Nation-Making and National Conflict under Communism

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrienne L. Edgar
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Cultural Development ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Soviet Regime ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
National Question ◽  
National Sentiment

Karl Marx was no friend of nationalism, yet the states that came into being in his name in the twentieth century were forced to reach an accommodation with it. The Soviet Union was a vast multi-ethnic empire that included more than a hundred different national and ethnic groups. The article shows how Marxists, notably the Austro-Marxists and Lenin, developed a theory of the ‘national question’, which in Lenin’s case linked support for national self-determination to anti-imperialism. The article examines the key facets of Bolshevik policy towards the non-Russian peoples of the Soviet Union, notably the strategy of ‘nativization’, and it discusses the recent historiography that tends to see the Soviet regime more as a ‘maker of nations’ than oppressor of them (although it was also that). It compares the efforts of the Soviet, Chinese, and Yugoslav governments to negotiate tensions between national equality, territorial autonomy, cultural development, and increasing national sentiment and, fundamentally, rising national sentiment with the imperative of centralization. It looks at the role of nationalism in the break-up of the Soviet Union.

Implications

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Edele
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Soviet Regime ◽  
World War ◽  
Ongoing Debate ◽  
Middle Position ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
War Effort ◽  
Second World

This chapter turns to the present and explains the implications of the current study for the ongoing debate about the Soviet Union in the Second World War and in particular about the role of loyalty and disloyalty in the Soviet war effort. It argues that this study strengthens those who argue for a middle position: the majority of Soviet citizens were neither unquestioningly loyal to the Stalinist regime nor convinced resisters. The majority, instead, saw their interests as distinct from both the German and the Soviet regime. Nevertheless, ideology remains important if we want to understand why in the Soviet Union more resisted or collaborated than elsewhere in Europe and Asia.

On Certainties and Ambivalencies: Reply to My Critics

Slavic Review ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric D. Weitz
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Racial Politics ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Soviet Regime ◽  
Human Heredity ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Population Politics

Eric D. Weitz argues that the Soviet Union promoted the development of national institutions and consciousness and explicidy rejected the ideology of race. Yet traces of racial politics crept into Soviet nationalities policies, especially between 1937 and 1953. In the Stalin period particular populations were endowed with immutable traits that every member of the group possessed and that were passed from one generation to the next. Recent scholarship, he suggests, has been resistant to drawing out the racial elements in the Stalinist purges of certain nationalities. Francine Hirsch challenges Weitz’s argument, arguing that the Soviet regime had a developed concept of “race,” but did not practice what contemporaries thought of as “racial politics.” Hirsch argues that while the Nazi regime attempted to enact social change by racial means, the Soviet regime aspired to build socialism dirough die manipulation of mass (national and class) consciousness. She contends that it is imperative to analyze the conceptual categories that both regimes used in order to undertake a true comparative analysis. Weiner proposes that Soviet population politics constandy fluctuated between sociological and biological categorization. Although the Soviets often came close to adapting bioracial principles and practices, at no point did they let human heredity become a defining feature of political schemes. Race in the Soviet world applied mainly to concerns for the health of population groups. Despite the capacity to conduct genocidal campaigns and operate death camps, the Soviets never sought the physical extermination of entire groups nor did they stop celebrating the multiethnicity of tiieir polity. The radicalization of state violence in the postwar era was triggered by die nature and role of the war in the Soviet world, the alleged conduct of those who failed to rise to the occasion, and the endemic unstable and unassimilated borderlands, and not by die genetic makeup of the internal enemies. Alaina Lemon’s contribution suggests that scholars seek racialized concepts by treating discourse as situated practice, rather than by separating discourse from practice. This allows consideration of the ways people use language not only to name categories but also to point to social relationships (such as “race”) with or without explicidy naming them as such. Doing so, however, is admittedly more difficult when die only available evidence of past discursive practices are printed texts or interviews. In conclusion, Weitz responds to these critics.

Without a “Concept”? Race as Discursive Practice

Slavic Review ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alaina Lemon
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Racial Politics ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Discursive Practice ◽  
Soviet Regime ◽  
Human Heredity ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Population Politics

Eric D. Weitz argues that the Soviet Union promoted the development of national institutions and consciousness and explicidy rejected the ideology of race. Yet traces of racial politics crept into Soviet nationalities policies, especially between 1937 and 1953. In the Stalin period particular populations were endowed with immutable traits that every member of the group possessed and that were passed from one generation to the next. Recent scholarship, he suggests, has been resistant to drawing out the racial elements in the Stalinist purges of certain nationalities. Francine Hirsch challenges Weitz’s argument, arguing that the Soviet regime had a developed concept of “race,” but did not practice what contemporaries thought of as “racial politics.” Hirsch argues that while the Nazi regime attempted to enact social change by racial means, the Soviet regime aspired to build socialism dirough die manipulation of mass (national and class) consciousness. She contends that it is imperative to analyze the conceptual categories that both regimes used in order to undertake a true comparative analysis. Weiner proposes that Soviet population politics constandy fluctuated between sociological and biological categorization. Although the Soviets often came close to adapting bioracial principles and practices, at no point did they let human heredity become a defining feature of political schemes. Race in the Soviet world applied mainly to concerns for the health of population groups. Despite the capacity to conduct genocidal campaigns and operate death camps, the Soviets never sought the physical extermination of entire groups nor did they stop celebrating the multiethnicity of tiieir polity. The radicalization of state violence in the postwar era was triggered by die nature and role of the war in the Soviet world, the alleged conduct of those who failed to rise to the occasion, and the endemic unstable and unassimilated borderlands, and not by die genetic makeup of the internal enemies. Alaina Lemon’s contribution suggests that scholars seek racialized concepts by treating discourse as situated practice, rather than by separating discourse from practice. This allows consideration of the ways people use language not only to name categories but also to point to social relationships (such as “race”) with or without explicidy naming them as such. Doing so, however, is admittedly more difficult when die only available evidence of past discursive practices are printed texts or interviews. In conclusion, Weitz responds to these critics.

The Importance of Being Ethnic: Minorities in Post-Soviet States—The Case of Russians in Kazakstan

1998 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 473-491 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sue Davis ◽  
Steven O. Sabol
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Ethnic Minorities ◽  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Cultural Pluralism ◽  
Ethnic Violence ◽  
Ethnic Tensions ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
National Question ◽  
Gorbachev Era

IntroductionThe fall of the Soviet Union prompted an outpouring of concern over borders, identity, and stability. Many students of the region predicted that the breakup would lead to violence and instability. Scholars of the Soviet region emphasized cultural pluralism—in particular ethnic and religious pluralism or the “national question”—as the ultimate lesson of the Gorbachev era. In other words, ignore ethnicity at your own peril. To this point, that has not been the case. There have been only a few areas where instability, ethnic strife, and violence have been rampant—the Transdniestr region, Tajikistan, and Chechnia in particular. Why has this been the case? The lack of ethnic violence and severe ethnic tensions in this diverse region should lead one to reconsider the role of ethnicity in politics.

scholarly journals Voci libere in URSS

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Soviet Regime ◽  
International Level ◽  
The West ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Conceptual Overview

Free Voices in the USSR is a project dedicated to the myriad of independent voices present in the culture of dissent in the Soviet Union in the second half of the twentieth century. Its aim is to offer a conceptual overview of the many forms of dissent by exploring two main thematic areas, the first devoted to “free voices” in the USSR and the second focused on reception in the West. The different manifestations of the USSR’s ‘Second Culture’, which was non-official and independent, spread thanks to the samizdat (the clandestine publication and circulation of texts within the USSR) and the tamizdat (the publication of texts forbidden in the USSR in the West). The reception of non-official forms of expression in the West is explored in the context of the debates arising from the Cold War; the role of the West in engaging with the literary, cultural and artistic challenges to the Soviet regime from within its own borders proved fundamental. Contributions to this website including critical essays, bio-bibliographic entries, archive information and the review and cataloguing of magazines are the result of coordinated research by a group of specialists at an international level.

scholarly journals Typical Bourgeois Intellectuals and Great Friends of the Soviet Union: Latin American Writers in the USSR during the Khrushchev Thaw

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 162-176
Author(s):  
K. R. Buynova
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
The Political ◽  
Soviet Regime ◽  
State Archive ◽  
Sensitive Topics ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Russian State

The author studies the Latin American writers’ visits to the USSR from 1954 till beginning of 1960s realized via the Foreign Commission of the Union of Soviet Writers. After Stalin’s death, the activity of all departments of the Commission expanded significantly; the lists of those invited from abroad now included writers who were absolutely loyal to the USSR as well as new and yet unknown names. As a result, the staff of the Foreign Commission had to face an unprecedented pluralism. Based on the Commission’s Spanish and Portuguese translators’ reports, stored in the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art, the study analyses the criteria based on which the stay of a guest was perceived as favorable or undesirable for continuing cooperation in order to improve the image of the USSR in foreign literary circles. The study also analyses somewhat of a loyalty marker, reflecting the guests’ perception of the results of the 20th Congress of the CPSU and the state of Soviet-Chinese relations as sensitive topics important for the political self-determination of communist writers. The study of these new sources allows us to conclude that when choosing new foreign partners, the Foreign Commission often relied on the advice of its’ faithful friends, and the protégés of the latter did not always withstand the test of compatibility with the Soviet regime. At the same time, there was no specific criteria for the new friends’ selection. The translators, who were the first to report on the visit, were invited from outside, sometimes just for one particular job; they did not receive clear instructions from the Commission and were guided by their own ideas about the importance of the writer in their care and the expediency of cooperation with him. Later their opinion could not be taken into account; presumably, it was the journalistic and novelistic production of the invited writers published as a result of the visit to the USSR that was of greater importance to decide whether they were worth further attention. The study reviews Soviet Writers’ Union cooperation with P. Neruda, F. González-Urízar, N. Parra, V. Teitelboim, A. Cassigoli, F. Coloane (Chile), J. Amado, M. Rebelo, E. de Moraes, G. Figueiredo, H. Silveira (Brazil), I. Abirad, J.C. Pedemonte, M. Rosencof (Uruguay), N. Guillen, C. Leante, O. Hurtado, Samuel Feijoo (Cuba), E. Barrios Villa (Bolivia), C.A. Leon (Venezuela).

‘There was an elephant in the court room’: Reflections on the role of Judge Sir Percy Spender (1897–1985) in theSouth West Africa Cases(1960–1966) after half a century

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 147-170
Author(s):  
VICTOR KATTAN
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
West Africa ◽  
International Law ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Political Systems ◽  
South West ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
South West Africa ◽  
The Cold War

AbstractThis article argues that theSouth West Africa Caseswere brought to an ignominious end because the cases were about self-determination as much as they were about apartheid. For liberals like Judge Sir Percy Spender, the President of the Court, political systems based on majority rule looked suspiciously like authoritarian regimes modelled on the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It is submitted that, given the controversy surrounding self-determination in international law, Sir Percy wanted to avoid addressing the merits of the cases. Self-determination was the proverbial ‘elephant in the court room’ that Sir Percy wanted to avoid at all costs. This article builds upon earlier archival research on theSouth West Africa Casesby taking a closer look at Sir Percy's role in the cases and his views on self-determination. It is argued that what ‘killed’ the cases was Sir Percy's belief that Ethiopia and Liberia were seeking to ‘legalize’ self-determination with a view to further uniting the Afro-Asian bloc at the United Nations with the Soviet Union against the West.

Racial Politics without the Concept of Race: Reevaluating Soviet Ethnic and National Purges

Slavic Review ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 61 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric D. Weitz
Keyword(s):  
Soviet Union ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Racial Politics ◽  
State Violence ◽  
Soviet Regime ◽  
Human Heredity ◽  
Recent Scholarship ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Population Politics

Eric D. Weitz argues that the Soviet Union promoted the development of national institutions and consciousness and explicidy rejected the ideology of race. Yet traces of racial politics crept into Soviet nationalities policies, especially between 1937 and 1953. In the Stalin period particular populations were endowed with immutable traits that every member of the group possessed and that were passed from one generation to the next. Recent scholarship, he suggests, has been resistant to drawing out the racial elements in the Stalinist purges of certain nationalities. Francine Hirsch challenges Weitz’s argument, arguing that the Soviet regime had a developed concept of “race,” but did not practice what contemporaries thought of as “racial politics.” Hirsch argues that while the Nazi regime attempted to enact social change by racial means, the Soviet regime aspired to build socialism dirough the manipulation of mass (national and class) consciousness. She contends that it is imperative to analyze the conceptual categories that both regimes used in order to undertake a true comparative analysis. Weiner proposes that Soviet population politics constandy fluctuated between sociological and biological categorization. Although the Soviets often came close to adapting bioracial principles and practices, at no point did they let human heredity become a defining feature of political schemes. Race in the Soviet world applied mainly to concerns for the health of population groups. Despite the capacity to conduct genocidal campaigns and operate death camps, the Soviets never sought the physical extermination of entire groups nor did they stop celebrating the multiethnicity of tiieir polity. The radicalization of state violence in the postwar era was triggered by the nature and role of the war in the Soviet world, the alleged conduct of those who failed to rise to the occasion, and the endemic unstable and unassimilated borderlands, and not by the genetic makeup of the internal enemies. Alaina Lemon’s contribution suggests that scholars seek racialized concepts by treating discourse as situated practice, rather than by separating discourse from practice. This allows consideration of the ways people use language not only to name categories but also to point to social relationships (such as “race”) with or without explicidy naming them as such. Doing so, however, is admittedly more difficult when the only available evidence of past discursive practices are printed texts or interviews. In conclusion, Weitz responds to these critics.

scholarly journals Borderland City: Kharkiv

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 169-196
Author(s):  
Volodymyr Kravchenko ◽  
Marta Olynyk (trans.)
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Russian Empire ◽  
Symbolic Space ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Local Contexts ◽  
Mental Map ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
The City

The article attempts to identify Kharkiv’s place on the mental map of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union, and traces the changing image of the city in Ukrainian and Russian narratives up to the end of the twentieth century. The author explores the role of Kharkiv in the symbolic reconfiguration of the Ukrainian-Russian borderland and describes how the interplay of imperial, national, and local contexts left an imprint on the city’s symbolic space.  

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