P. Rysakov, Practice of Chauvinism and Local Nationalism. 1930

Original Source: Revolutsiia i natsionalnosti, No. 8 (1930).

Facts are indeed stubborn. Only facts could induce a bourgeois politician like Voldemaras to state during the autumn session of the League of Nations that, owing to 'the lively activity of Soviet Russia in the field of reviving and supporting the National Regions ... the League of Nations will probably in the near future be faced with a serious problem which is maturing without its being aware of it ...

We shall quote only some particular examples, illustrating the achievements of our national policy ...

Take Uzbekistan. Before the Revolution that country, stripped by autocracy of its national physiognomy, had no industry of its own. But during the last three years, the industrial investments alone amounted to almost 50 million rubles. The investments in popular education and health services for 1927-28 and 1928-29 reached 89 million rubles. Whereas before the Revolution the Republic had less than 10 secondary schools, attended by the offspring of the colonial officials, it now has four higher educational establishments, which train dozens of indigenous engineers, doctors, chemists, agronomists and so forth. Fifty per cent of the workers of Uzbekistan are from the indigenous population. Bled white by autocracy, Uzbekistan was not able to develop its basic production---cotton growing and processing. At present the economy of the country has been switched in that direction, and already in 1931 Uzbekistan will gather from its fields 400,000 tons of cotton and build a network of cotton-processing works ...

Take Kazakhstan, the land of 'barbarians and bare steppes', as described by the Tsarist colonizers. That very country has already ploughed up over 4 million hectares of 'bare steppe', to be followed by as many as 20 million more. In 1915, Kazakhstan had 1,825 schools with 89,000 pupils (of whom 13,000 were Kazakhs), but in 1930 the Republic had 8,834 schools with 334,500 pupils (3,454 Kazakh schools with 130,000 pupils). The people, which had been downtrodden by autocracy, has founded its own university and reared hundreds of indigenous specialists. But recently a country without roads, Kazakhstan now has 1,452 kilometers of the Turksib, and is building 2,042 kilometers of new railroad lines. In the leading enterprises of the Republic, the indigenous proletariat now occupies a dominant position (Karsakpai-63 per cent and so forth).

All these are quantitative achievements. The qualitative achievements are no less instructive. The liberation from the colonial yoke of autocracy and the privileges it was establishing for the kulak settlers, the land-and-water reform in Central Asia, the confiscation of the property of the big semi-feudal beys in Kazakhstan and so on, and finally, the mighty wave of collectivization which embraces ever new strata of the village poor and medium farmers-all these factors are making for the socialist transformation of the backward Republics of the Union. Already 23 per cent of all the households in the National Republics and Provinces have been collectivized.

This is the basis on which the culture of the nationalities, which is national in form and proletarian in content, is growing and developing. This is the basis on which national antagonism among the individual nationalities is being effaced ... But this is also the background against which Great-Russian chauvinist and local nationalist distortions, errors and direct counter-revolutionary acts are often manifested. The socialist offensive calls forth the counterattack of the class enemy, which shows itself particularly in the weakest links of the party.

The activity of the class enemy in the national sector of our socialist construction has increased a great deal lately. Showing itself, as it does, in the weakest links of our party, it assumes the form of deviations towards (Great-) Russian chauvinism and towards local nationalism. Let us analyze some of the most striking manifestations of either type of deviation-the 'creeping deviations', as Comrade Stalin defined them at the XVIth Party Congress.

I do not understand the formulation: national in form and international in content. I can understand the second half-international in content-but the first half-national in form-is unintelligible to me. I do not know national culture. I know bourgeois culture, I know proletarian culture, but I do not understand national culture.

This quotation has not been taken from the Trotsky-Vaganyan files. Its author is a member of the Association of Proletarian Writers of Georgia, Rozenfarb, who asserted at one of the recent plenary sessions of the Association 'that it was a reactionary idea to create a culture which is national in form and proletarian in content.'

Unfortunately his is not an isolated case. Now and again, despite the magnificent declarations on 'internationalism', 'the struggle for culture and progress' and so forth, Great-Russian chauvinism shows its cloven foot. Take, for example, the teachers of Polotsk (Belorussia), who refuse to conduct the lessons in the Belorussian language under the pretext that 'knowledge of the Belorussian language dooms the pupils to ignorance.' Take the 'internationalists' of Baltin (Moldavia), who are declaiming against switching to the Moldavian language the work in the institutions of the Autonomous Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic on the ground that it would allegedly separate Moldavia from the USSR and arrest cultural progress. Take the school official Krinkov in Buryat-Mongolia, who is telling the children that 'it would be good if there were no Buryats in the world.' Take the communist cell of the Simferopol City Department for Education which listens to melancholy theories alleging that 'it is necessary to close down the Jewish adult schools for literacy', and that 'in the Tatar schools, at least 30 per cent of the teaching must be switched to the Russian language.' Take ... but the above examples (from) the experience of the last few months are sufficient to convince us that the Great-Russian chauvinist deviation in the question of national cultural development has been intensified. What is the essence of that deviation? It is to deny the possibility of, and the need for, developing, in Soviet conditions, a culture which is national in form and proletarian in content. It is not necessary to restate Comrade Stalin's criticism, at the XVIth Congress, of the anti-Leninist nature of this kind of denial. It is obvious that that criticism has either not yet penetrated the consciousness of a certain section of officials in the national districts, or that their consciousness is completely subjected to the influence of the hostile classes. In either case, it is our task to struggle, with all the resolution and consistency at our command, against the attempts to distort the basic line of the party in the questions of developing national cultures.

But the intensification of Great-Russian chauvinism is not confined to the front of cultural development. Great-Russian chauvinism is still more active in the other fields of our work in the Republics and Provinces. Here are a few characteristic examples.

The Assistant Public Prosecutor of Kvyl-Arvat (Turkmenistan), Teliatnikov, wrote the following profound resolution on the case of a Russian foreman who had indulged in gibes at the expense of Turkmen workers: 'In the conditions of the National Republics, it can only be a question of chauvinism on the part of the indigenous nationality.' The timber-floating managers in the districts of Buryat-Mongolia are setting lower wage rates for Buryat timber floaters. In the Sevastopol naval yards, the non-fulfillment of the industrial finance plan is being justified by this-to put it mildly-'peculiar' argument: 'How can one fulfill the industrial financial plan with Tatars working the lathes?' In the northern districts of Kazakhstan, especially on the Turksib railroad, Kazakh workers are badly received because 'one has to do the work for them'. On the Turksib railroad, too, Kazakh workers are often given the worst accommodation. In the Kazan fur factory, the senior staff was baiting and trying to discredit the only Tatar woman engineer, but for a long time the party cell 'did not notice' it. In the 'First of May Workshops' (Tashkent), with the silent consent of the party cell, specially extended delays were introduced for the admission of Uzbek workers to the trade union. In Tashkent, too, in the Il'ich factory, the wage rates for Uzbek workers are lower than for Russian workers of equal skill.

We shall pass over the cases when people of the Black Hundred type beat up and bait the indigenous workers. But the picture of the growing Great-Russian chauvinism would remain incomplete if we did not quote some facts from the practice of the korenizatsiia of the apparatus and the efforts to raise cadres of the indigenous proletariat in some national districts. In these fields, the tendencies of Great-Russian chauvinism are most glaring, even though they are carefully concealed by reference to 'objective causes'.

The picture of the indigenization of the central apparatus in the Crimea is as follows: in the People's Commissariat of Finance, only seven of the 107 officials are Tatars; in the People's Commissariat of Agriculture, 46 of 606 officials are Tatars; in Soiuzkhleb, only two of 66 employees are Tatars, and both are messengers. In the other central institutions, too, we get almost exactly the same picture. Matters are no better regarding the development of cadres from the indigenous proletariat: the Crimean industries employ 27,210 workers, but these include only 1,806 Tatars. The metallurgical plant in Kerch (the largest undertaking in the Crimea) has only 416 Tatars (5.3 per cent) among its 8,103 workers.

Even though the indigenization of the apparatus in the Tatar Republic compares favorably with that in several other autonomous units, the data illustrating the development of Tatar proletarian cadres are nevertheless very alarming. In the textile industry the proportion of Tatar workers by April 1, 1930, reached 30.3 per cent, but at the beginning of October it dropped to 27.3 per cent. In railroad transport, the Tatar workers amounted to 12 per cent of the total; in water transport, to 10 per cent.

In Uzbekistan, by March 1, 1928, the apparatus of the principal organizations had been 23.5 per cent Uzbek-ized. The Central Asian Bureau of the Central Committee of the CPSU (B), the Central Committee of the Uzbek CP(B) and the Central Executive Committee of Uzbekistan decreed that the apparatus of all these organizations must be 100 per cent uzbek-ized by September 1, 1930. It appeared, however, that at the appointed time the percentage of Uzbekization had fallen to 22.6 per cent. In the People's Commissariat of Agriculture of Uzbekistan, which deals exclusively with the indigenous peasantry, 80 per cent of the correspondence is conducted in the Russian language. In several enterprises of Uzbekistan the percentage of workers from the indigenous population has fallen lately. Thus in the Fergana plant, in May of this year, 62.5 per cent of the workers were local people, but by August their number had dropped to 51 per cent.

These computations and figures do not, of course, depict the general state of the indigenization of the apparatuses in the National Provinces and Republics, nor of the development of indigenous proletarian cadres in the Provinces and Republics. In the last few years, considerable achievements have been made in this sphere. The indigenization of the Soviet apparatus and of cultural and educational work in the Ukraine, Belorussia and several Transcaucasian Republics has entered the final stage. The development of non-ferrous metallurgical industry in Kazakhstan, the building of the Turksib line and the railroad to Stalinabad, and so forth have laid a powerful and concrete basis for the efforts to raise cadres of the indigenous proletariat in the Eastern districts. In the course of the last year the indigenous proletariat has risen by 60 per cent. At the same time, the decisions of the XVIth Congress on the shift of industry to the East and the intensified industrial development in Eastern districts, based on local resources of raw materials (textile, non-ferrous metallurgical industry and others)-these decrees are holding up splendid perspectives for the development of the indigenous proletariat in the Republics of the Soviet East. However, the above-mentioned facts and computations prove once again that the struggle against the manifestations of Great-Russian chauvinism is not yet waged systematically, and that in several places its political significance is not yet sufficiently appreciated.

In his definition of the nature of the deviation towards Great-Russian chauvinism Comrade Stalin said at the XVIth Congress:

The essence of the deviation towards Great-Russian chauvinism consists in the tendency to gloss over the national differences of language, culture and daily life; the tendency to prepare for the abolition of the National Republics and Provinces; the tendency to undermine the principle of national equality and to debase the party policy of making the apparatus a national one, nationalizing the press, the schools and other state and public organizations.

Our leading local organizations often fail to see the political essence of Great-Russian chauvinist manifestations, since they consider these individual manifestations outside the common political framework of the Great-Russian chauvinist tendencies. Precisely herein lies the basic defect of our struggle against Great-Russian chauvinism. While successfully bringing to light and revealing the individual sallies, we seldom draw political conclusions from them. For example, it is not enough to dismiss the Assistant Public Prosecutor of Kvyl-Arvat and to reveal him as a blatant chauvinist. It is necessary to show by his example where the political roads of Great-Russian chauvinism are leading to ...

The growth of the National Republics and Provinces and their socialist transformation is accompanied by the sharpening struggle not only of the dying-off classes of the former ruling nation but also of the exploiting classes of the nationality in question. Penetrating into the party organizations, those struggles assume the form of anti-party nationalistic groupings which frequently link up with direct counter-revolution, as was shown by the Sultan-Galiev movement.

Lately, the local nationalistic elements have considerably revived. This is proved by many cases. Let us dwell on the most striking examples on which no light has been shed as yet in our leading press.

Quite recently the counter-revolutionary nationalistic organization Milli Istiklal (National Independence) was uncovered in Uzbekistan. Continuing the program of the other counter-revolutionary organization Milli Ittikhad (National Unification), which also has been liquidated recently, the Milli Istiklal pursued the aim of overthrowing the Soviet regime and setting up a bourgeois state. In the expectation of foreign intervention, the organization was training cadres and conducting counter-revolutionary sabotage in the People's Commissariat of Education, the juridical organs of Uzbekistan and the party organizations. The leaders of the organization were prominent officials of the People's Commissariat of Education and the Supreme Court and made use of the soviet apparatus in order to train, inside it, cadres of 'future administrators of the state' and to discredit the Soviet Government and the party. With the same aim in view, Milli Isliklal strove to seize control of many public organizations, in particular the society Kzyl-Kalyam (The Red Pen), whose tasks included 'the strengthening of proletarian ideology in artistic literature'. The counter-revolutionaries were successful in the society Kzyl-Kalyam which came to be led by a member of Milli Istiklal.

Of course, that organization cannot be regarded as representing one of the types of nationalistic deviation in our party. It was a direct counter-revolutionary organization which had penetrated the ranks of the party. But its discovery is a sign not only that our internal enemies are reviving their counter-revolutionary efforts, but also that the nationalistic deviation in the ranks of the party is becoming more active. Milli Istiklal subjected to its influence the nationalistic elements of the Uzbek CP(B), guiding their work to its own counter-revolutionary purposes.

The party organizations of Uzbekistan, like true Bolsheviks, reacted to the discovery of Milli Istiklal with the required severity and firmness. But in some of these organizations this was accompanied by plain nationalistic demonstrations. Thus, at a meeting of the Samarkand party aktiv, which discussed the report of Comrade Ikramov (the secretary of the CC of the Uzbek CP(B)) on the uncovered counter-revolutionary organizations, the speaker was handed the following note: 'Our Uzbekization proceeds in such a way that Uzbeks sit at the head of the institutions, and Uzbeks are the coachmen: some are riding, some are driving, but the work is directed by the Russians. Is this Uzbekization? Is this not rather colonization by the Russians?' At the same meeting, a certain Ayupov asserted that the CC of the Uzbek CP(B) is an 'incubator of colonizers'. These statements betray not only a pathetic identity with the ideas of the well-known counter-revolutionary Chokaev, who had written that 'the only function of the highest Uzbek officials is to act as rubber stamps while the actual policy and work are directed by the Russians.' Stemming from a plainly infamous slander of the party, they show that there are grave nationalistic inclinations in the ranks of the Uzbek CP(B). This obliges the party to observe maximum vigilance towards every kind of deviation in the national question, and to step up, in every way, the struggle against Great-Russian chauvinism, as the most dangerous deviation, and also against local nationalism.

An organization in many ways identical with Milli Istiklal was discovered recently also in the Tatar Republic-the organization Diidigyan (Great She-Bear). It is true, that organization did not yet pursue such aims as Milli Istiklal. But acting underground, and having selected literature as the arena for its activity, Diidigyan set itself the task of an organized struggle against the leadership of the party in literature, against proletarian literature. Not content with activities within Tataria, Diidigyan extended its activity also to Bashkiria. The organization was able to secure considerable influence on individual communists and even the party organizations concerned. This is proved inter alia by the fact that the communist Seifi, one of the prominent Tatar men of letters and editor of the journal Yanalif, began to assert that '99 per cent of the Tatar nation are working people' and that, consequently, the class struggle in the Tatar village was 'an invention', and so forth. These very tenets were points of the propaganda of Diidigyan. It is true, in this case, that Seifi's assertions can be related to his right-wing opportunist views. But this is another proof that the ideology underlying the deviations in the national question is closely mixed up with the opportunist deviations in party policy.

There is no need to quote further examples showing the revival of local nationalism (national democratism in Belorussia and so forth). We shall merely note that that revival is typical not only of the National Republics and Provinces, but also of nationalities who have no autonomous units of their own. Thus, in the Polish press (Kultura Mass) some comrades have expressed the idea that it is impossible to develop a Polish proletarian culture in the conditions of the USSR, and that it is necessary 'to orientate the course towards Poland" and so forth.

We shall not analyze the above-mentioned examples, nor the nature of the reviving local nationalism. They speak for themselves: the nationalistic elements, reflecting the hopes of the dying-off exploiter classes in the national districts, have become considerably more active, in some cases (Uzbekistan, Belorussia) growing into direct counter-revolution, and assuming the tactics of wreckers' organizations of the type of the 'Working Peasants' Party' and the 'Industrial Party'. The best and only method of fighting local nationalism is to fulfill the directives of the XVIth Congress: while conducting a resolute struggle against Great-Russian chauvinism, as the chief danger among the national deviations, we must also make active the struggle against the deviation towards local nationalism, 'and, at the same time, do more to apply the Leninist national policy in practice, to eliminate the elements of national inequality, and to develop the national cultures of the Soviet Union.'

A review of the practice of 'the creeping deviations' cannot be complete unless we dwell on one more type of nationalistic local deviation--i.e. the master-race chauvinism and contempt displayed towards the smaller nationalities by the stronger ones. A striking manifestation of that deviation could be observed in the recent dispute between Georgia and Soviet Ossetia on the question of exploiting the marble quarries in the vicinity of the village of Tsnelisi.

A few years ago, South Ossetia had begun to exploit these quarries. When it was discovered that they yielded marble and talc of very high quality, the Building Trust of Georgia began to dispute South Ossetia's right to work the quarries, on the 'formal grounds' that the mountain in which the work was done is situated on the Soviet frontier between Georgia and South Ossetia. Trying to prove the exclusive right of Georgia to exploit the quarries, the manager of the Building Trust of Georgia, Comrade Kalanadze, resorted to the following arguments: 'This part of the mountain is absolutely and unreservedly ours, for, according to historical data, the frontier between the Princes (!) of Amirabzhibi and Palavandov used to run here.'

Thanks to the intervention of the Transcaucasian party organs, the dispute was solved in favor of South Ossetia. But that prolonged dispute gave rise to persistent talk of depriving South Ossetia of its autonomy, of 'curtailing and gradually winding it up'. This in turn begot nationalistic sentiments in South Ossetia.

This is the most striking example of a series of chauvinist attacks against the weaker nationalities and national minorities. These attacks sometimes read like anecdotes.

For example, the following case happened in the town of Kuba (Azerbaijan). A member of the staff of the Regional Educational Committee, an Armenian woman, refused to speak Armenian with Armenian callers, and demanded that they should speak to her in Turkic. When she was asked for the reasons she said: 'If I should talk to them in Armenian, I shall be immediately dismissed for nationalist deviation.' Evidently in Kuba there were reasons for such an assertion. Examples such as this seem to dwarf the dozens of cases when the cultural, economic and day-to-day amenities of the national minorities are ignored outright: the need for a Ukrainian newspaper was stubbornly overlooked in the Kuban; when the cultural five-year plan was drawn up in Azerbaijan, educational work among the national minority was 'forgotten'; in Kazakhstan, despite the repeated decrees of the territorial committee, almost no special cultural and educational work is done among the indigenous peasants; in some districts of the Ukraine the need for Jewish schools is disputed for 'objective reasons', and so on and so forth.

All these occurrences made it an urgent need to shake up thoroughly some stale 'minds' who regard the work among the national minorities as secondary, and indulge in master-race attacks against the small and weak nationalities. This task is being considerably facilitated by the delimitation of the territories into districts which is now nearing completion ...

The struggle against the increasingly active deviations in the national question and the correct application of the Leninist national policy are the most important conditions of the success of our general socialist offensive. That is why we are so acutely faced with the task of fulfilling to the utmost, and with maximum consistency, the directive of the party formulated by Comrade Stalin at the XVIth Congress:

It is necessary to draw the attention of the broad masses to the resolutions of XVIth Congress on the national policy of the party, by struggling on two fronts, and by bearing in mind our international purpose: the fusion of nations, languages and cultures as a long-range aim, but until then-the achievement of national equality in the economic and cultural sphere, by helping the backward nations to catch up with the advanced ones.

Source: Rudolf Schlesinger, ed., Changing Attitudes in Soviet Russia; the nationalities problem and Soviet administration (London: Routledge & K. Paul, 1956), pp. 171-180.