National Delimitation

Background

National delimitation (natsionalno-territorialnoye razmezhevaniye) was the institutional process that reorganized the multi-ethnic territory of the Russian Empire into the Soviet ethno-federal system. It began from the November 1917 Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia and accelerated after the USSR's formation in 1922.

Theoretical Foundation

In his 1913 Marxism and the National Question, Stalin defined a nation as 'a historically constituted, stable community of people, formed on the basis of a common language, territory, economic life, and psychological make-up manifested in a common culture.' Since many groups in the former empire did not fully meet this definition, delimitation was not a technical administrative exercise but a political act of defining, and creating, nations from above.

The Central Asian Delimitation (1924)

The most dramatic case was the 1924 delimitation of Central Asia. The borders of the Turkestan ASSR, Bukharan PSR, Khorezm PSR, and Kirghiz (Kazakh) ASSR were dissolved and the region reorganized into five national units: Uzbek SSR, Turkmen SSR, Tajik ASSR (within Uzbekistan), Kara-Kirghiz (Kyrgyz) Autonomous Oblast, and Karakalpak Autonomous Oblast. Molotov recalled: 'The creation of the Central Asian republics and their borders was entirely Stalin's work. The Kazakh elite fought for Tashkent … Stalin decided: Tashkent to the Uzbeks, Verny (Alma-Ata) to the Kazakhs.' The delimitation followed linguistic and ethnographic principles, but in regions of mixed settlement (the Fergana Valley, the Khorezm oasis) compromises between ethnic lines and irrigation systems, trade routes, and economic zones were unavoidable. The Sarts were absorbed into the Uzbek nation; the mountainous Tajik territories were separated from eastern Bukhara.

The Caucasus and Other Regions

In the Caucasus, the Mountain ASSR was partitioned into Kabarda, Balkaria, Chechnya, North Ossetia, Karachay, and others; the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast was carved out within Azerbaijan. Within European Russia, the Volga German Labour Commune, the Bashkir and Tatar ASSRs, and scores of national okrugs and raions were created.

Legacy

Delimitation laid the institutional foundations for national republics that had never existed before, creating national elites, literary languages, and cultural institutions. But the incomplete, compromise-ridden borders drawn across mixed settlement zones also embedded the structural conditions for the ethno-territorial conflicts that erupted as Soviet power weakened: Nagorno-Karabakh, Osh, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia among the most destructive.