The Course of Soviet Nationality Policy

From the formulation of national self-determination in 1914 to the dissolution of the union in 1991: how the Soviet state handled the national question

1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 Territory & institutions Language & cadres Official doctrine Repression Stalin defines the nation by four common features and rejects cultural-national autonomy, the starting point of Bolshevik national theoryMarxism andtheNationalQuestion1913 Lenin, answering Rosa Luxemburg, formulates self-determination as the right to secede and form a national stateThe Rightof NationstoSelf-Determination1914 Lenin defined it as the freedom to separate and made it central to the Bolshevik programmeThe rightof nationstoself-determination1896–1917 Equality, self-determination up to separation and the abolition of national privileges, proclaimed as state policyDeclarationof theRights ofthe Peoplesof Russia1917.11 Lenin blocked Stalin's plan to absorb the republics into Russia, settling on a union of formal equalsTheautonomizationdispute1922 The USSRfounded,with theright ofsecession1922.12 The Twelfth Congress ruling that grounded the affirmative-action policies that followedGreatRussianchauvinismnamed themain danger1923 Administration and schooling switched to local languages, native cadres recruited, national districts createdKorenizatsiya1923–1933 The largest regional case: most schooling and publishing moved into UkrainianUkrainizatsiya1923–1933 Turkestan was divided into national republics, drawing today's bordersNationaldelimitationin CentralAsia1924–1936 National inform,socialistin content1925–1930 Alphabets were devised for unwritten languages and Arabic-script languages moved to LatinLatinizationofalphabets1926–1932 In Kazakhstan the removal of native elites and forced sedentarisation ended in famineThe LittleOctober1925–1933 Muslim reformist intellectuals who had first worked with Soviet power were removed as nationalistsThe Jadidmovementliquidated1929–1938 The same decisions that dealt with grain seizures abolished Ukrainization in the Kuban and curtailed it inside the republicUkrainizationhalted1932.12 Aimed at Ukrainian cultural life and party cadres; Khvylovy and Skrypnyk killed themselvesThe purgeof'bourgeoisnationalism'1933–1934 The imperial military past and its figures were rehabilitated as defenders of the fatherlandSovietpatriotism1934–1991 The union was recast as eleven republics, and the secession clause was kept1936Constitution:therepublicsrecast1936 A family metaphor that introduced hierarchy while professing equalityThe elderbrotherdoctrine1936–1980년대 Russian became a required subject in national schools and Latin-script languages were converted to CyrillicRussianmadecompulsory,scriptsturnedCyrillic1938–1940 Aimed at diaspora nationalities with cross-border ties; some 247,000 people were shotThenationaloperations1937–1938 The first total case: over 170,000 people moved to Central Asia without any trialThedeportationof theKoreans1937 Volga Germans, Karachays, Kalmyks, Chechens and Ingush, Balkars, Crimean Tatars, Meskhetian TurksThe wartimedeportations1941–1944 The autonomies of the deported nations were dissolved and even their place names erased from the mapAutonomousrepublicsabolished1943–1944 Stalin called the Russians the most outstanding of all the nations of the USSRThe toastto theRussianpeople1945.05 The JewishAnti-FascistCommitteedissolved1948–1952 Thecampaignagainstrootlesscosmopolitanism1946–1953 Declared a fabrication and closed a month after Stalin's deathTheDoctors'Plot1952–1953 Chechens, Ingush, Karachays, Balkars and Kalmyks returned; Crimean Tatars, Meskhetian Turks and Volga Germans did notAutonomiesrestored,somereturnsallowed1956–1957 The claim that the nations had fused into a new historical communityThe Sovietpeople1961–1991 Ukrainian intellectuals were arrested en masse in January 1972 and the first secretary, Shelest, was removed in May; criticism followed that his Our Soviet Ukraine (1970) had idealised the national pastThe removalof Shelest1972–1973 Republican languages kept their legal status while the practical value of Russian kept risingRussian asthelanguage ofinter-ethniccommunication1961–1980년대 The 1979 Tashkent conference urged Russian from kindergarten and a 1983 decree added pay supplements and split classes for Russian teaching, while the Tbilisi demonstrations of 1978 preserved Georgian as a state languageThe debateovernational-languageschooling1978–1983 Named the Soviet people in its preamble while leaving federalism and secession in placeThe 1977Constitution1977 Republics made their own languages official, breaking the union's language orderTherepublicanlanguagelaws1988–1990 The ground the republics cited was the secession clause of the Soviet constitution itselfSovereigntydeclared,the uniondissolved1988–1991 Once the secret protocols were declared void, Baltic departure became restoration rather than secession, and a precedent for the other republicsThe Balticmovement:theannexationdeclaredvoid1987–1991 The last doctrinal turn of nationality policy: to refound a union granted from above as a contract from belowThe newuniontreaty: aunion ofsovereignstates1991
succession · split · merger influence antagonism suppression