture of the Muslim Tatars were ruralized.
The two lines of military repression and of pragmatic flexibility following the submission of the non-Russian population served as a model for Russian premodern nationalities policies. Tsarist policies were based on cooperation with loyal non-Russians and a retention of the status quo, regional traditions, and institutions. This facilitated the transfer of power and the establishment of legitimacy. In order for non-Russian aristocrats to be co-opted into the imperial nobility, they needed to have a social position and a way of life that corresponded to that of the Russian nobility. So, among the elites of the Siberian native peoples, who were subjugated by force during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, only a small group of western Siberian Tatars became nobles. Nevertheless, Russian officials sought cooperation with the chieftains of Siberian tribes, who became heads of the local administration and had to guarantee the delivery of the yasak. The main aim of Russian policies towards the Siberian native peoples was the exploitation of furs, especially the valuable sable. With a pragmatic policy the government tried to further these economic goals. The shamanist religion was not persecuted, and missionary efforts of the church were not allowed. However, t
he regional administrators and the Russian trappers, Cossacks, merchants, and adventurers often did not obey these instructions, and they committed numerous acts of violence against the native peoples.
After the conquest of Kazan and of Astrakhan (1556), Russia gained control over the Volga valley and began to exert pressure on nomadic tribes. Leaders of the Nogai Tatars, the Bashkirs, and (from 1655) the Kalmyks swore oaths of loyalty to the tsar, which were interpreted by Moscow (and by the imperial and Soviet historiographies) as eternal subjugation of their tribes and territories. From the perspective of the steppe nomads, however, these oaths were only temporary and personal unions that did not apply to other clans or tribes. These different interpretations caused diplomatic and military conflicts between the sedentary Russian state and the nomad polities.
Similar problems of interpretation occurred in the case of the Dnieper Cossacks who swore allegiance to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich in 1654. The Russian government regarded the agreement of Pereyaslav as a voluntary submission and the definitive incorporation of Ukraine into Russia; in the late Soviet Union it was labeled as voluntary reunion of Ukraine with Russia. For Bohdan Khmel-nytsky and his Cossacks (and for many Ukrainian historians), however, it was only a temporary military alliance and a temporary Muscovite protectorate. In 1667 Ukraine was divided between Russia and Poland-Lithuania, and its Eastern part on the left bank of the Dnieper (with Kiev on the right bank) became part of the Muscovite state. The so called Hetmanate of the Dnieper Cossacks retained much autonomy within Russia, with its sociopolitical structure under the rule of an elected het-man and its independent army guaranteed. As in the case of the loose protectorates over some of the steppe nomads, military-strategic concerns seem to have been decisive for the cautious policy of the Russian government.