Mikhail Gorbachev, Report of the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party at the Nineteenth All-Union Conference of the Communist Party. June 29, 1988
Original Source: Pravda, 29 June 1988, p. 5 (excerpt).
Comrades! One of the greatest achievements of socialism is the union which has formed in our country of equal nations and national groups. Today this permits us to say with great conviction that in the future as well the only healthy basis for development is to systematically follow Leninist nationality policy.
Life has shown the correctness of the idea laid down in the organization of our great union, that the joining, the unification of efforts permitted every nation and society as a whole to sharply accelerate its movement, to advance to new frontiers of historical progress. For all the difficulties which lay in our way, we maintain that this Union has withstood the test of time. It continues to be the decisive precondition of the development of all our peoples.
As you know, there is to be a special plenum of the Central Committee devoted to the question of development of inter-nationality relations. But even now, at our conference, we must treat this extraordinarily important and topical problem. It is important here to see the entire real picture, both the undoubted achievements and the obviously uncompleted jobs, the oversights and difficulties arising from the irresolution of concrete social and economic questions, as well occasional ignorance of how to unite national interests and those common to all peoples.
We must take up in a fundamental way the further development and optimization of the existing inter-republic economic, scientific, and technical connectors, more full realize the advantages of the intra-republic division of labor and labor cooperation, and scientifically based regional policy. Glasnost’ means a great deal here. Workers must be fully in the course of what is developing in their republic and of the place they occupy in the national economic complex. They must know how not just their neighbors are living and developing, but all the republics of the country. This must also be done because sometimes one encounters conversations and judgments about relationships between republics which are based upon insufficient or even one-sided information.
It will be correct if our Party conference will take as reliable compass points for inter-nationality relations in the sphere of economics the principles of justice and fraternal international help for one another, for mutual action, which will guarantee both a general rise and the improvement of economic and social conditions of life for all nations and national groups of the country.
In the contemporary situation the rights of the union republics must be analyzed and brought into accordance with radical economic reform. It clearly has merits that once they have fulfilled their obligations to the all-union fund that they can direct production for their own needs, on the basis of a skilled and enterprising management. This would also meet the demands of social justice in the development of national relations, and would stimulate our common movement ahead.
In recent years the processes of democratization and glasnost’ have illuminated the sorts of problems whose existence is not always taken sufficiently into account, such as questions connected with language, culture, literature, and art, with historical monuments and the preservation of nature.
The development of our multinational state is naturally accompanied by the growth of national self-consciousness. This is a positive phenomenon, but inasmuch as the new demands which arise in this connection are not always given the necessary attention, certain questions began to grow complicated, in a number of instances acquiring a nationalistic coloration. Although in principle these questions could have been resolved calmly, without giving grounds for any sort of speculation and emotional outbursts.
Recently we have seen with our own eyes how tangled the problems of internationality relations can become. And we must preserve the fraternity and friendship of our peoples like the apple of our eye. There is simply no other path, comrades, no intelligent alternative. (applause) He who tries to prove otherwise is deceiving himself and others. Further, to try to incite people of different nationalities against one another, to sow discord and hatred between them is to take upon one’s self a heavy responsibility before one’s people and before socialist society, to say nothing of before the law. Objectively such actions interfere both with the process of democratization and the business of restructuring.
We must also examine questions of inter-nationality relations in the context of the present developmental stage of the Soviet multinational state. We must generalize our accumulated experience, making use of all that is valuable and at the same time expose what must be avoided. We may say straight out that there is a great deal to think of here. First of all we have to evaluate the many normative acts which regulate the mutual actions of the Union and the republics, how fully they correspond to the present conditions, tasks, and needs of our multinational society, to the level of democracy’s development. This clearly also requires clarification of the situation, rights, and obligations of the union and autonomous republics, and of the other national formations.
In the course of this approach it is also necessary to examine this question, that our society is distinguished by great mobility of the population; many people live Outside of their own national formations, and there are also national groups which have no territorial autonomy. All this is the reality of our multinational state. There are possible certain collisions here, and there is only one path for their resolution, within the framework of the existing structure of the union republic to guarantee maximum consideration of the interests of every nation and national group and of the entire society of Soviet peoples. Any other approach in our concrete conditions is simply impossible, and any attempt to try another path would be fatal.
Let us take Kazakhstan as an example. It is an enormous republic, with great possibilities for development; it has a true international society, the achievement of which is the result of cooperation by all peoples. This land was conquered by and is now inhabited by Kazakhs, Russians, Ukrainians, Germans, Kirghiz, Tatars, Uzbeks, Turkmen, and representatives of many other nations and national groups. At the same time though no one can doubt the integrity of the Kazakh republic. To some degree or another the same picture may be seen in other republics as well.
We cannot avoid internationalization of the economy and of all social life. And any tendency toward national exclusivity can only lead to economic and spiritual impoverishment. Our socialist approach is different. We strive to make it so that a person of any nationality has full rights in fact in any part of the country, that he might realize his rights and legal interests everywhere.
In speaking for the further strengthening of inter-nationality relations we assume that the development of the state of the Soviet Union, of the international connections and the fraternity of our peoples are all living, dynamic processes. They must be constantly before the eyes of both republic and all-union bodies. The problems connected with them must be solved by relying on the will of the peoples, their mutual consent, with calculation of the interests of all Soviet peoples.
It is very important that within the framework of our political system there should exist, on a permanent basis, government and social institutes which could study the whole complex of inter-nationality relations. I have already said above that this must become one of the primary tasks of the Soviet of Nationalities of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.
In general, comrades, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is our common home. And we, its owners, are obligated ever to care for it, preserving it and improving it, trying to conduct business such that all Soviet people who live in it should feel proud of their socialist Fatherland. (prolonged applause)
This plainly must be stressed particularly in the resolution of our conference on improvement of national relations.
Source: Martha B. Olcott with Lubomyr Hajda and Anthony Olcott, eds., Soviet Multinational State: readings and documents (Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1990), pp. 24-26.