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| ISBN-13: | 9780817982539 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Hoover Institution Press |
| Publication date: | 07/03/2017 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 406 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
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CHAPTER 1
Nationalism and Bolshevism in the USSR
Alain Besançon
Communism is a jealous god. It tolerates nothing at its own level. Where it reigns in absolute triumph, there is room for nothing else — no classes, no religions, no wealth, no culture, no language, no law, no common morality, and no nation. Yet its triumph requires accepting the presence of, seeking out an alliance with, and sometimes even creating these classes, this culture, this morality, and these nations. For the sixty-eight years during which Leninism has taken root and spread across the earth, there is no force it has found as indispensable or as frightening to it as nationalism.
In Russia, the concepts of nation and people jointly sprang from the concept of narod. The narod is neither the plebs nor the populus — both concepts that sprang from an urban political life, absent in Russia. Narod has a religious connotation and evokes a community gathered in the same faith, like the Jewish kahal or the Greek laos. Narodnost' carries with it a sense of romantic exaltation, as in Volkstum, that gave support to the official nationalism of the tsars of St. Petersburg, the utopia of the Slavophiles, and also that of the populists. It legitimized both that part of the tsarist political system most opposed to the modern world (even to the enlightened tradition of St. Petersburg) and also the revolt that sought to strike down the tsars. The magic word narod, ambiguous since it was first coined, was brandished by both sides, and ended up with two accepted (and opposite) uses: it means nation, which from the official point of view encompasses the frontiers of imperial Russia, and from the non-Russian nationalities' point of view strengthens the emancipation movement; and it means people, as opposed to westernized classes and the state. Used in these two senses, narod retains the magical qualities that made it the supreme value to which all were invited to devote their lives.
Lenin saw that both interpretations of narod could be summed up in an overall theory that the party would put into practice. Insofar as it is a social concept, Lenin saw the concept of people as confused and requiring translation in the light of Marxism; it had to be seen through the perspective of the class struggle. In his first work, his massive study of the development of capitalism in Russia, Lenin took the concept of people out of the village, the very spot where populism had placed it. Instead of the people, he saw an array of classes — or "social levels," if they did not deserve to be called classes — that were, or should be, subordinated to the class par excellence, the proletariat. Insofar as narod refers to the nation, he naturally subordinated the concept of people to the class struggle. The role of the people, in both of the word's accepted uses, was to be a source of energy for the revolution. But it was the proletariat, and the party as representative of the proletariat, that was to use this energy. "The bourgeoisie of the oppressed nations will call upon the proletariat to give unlimited support to its aspirations. The most practical response would be for the proletariat to say openly 'Yes' for the liberation of its particular country and 'No' to the right of self-determination of all [other] nations ... [But] the proletariat recognizes equality of rights and an equal right [for all] to constitute a national state. It gives highest value to the alliance of proletariats from all countries, and it is from the point of view of the class struggle of workers that it evaluates all nationalist demands and national separatist movements."
The nation thus became part of general Marxist theory, which relegated each thing to its place. Lenin's nation is a social entity made up in part by class. Which class? The bourgeoisie. According to Lenin, one must make a "strict distinction" between two periods of capitalism, which "differ radically." In the first period, there is society and a "democratic bourgeois" state, and national movements become mass movements that involve all classes. In the second period, "the eve of the collapse of capitalism," hostility between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie is the dominant feature. Stalin summed all this up with his usual clarity: "On occasion the bourgeoisie is able to get the proletariat involved in the national movement, and on these occasions the national struggle assumes the guise of a 'general popular' movement." But the essential nature of this movement remains bourgeois, advancing the interests of and sought principally by the bourgeoisie.
This theory points out the key role of class beneath the trappings of the nation. It "unmasks" the false unanimity of national movements, which are essentially class movements. The proletariat is instructed to redirect the energies of such conflicts toward its own goals and to support national struggles to the extent that it can use them. The proletariat is depicted as international in scope because it has lost its countries to bourgeois usurpation. But, without losing sight of its transnational goal, the proletariat must reconquer the nation, which belongs to it by right. When the revolutionary struggle has ended, when all the people are united behind the proletariat and the entire country is subjugated to it, then the tension between the two senses of the term narod will disappear. It will mean indistinguishably both people and nation.
Such is the Leninist perspective. Nation is subordinate to class, and class is subordinate to party, which is its essence. The party represents the working class by virtue of the self-legitimizing nature given it by ideology. In practical terms, therefore, the party decides, according to its overall policies, whether to employ the nationalist forces of political struggle or the class forces, or it may combine the two. Classes and nations are no longer natural realities, entities that have autonomy and the capacity to organize themselves. They are instead abstract notions that exist only in an overall theory, in the wooden language of ideology. Their role is to be used in the changing lines and political positions taken by the party.
These very basic considerations suffice to sketch sixty-eight years of Soviet policy with regard to the national problem.
THE GREAT RUSSIANS
Lenin's problem in the first months after the October putsch was to establish the Bolshevik party as the core around which the state could be reconstituted. So, after a period in which the party sought the disintegration of the state and voiced anarchist slogans, there followed, without the least transition, a period in which the goal was to rally to the party a large part of the traditional military and administrative framework. These officers and functionaries had several motives for joining the Bolsheviks: (1) a desire for order and a wish to make life endurable by ending the anarchy and reestablishing a minimum of legality; (2) patriotism and fear of losing several centuries of constructive efforts in a new "time of troubles"; and (3) nationalism and the hope of saving the one and indivisible Russia, the Russian empire.
The nature of Bolshevik power gave reason to the last motive. But the order that Bolshevism brought was no more acceptable than anarchy, and the systematic destruction of all Russian and human values could only offend patriotism. Bolshevik power, however, was capable of restoring the domination of a single state over most of the territories of the old empire. This result was enough to satisfy the proponents of nationalism in its lowest form. According to Custine, "the slave on his knees dreams of world empire." This is how the alliance between Bolshevism and Great Russian nationalism was formed; that alliance has been the principal moral force of the Soviet regime for its entire history, and it remains so even today.
The Bolshevik-Great Russian alliance was quick to attract non-Bolshevik theorists, often from the extreme right, like Nikolai Ustrialov. But I do not think that this alliance was between equals, nor that there was a progressive fusion between nationalism and Bolshevism in the Stalinist synthesis, as Agursky tries to show. In fact, the party remained the master of this alliance and knew how to maintain the subordinate relationship that Lenin had established: party-class-nation. The revolutionary goal, which was utopian and ideological, was not abandoned for the sake of the nationalist goal: extension or maintenance of the empire. The problem for the party was to keep the party-class-nation hierarchy in the correct order.
For several years it appeared necessary to fight actively not only against Russian patriotism — an obvious necessity — but also against nationalism itself. This was done by waging antichauvinist and even anti-Russian campaigns. But these had only pedagogical value and only served to keep in line allies that might compromise the party. Then, beginning in the 1930s, Russian nationalism was progressively integrated into the ideology. Russian cultural and historical heritages were worked into a stockpile from which the party could select items of nationalistic value that would serve the dynamics of the Soviet state. Peter the Great, for instance, served as a historical example of the military and modernization program of the Soviet state, and a few years later Ivan the Terrible provided a precedent for the permanent purge. The paintings of the Peredvizhniki, in which populism and nationalism were inextricably intertwined, became the formal model for socialist realism. The regime found a socialist use for the classical novel, particularly when, as in the case of Tolstoy, it depicted military glory and scorn for the West. But anything in this same heritage that had universal value and could only be appreciated in a transnational context (religious thought, modern art, Dostoevsky, and so forth) was censored and banned.
If one makes a distinction between patriotism — one's ties to a natural community — and nationalism, in which resentment of the nation's weaknesses and hatred of things foreign play a role, patriots were suspect because they were bound to a former reality that was doomed to destruction along with religion, the family, and social classes, all the targets of persecution. Nationalism was encouraged because it fostered destructive hatred toward what was external to the communist world, which the revolutionary project planned to annihilate. Authentic patriotism was thus stigmatized as "bourgeois nationalism." But the most chauvinistic Russian nationalism was praised as "Soviet patriotism." Even better, this Soviet patriotism was the principal force that supported communism's world project, so that chauvinistic nationalism, by following a carefully marked "dialectical" detour, was put in the service of "proletarian internationalism." Thus the state formed a necessary alliance with nationalism and used it to implant the Soviet state within the old frontiers of the Russian empire; it then used this same instrument to extend its form and domination beyond its frontiers. Proletarian internationalism was the external expression of Russian nationalism, an assistance in and a motivating force for communization. It was for this reason that all advances of communism were accompanied by advances of Russianism. In Poland or in Czechoslovakia, this meant the obligatory study of Russian in school; a revamping of history to underscore the ties between these peoples and the Russian people; a premium given to Russian art, music, and literature; and a corresponding de-emphasis of Western art.
THE NON-RUSSIAN NATIONALITIES
Lenin's use of the nationalist demands of the non-Russian nationalities came even earlier than his call to Russian nationalism. Indeed, the latter was used for the construction of the Soviet state whereas the former was the most efficient engine for the decomposition of the tsarist empire. By March 1921, however, when Georgia was retaken, all of the non-Russian nationalities were under Soviet control. Was this a contradiction? Not at all. "In any bourgeois nationalism in an oppressed nation," Lenin wrote in 1914, "there is a general democratic content that is focused against oppression; and it is this content that we support without reserve, while rigorously isolating it from the tendency toward national exclusivism." Once the "general democratic content" has spent its energies, the task of the party is to struggle against "nationalist exclusivism," which works against the working class, represented by its party. As Stalin noted beginning in May 1918: "Autonomy is a form. Soviet power is not against autonomy; it is for autonomy, but only for an autonomy where all the power is in the hands of the workers and peasants, where the bourgeoisie of all nationalities is not only deprived of power but also of participation in elections for the governing bodies." So the Georgians had the right to separatism, but the place of the Georgian Mensheviks was in prison, as was the case for all Mensheviks. The fact that they represented the vast majority of Georgians did not in the least mean that they had the right to represent their country. This right of representation belonged legitimately to the weak Bolshevik minority, solely by virtue of the fact that they were Bolsheviks. If this minority was put in power by the Red Army, did not demand separatism, and on the contrary developed "friendship between peoples," it had the complete right to do so.
Nevertheless, integrating the communist project with the demands of the non-Russian nationalities remained a problem. Bolshevism had triumphed as the "emancipator of peoples." How could it keep that title? Here we encounter the most essential component of the Bolshevik art of governing: compromise. In Bolshevik ideology, a compromise is a temporary concession to practical considerations. It is imposed in order to allow the ideology to retain power while awaiting the opportunity for complete victory when conditions permit the withdrawal of concessions. An example of a political compromise was NEP, the new economic policy that ended War Communism but saved the state and prepared the way for collectivization. Brest-Litovsk is an example in foreign policy; great amounts of territory were abandoned in 1918 to save the state and allow eventual reconquest. In religious policy, one compromise was the reestablishment during World War II of the patriarchate, which, at the beginning of the war, had placed the existing resources of the Orthodox church at the service of the state. In economic policy, Soviet compromises included tolerance of the private lots, the kolkhoz market, the black market, and corruption. A compromise must be agreed to in such a manner that it brings to the party an extra boost of force. This allows the party to remain master of the terms of the compromises and able to revoke them whenever it deems appropriate. To describe nationalities policy, therefore, is to describe the compromise that was effected in this essential domain.
One can distinguish between the general pan-Soviet clauses of compromise and the local clauses that applied to the particular conditions of each nationality. The nationalities do have frontiers. It is easy to see in this fact only a symbolic satisfaction, but in nationality matters symbols have importance. One can say the same of administrative autonomy and the facade of self-government, with Supreme Soviets, Presidiums, Councils of Ministers, and Supreme Courts in each republic. Although these provisions appear merely decorative, they are not entirely so. They were the subject of a conflict between Communists who advocated centralized power and called themselves internationalists — their opponents called them Luxemburgists — and Communists who claimed strict adherence to the autonomist provisions. This conflict continues even today. It was apparent when Brezhnev redrew the Soviet constitution. One version sought to wipe out national frontiers and replace them with "economic regions." It was vainly defended as a progressive step in the construction of communism, but it did not see the light of day.
The other major area of compromise is culture and national language. Stalin had already indicated the limits: "Proletarian culture, whose content is socialist, takes on different forms and manners of expression with each of the different peoples who participate in the work of building socialism, according to differences in language, style of life, etc. Proletarian in its content, national in its form: such is the universal human culture toward which socialism is advancing." So above all there is the same diamat (dialetical materialism), but for each national region it is appropriate to allow something of the former cultural structure to subsist.
The Soviet system retained the local classics, which mixed with Russian classics and were deemed compatible with Soviet ideology. This strategy did not cause problems with the medieval epics of the Caucasus or Central Asia, but it created delicate problems with the works of Shevchenko. What would be cut and what would be retained was subject to compromise, and the party decided which way to go. Generally, it was the higher level of culture that was most closely scrutinized, and often repressed, on the grounds that it could furnish the basis of a bourgeois nationalist movement; lower levels of culture, it was held, were neutral and posed no threat. In consequence, national culture moved toward folklore. In theaters throughout the Soviet Union, functionaries costumed as Cossacks, Circassian mountain people, or medieval Uzbeks dance and sing melodies collected and arranged by the ideologized folklorists of the past century or the present one. Performances of these traditional works serve as a substitute for the cultural life of these nations, replacing what for some time now has been wiped away by the dreary drabness of the cities and of local dress and by the pan- Soviet uniformity of the wooden language. Folklore serves to remind these nations of their past cultural life — through the prism of a falsified history — and to make them see socialism's promised convergence of people and nation into the eschatological narod.
(Continues…)
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Table of Contents
Editor's Foreword, Robert Conquest,
Contributors,
NATIONALISM AND BOLSHEVISM IN THE USSR Alain Besançon,
RUSSIAN NATIONALISM IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE Hugh Seton-Watson,
RUSSIAN NATIONALISM AND SOVIET POLITICS: OFFICIAL AND UNOFFICIAL PERSPECTIVES Frederick C. Barghoorn,
NATIONALISM IN THE SOVIET EMPIRE: THE ANTI-SEMITIC COMPONENT Leonard Schapiro,
THE PROSPECTS OF NATIONAL BOLSHEVISM Mikhail Agursky,
RUSSIAN NATIONAL FEELING: AN INFORMAL POLL Vladislav Krasnov,
SOVIET MINORITY NATIONALISM IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE Alexandre Bennigsen,
THE UKRAINE AND RUSSIA Roman Szporluk,
THE BALTIC STATES Alexander Shtromas,
THE SOVIET MUSLIM BORDERLANDS S. Enders Wimbush,
MINORITY NATIONALISM TODAY: AN OVERVIEW Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone,
LANGUAGE, CULTURE, RELIGION, AND NATIONAL AWARENESS John B. Dunlop,
SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC ASPECTS OF THE NATIONALITY PROBLEM Gertrude E. Schroeder,
THE DEMOGRAPHY OF SOVIET ETHNIC GROUPS IN WORLD PERSPECTIVE Mikhail S. Bernstam,
EASTERN EUROPE WITHIN THE SOVIET EMPIRE Milovan Djilas,
NATIONALISM IN THE USSR AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR THE WORLD Donald W. Treadgold,