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The Soviet Nation
MOST RUSSIANS, ARMENIANS AND UZBEKS ARE SURE OF THEIR ANCIENT ORIGINS AND UNIQUE CHARACTERISTICS. BUT THE PAST THEY SHARE IS JUST AS MUCH A PART OF WHO THEY ARE TODAY.
By Ronald Grigor Suny
Moscow Times
Sept 2 2005
In the West, at least before the Gorbachev years, the Soviet Union
was almost always referred to as Russia. Sports stars or politicians,
like Igor Ter-Ovanesyan or Anastas Mikoyan, were invariably called
Russians, as if in a self-conscious effort to either deny the
country's multinational character or to push the point that Soviet
policies and practices were aimed at Russification and homogenization
of the whole Soviet people. The dominant view of scholars for most
of the Cold War was that Lenin's nationalities policy of "national
self-determination" for all peoples was disingenuous, dedicated in
reality to the aggrandizement of the central state's power.
It was only in the 1980s, as non-Russians in the South Caucasus and
Baltic region began agitating for autonomy and independence, that a
few historians and political scientists began to reconsider Bolshevik
attempts to foster ethno-national cultures, promote leaders from
non-Russian nationalities and organize the first state composed of
national territorial units. With the disintegration of the Union and
the formation of 15 independent nation-states just a few years later,
a small army of younger scholars -- Yuri Slezkine, Jeremy Smith,
Terry Martin and Francine Hirsch among them -- took up the study of
how the Soviet Union was formed.
Now an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin,
Francine Hirsch takes us deep into the politics and processes of the
nascent federation with "Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge
and the Making of the Soviet Union." For most Marxists, nation
and nationalism were impediments to the building of a classless,
socialist society. But Lenin, almost alone of the leading Bolsheviks,
believed that small-nation nationalism could aid in the struggle
against Western imperialism. Russia could prove to oppressed peoples
everywhere that a large socialist state was an ally, not a threat,
to their cultural and political development. Lenin's policy granted
territory, education and limited political rights to non-Russians but
stopped short of real sovereignty or complete freedom of expression.
As Hirsch shows, the state's efforts led to a "double assimilation":
the coalescing of unstructured populations into nationalities and the
further assimilation of these nationalities into a Sovietized society.
Referring to the Soviet Union as an "empire of nations," Hirsch
demonstrates through prodigious research how ethnographers from
the former tsarist regime collaborated with the Leninists to shape
the new state. Hers is the tale of a modernizing, self-styled
scientific state that imposed categories, names and programs on
ethnic populations with relatively little say in their own fate. The
whole enterprise is reminiscent -- indeed, parallels -- what European
imperialists, like the British in India, did to their conquered and
colonized subjects. Yet Hirsch is careful not to subscribe to the
older view that Lenin was driven by power alone. Rather, she sees
the building of the Soviet multinational state as the product of a
joint intelligentsia project, at times enthusiastically backed by
ethnographers and others, to liberate a benighted population and
propel them along the evolutionary path toward modernity. Sometimes
the consideration for ethnicity gave way to other more compelling
interests, like economics or defense, but the Soviet state never
abandoned its official commitment to nation-making.
Cornell University Press
The Soviets, like the Nazis, engaged in race science with studies
such as this one, from 1927, of Mordvin and Russian men. But unlike
the Nazis, the Soviets believed that race was a product of history,
and therefore still open to change.
Hirsch is particularly good on how Soviet "race science" differed
from that of the Nazis. Whereas the Hitlerites saw biological race
as immutable and a fundamental determinant of a people's abilities,
Soviet ethnographers saw "race" as a product of history, therefore
changing and developing. All peoples, in their view, were capable of
progressing through time. They advanced most rapidly in a socialist
society, and there they would eventually form a multicultural community
-- the Soviet people.
"Empire of Nations" is an exceptionally rich book and a significant
addition to the growing literature on the construction of the Soviet
state. Beautifully written and clearly presented even when the story
hovers on complicated administrative matters, Hirsch's account of
the Soviet Union as a "work in progress" that neither began with a
blueprint nor achieved completion reaffirms the now widely accepted
view of nation-formation as a process of human intervention and
invention. Nations, scholars generally agree, are not "primordial"
collectives that have always existed and only await their moment of
awakening and freedom. Rather, they are the product of a conscious
effort to piece together elements of shared language or culture in
defense of the right to political freedom. This "constructivist"
view that nations are made in modern times is illuminated by the
Soviet experience, where the socialist state played a particularly
forceful role in delineating and consolidating nations within its
fold. The great irony of Soviet history is that it was the regime's
very success in creating and fostering nations that led eventually
to disintegration once the central government began loosening its
hold over the empire's peripheries.
Every scholar aspires to making an original contribution to her or his
field, and Hirsch can take pride in adding enormously to our knowledge
of the cultural technologies of Soviet rule. And the fact that she is
in an active company of colleagues toiling nearby in the histories of
the non-Russians in no way diminishes her work. Regrettably, she does
not adequately acknowledge those fellow toilers and instead repeatedly
emphasizes how she disagrees with their views. Indeed, Hirsch is one
of the most "disagreeing" scholars one is likely to read, footnoting
over and over again her differences with the other major players.
There is nothing wrong with vigorous scholarly debate, but Hirsch's
disagreements are not very substantive. To take just two examples,
she disagrees with Harvard historian Terry Martin's notion of an
"affirmative action empire," the idea that the Soviet state promoted
the fortunes of non-Russians particularly in the 1920s, although
his analysis jibes perfectly with her own. She also takes Martin
to task for arguing that in the 1930s the Soviet Union shifted
from a "constructivist" to a "primordialist" approach to defining
nationality. But she then goes on to elaborate how the secret police
in the late 1930s required that nationality on internal passports be
based not on an individual's "choice," as before, but on his or her
parents' ethnicity. This greater emphasis on descent, it would appear,
reflects the move under Stalin from subjective national identification
to a more primordial, almost racial idea of nationality.
Thinking of nations as primordial is still common among post-Soviet
peoples. Most citizens of present-day Russia, Armenia or Uzbekistan
are certain that they are distinct and different from their
neighbors precisely because of their ancient origins and unique
cultural characteristics. But this is only one of the legacies of
the long Soviet experiment. Besides inclusion in and allegiance to
a particular nation, post-Soviet peoples share the mentalities and
habits of another unique cultural formation: the culture that can
only be described as Soviet. It might be that you can take peoples
out of the Soviet Union, but you may not, at least for a long time,
take the Soviet out of the people.
Ronald Grigor Suny is a professor of political science and history at
the University of Chicago and the author of "The Soviet Experiment:
Russia, the U.S.S.R. and the Successor States."
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress
MOST RUSSIANS, ARMENIANS AND UZBEKS ARE SURE OF THEIR ANCIENT ORIGINS AND UNIQUE CHARACTERISTICS. BUT THE PAST THEY SHARE IS JUST AS MUCH A PART OF WHO THEY ARE TODAY.
By Ronald Grigor Suny
Moscow Times
Sept 2 2005
In the West, at least before the Gorbachev years, the Soviet Union
was almost always referred to as Russia. Sports stars or politicians,
like Igor Ter-Ovanesyan or Anastas Mikoyan, were invariably called
Russians, as if in a self-conscious effort to either deny the
country's multinational character or to push the point that Soviet
policies and practices were aimed at Russification and homogenization
of the whole Soviet people. The dominant view of scholars for most
of the Cold War was that Lenin's nationalities policy of "national
self-determination" for all peoples was disingenuous, dedicated in
reality to the aggrandizement of the central state's power.
It was only in the 1980s, as non-Russians in the South Caucasus and
Baltic region began agitating for autonomy and independence, that a
few historians and political scientists began to reconsider Bolshevik
attempts to foster ethno-national cultures, promote leaders from
non-Russian nationalities and organize the first state composed of
national territorial units. With the disintegration of the Union and
the formation of 15 independent nation-states just a few years later,
a small army of younger scholars -- Yuri Slezkine, Jeremy Smith,
Terry Martin and Francine Hirsch among them -- took up the study of
how the Soviet Union was formed.
Now an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin,
Francine Hirsch takes us deep into the politics and processes of the
nascent federation with "Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge
and the Making of the Soviet Union." For most Marxists, nation
and nationalism were impediments to the building of a classless,
socialist society. But Lenin, almost alone of the leading Bolsheviks,
believed that small-nation nationalism could aid in the struggle
against Western imperialism. Russia could prove to oppressed peoples
everywhere that a large socialist state was an ally, not a threat,
to their cultural and political development. Lenin's policy granted
territory, education and limited political rights to non-Russians but
stopped short of real sovereignty or complete freedom of expression.
As Hirsch shows, the state's efforts led to a "double assimilation":
the coalescing of unstructured populations into nationalities and the
further assimilation of these nationalities into a Sovietized society.
Referring to the Soviet Union as an "empire of nations," Hirsch
demonstrates through prodigious research how ethnographers from
the former tsarist regime collaborated with the Leninists to shape
the new state. Hers is the tale of a modernizing, self-styled
scientific state that imposed categories, names and programs on
ethnic populations with relatively little say in their own fate. The
whole enterprise is reminiscent -- indeed, parallels -- what European
imperialists, like the British in India, did to their conquered and
colonized subjects. Yet Hirsch is careful not to subscribe to the
older view that Lenin was driven by power alone. Rather, she sees
the building of the Soviet multinational state as the product of a
joint intelligentsia project, at times enthusiastically backed by
ethnographers and others, to liberate a benighted population and
propel them along the evolutionary path toward modernity. Sometimes
the consideration for ethnicity gave way to other more compelling
interests, like economics or defense, but the Soviet state never
abandoned its official commitment to nation-making.
Cornell University Press
The Soviets, like the Nazis, engaged in race science with studies
such as this one, from 1927, of Mordvin and Russian men. But unlike
the Nazis, the Soviets believed that race was a product of history,
and therefore still open to change.
Hirsch is particularly good on how Soviet "race science" differed
from that of the Nazis. Whereas the Hitlerites saw biological race
as immutable and a fundamental determinant of a people's abilities,
Soviet ethnographers saw "race" as a product of history, therefore
changing and developing. All peoples, in their view, were capable of
progressing through time. They advanced most rapidly in a socialist
society, and there they would eventually form a multicultural community
-- the Soviet people.
"Empire of Nations" is an exceptionally rich book and a significant
addition to the growing literature on the construction of the Soviet
state. Beautifully written and clearly presented even when the story
hovers on complicated administrative matters, Hirsch's account of
the Soviet Union as a "work in progress" that neither began with a
blueprint nor achieved completion reaffirms the now widely accepted
view of nation-formation as a process of human intervention and
invention. Nations, scholars generally agree, are not "primordial"
collectives that have always existed and only await their moment of
awakening and freedom. Rather, they are the product of a conscious
effort to piece together elements of shared language or culture in
defense of the right to political freedom. This "constructivist"
view that nations are made in modern times is illuminated by the
Soviet experience, where the socialist state played a particularly
forceful role in delineating and consolidating nations within its
fold. The great irony of Soviet history is that it was the regime's
very success in creating and fostering nations that led eventually
to disintegration once the central government began loosening its
hold over the empire's peripheries.
Every scholar aspires to making an original contribution to her or his
field, and Hirsch can take pride in adding enormously to our knowledge
of the cultural technologies of Soviet rule. And the fact that she is
in an active company of colleagues toiling nearby in the histories of
the non-Russians in no way diminishes her work. Regrettably, she does
not adequately acknowledge those fellow toilers and instead repeatedly
emphasizes how she disagrees with their views. Indeed, Hirsch is one
of the most "disagreeing" scholars one is likely to read, footnoting
over and over again her differences with the other major players.
There is nothing wrong with vigorous scholarly debate, but Hirsch's
disagreements are not very substantive. To take just two examples,
she disagrees with Harvard historian Terry Martin's notion of an
"affirmative action empire," the idea that the Soviet state promoted
the fortunes of non-Russians particularly in the 1920s, although
his analysis jibes perfectly with her own. She also takes Martin
to task for arguing that in the 1930s the Soviet Union shifted
from a "constructivist" to a "primordialist" approach to defining
nationality. But she then goes on to elaborate how the secret police
in the late 1930s required that nationality on internal passports be
based not on an individual's "choice," as before, but on his or her
parents' ethnicity. This greater emphasis on descent, it would appear,
reflects the move under Stalin from subjective national identification
to a more primordial, almost racial idea of nationality.
Thinking of nations as primordial is still common among post-Soviet
peoples. Most citizens of present-day Russia, Armenia or Uzbekistan
are certain that they are distinct and different from their
neighbors precisely because of their ancient origins and unique
cultural characteristics. But this is only one of the legacies of
the long Soviet experiment. Besides inclusion in and allegiance to
a particular nation, post-Soviet peoples share the mentalities and
habits of another unique cultural formation: the culture that can
only be described as Soviet. It might be that you can take peoples
out of the Soviet Union, but you may not, at least for a long time,
take the Soviet out of the people.
Ronald Grigor Suny is a professor of political science and history at
the University of Chicago and the author of "The Soviet Experiment:
Russia, the U.S.S.R. and the Successor States."
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress