ACTIVITIES OF THE RSFSR NARKOMNATS (PEOPLE’S COMMISSARIAT OF NATIONALITIES) ON CREATION OF NATIONAL AUTONOMIES

The national question was one of the most painful in the multi-ethnic Russian Empire, it sounded especially acute at the beginning of the XX century. In order to attract representatives of different ethnic groups to its side, the new Soviet state pursued a purposeful policy of implementing national-state construction. It should be emphasized that in the historical realities of 1918-1920s such a solution to the national question, which was implemented by the Soviet government, was unique. In no other country in the world at such a level (granting nations the right for self-determination up to separation and formation of their own state), the issue has not been raised or resolved. That is why the Bolsheviks did not have the opportunity to adopt anyone’s experience in this area, which should be attributed to one of the objective reasons for the mistakes made by Moscow in implementing this process. The article is devoted to the study of the experience in national-state building in the RSFSR, which was conducted under the leadership of the People’s Commissariat for Nationalities. The current work on preparing conditions to form autonomies in specific regions of the country (strengthening the Soviet authorities, conducting the policy of education and indigenization, publishing textbooks and organizing education in schools in national languages, etc.) was implemented by special not only functional, but also territorial Narkomnats departments such as, for example, Chuvash, Mari, Votsky ones, etc. Based on the analysis of materials from archival funds and generalization of research literature, the article shows the role of Narkomnats and its national departments in creating national-territorial autonomies in the RSFSR. In the opinion of the authors, it is necessary to continue the work on further studying the history of establishing individual autonomous associations that have not received proper coverage in the historiography of the problem to date. These, for example, include the autonomy of the Crimea and the Volga Germans. In this article, the authors dwell in more detail upon the activities of the Chuvash Department of Narkomnats, the choice of which is due to several reasons. Firstly, the work experience of this department turned out to be quite successful (it was established in May 1918, abolished after autonomy proclamation in June 1920), since in a relatively short period of time it was able to prepare the necessary prerequisites for autonomy establishment. Secondly, in 2020, the Chuvash people celebrated the 100th anniversary of statehood, in connection with which the interest in this page of the history of Chuvashia began to attract the attention of modern scientists again. The study makes no claims to be exhaustive, but makes a certain contribution to the coverage of the issue.

The Asymmetrical Effect of Polarization on Support for Independence: The Case of Catalonia

The article analyses the consequences of elite polarization at the mass level in the centre-periphery dimension. We analyse the rapid rise in support for independence in Catalonia, focusing on the role of party competition around the centre-periphery cleavage. We argue that mainstream actors’ adoption of centrifugal party strategies with respect to the national question produced a polarizing dynamic in the party system that eventually caused voters’ attitudes regarding the centre-periphery issue to harden. Indeed, we posit that this increase in mass polarization was a consequence of party agency that subsequently helped to drive attitudes regarding independence. To test this hypothesis, we measure centre-periphery polarization (as perceived by voters) by adopting two different perspectives—inter-party distances (horizontal polarization) and party-voter distances (vertical polarization)—and then run logistic regressions to explain support for independence. The findings show an asymmetrical effect on polarization. While the centrifugal strategy implemented by Catalan regionalist parties paved the way for a radicalization of voters on the Catalan nationalist side, among voters for non-regionalist parties, attitudes towards independence were initially less conditioned by this polarization. The results provide evidence of the political effects of elite polarization.

A Critical Review on Electric Power Sector for Sustainable Energy Development in Nigeria

Electricity is one of the most important invention of Man. It powers the economy and everything in a Nation. This work seeks to carryout a critical review of Nigeria’s energy crisis. A PricewaterhouseCoopers, PwC reports asserts that Nigeria still ranks 2nd worst in the global electricity access charts; a significant portion of electricity is generated from private generators at a higher cost of NGN 120/kWh while grid-based cost NGN 4-5/kWh; more than 50% Nigerians do not have access to electricity, however amongst the other 50% who have access, experience intermittent power supply; 5 - 6 times increase in electricity consumption required to match peer countries with similar GDP per capital; 25 % of potential energy reaches the end-user: Structural inefficiencies across the power value chain prevent electricity from reaching end-users. This work sets out to chronicle Nigeria’s energy crisis: its challenges and prospects. Results from various reviews show that the major issue plaguing the nation’s electricity sector isn’t so much about resources, which the Nation has in abundance, albeit, some in potential state. From the reviews so far, the following are the major problems: 1. The National question 2. Lack of technical know-how 3. Sabotage of government’s efforts and destruction of power sector physical assets. 4. Inconsistency in Policy formulation and implementation. The work therefore, proposes that for the long run, the nation tries to solve her national question; however, for the short run, the Federal Government should adopt the NLNG business model that has produced fantastic results for all its shareholders and stakeholders. The researchers therefore strongly advice the Federal Government to adopt the business model of the Nigeria Liquified Natural Gas, NLNG Company.

A nation of bureaucrats or a nation of workers? Welfare benefits as nation-building modernization tools in interwar Romania

As one of the most potent hypothesis in political economy, the negative impact of ethnic diversity on the provision of public goods made the welfare state–nation state isomorphism seem a one-way connection. Against the grain of existing studies I argue, through a case-study of interwar Romania, that welfare states are constructed to proactively (re)build the nation, rather than retroactively emanate from it, once established. Rather than an ahistorical ethnolinguistic fractionalization, the article takes nationhood as historically fluid and contested because through institutionalized action, elites can and do proactively revamp the political arena, redistributing coalitions of winners and losers based on exogenously given criteria. The article therefore shows that nation forgers typically internalize the global social question through the topoi of local socio-economic problems construed as a national question. Because elites can pick and choose who becomes part of the national compact, the politicization of the perception of incomplete nationhood provides a sufficient ideational thrust for welfare policymaking, irrespective of pre-existing national solidarities. Consequently, welfare policies are typically layered as remedial or compensatory policies designed to foster a specific social mobility, deemed in a top-down fashion to be completing the nation.

Making Science Indian

Science and technology has been an important site of constituting the national-modern. Elites, especially the Tatas, led the way in founding institutions of scientific research and training across the country. Such institutions were supposed to help the country overcome the deficit in scientific infrastructure, institutions, and individuals. Others such as Birlas and Thakurdas took a more pragmatic approach and invested in institutions of applied technologies such as cotton and textiles to fuel India’s industrialization. In addition to funding such ‘big’ science, elites also invested in ‘small’ science—on and off-farms—linking scientific laboratories to the field. Post-1990, elites took on a networking role linking new nexuses across lab–field–policy. At the turn of the twenty-first century, elites are now funding digital infrastructure and platforms over brick-and-mortar institutions from an earlier generation. In their pursuit of modern science, elites’ philanthropy has remained firmly tied to the national question as science has been closely tied to national self-reliance and sovereignty.

Collectivization and National Question in Soviet Udmurtia

The subject of this article is the collectivization of agriculture in Soviet Udmurtia at the turn of the 1930s. Situated in the Urals, Udmurtia was an autonomous region, largely agricultural, and with a developing industrial center, Izhevsk, as capital. The titular nationality of the region, the Udmurts, represented slightly more than 50% of the total inhabitants, while the rest was made up by Russians and other national minorities. Udmurts were mostly peasants and concentrated in the countryside, whereas city-dwellers and factory workers were mostly Russians. Due to these and other circumstances, collectivization in Udmurtia was carried out in a very specific way. The campaign began here in 1928, one year before than in the rest of the Union, and had possibly the highest pace in the country, with 76% of collectivized farms by 1933. The years 1928–1931 were the highest point of the campaign, when the most opposition and the most violence took place. The local Party Committee put before itself the special task to carry out a revolutionary collectivization campaign in the Udmurt countryside, which should have been a definitive solution to its “national” backwardness and to all its problems, from illiteracy to trachoma, from syphilis to the strip system (that is, each family worked on small “strips” of land far from each other). The Party Committee failed to exert much support from the peasant Udmurt masses, which stayed at best inert to collectivization propaganda, or opposed it openly. However, the back of the Udmurt peasantry was finally broken, and Udmurtia was totally collectivized by the end of the 1930s.

THE ERA OF LATE STALINISM: HISTORIOGRAPHICAL ANALYSIS EXPERIENCE (1945-1953)

В статье предпринимается попытка осмыслить в историографическом ракурсе эволюцию советской этнополитики в период позднего сталинизма. В ней анализируются послевоенные тенденции этнополитического курса Кремля в отношении национальных республик и периферийных народов. При всех незначительных расхождениях во взглядах на проблему внутри научного сообщества доминировала точка зрения, согласно которой подход к этнонациональным проблемам со стороны правящих кругов базировался на обезличенной, предельно механистичной и функционалистской основе. Анализ ключевых партийных установок, а также последующих их трактовок исследователями представляется актуальным вследствие утвердившейся в политических кругах и, отчасти в научной среде, точки зрения, согласно которой национальный вопрос стал одной из главных причин распада СССР. The article is devoted to tracing the evolution of Soviet ethnopolitics in the period of late Stalinism from a historiographical perspective. It analyzes the post-war trends of the Kremlin's ethno-political course toward national republics and peripheral peoples. Despite all the minor differences in views within the scientific community, the dominant point of view on the topic is that the ruling circles approach to ethno-national problems was based on an impersonal, extremely mechanistic and functionalist basis. The analysis of key party decisions, as well as their subsequent interpretations by researchers, seems relevant due to the established view inside the political circles and, partly in the scientific community, according to which the national question became one of the basic causes for the collapse of the USSR