Internationalism or Russification?

284 Pages·1968·8.947 MB·English

by  I. Dzyuba, M. Davies

By the same author
‘An Ordinary Man’ or a Philistine?
(in Ukrainian) Kiev, 1959
Internationalism or
Russification?
A Study in the Soviet Nationalities Problem
Iv a n D ^ u b a
Preface by Peter Archer, Barrister-at-Law, M P
Edited by M. Davies
Second Edition
Weidenfeld and Nicolson
5 Winsley Street London W i
The original Ukrainian text was published under the title
lHmepHaqioHajii3M hu pycu0iKaqm ?
by ‘Sucasnist'5 Publishers, Munich, July 1968
The publication of the Russian text is planned by the Alexander
Herzen Foundation, Amstel 268, Amsterdam.
sbn 297 17613 7
© 1968 by M. Davies
First published June 1968
Second edition October 1970
Printed in Great Britain by
The Camelot Press Ltd., London and Southampton
I have always*5 endeavoured to consider nationality
problems - just as, in fact, all other problems - from
the viewpoint of the principles of scientific Communism
and of the teaching of Marx, Engels and Lenin, perceiving
the prospects for their successful solution to lie along the
road towards the fulfilment of Lenin’s legacy and Com­
munist construction.
IVAN DZYUBA 26 December ig6g
The word in te rn a tio n a lism translates
internatsionalizm in the original title. In the context of
this book, it should be understood to have the meaning
(which is also that given it by Soviet lexicographers) of:
the defence of freedom and equality of all peoples and
struggle against chauvinism (S. I. O zhegov).
Contents
Preface >s' ' ix
The Author and his Book xv
Abbreviations xxi
Letter to P. Yu. Shelest and V. V. Shcherbyts'ky i
Introduction 13
1 The Possibility of Mistakes and the Admissibility of Criti­
cism on the Nationalities Question 24
2 The Importance and Place of the Nationalities Question 28
3 The Forces that Prepared the Revision of the Leninist
Nationalities Policy 34
4 The Future of Nations; Nations under Communism 40
5 National Sentiment, National Consciousness, National
Duties 51
6 The Socialist Republics and the Forms of their Coopera­
tion 56
7 The Phantom of ‘Ukrainian Bourgeois Nationalism’ and
the Reality of Russian Great-Power Chauvinism as the
Principal Obstacle to National Construction in the USSR 60
(1) Russian Chauvinism as a Heritage of History 62
(2) Russian Chauvinism as the Confusion of the Union
of Republics with ‘Russia, One and Indivisible’ 63
(3) Russian Chauvinism as the Practice of Attributing
to the Russians what has been Created by all the
Peoples of the USSR 92
viii Internationalism or Russification?
(4) Russian Chauvinism as National Nihilism, Pseudo-
Internationalism, and Pseudo-Bfotherhood 93
(5) Ukrainophobia 99
(6) Russian Chauvinism as Ultra-Centralism 102
8 Actual Equality and Formal Equality 114
9 Ukrainization and its Repression 127
10 Russification and its Mechanics 134
(1) Culture 139
(2) The Language Blockade 149
11 The Russification of Other Peoples and Denationalization
Run Counter to the Interests of the Russian People Itself 166
12 The Gap between Theory and Practice: Covering Up
the Tracks by Deliberately False Phraseology 171
13 The National Question is Simultaneously a Social and a
Universal Historic Question 193
14 The Government of the Ukrainian SSR as the Spokesman
of National Integrality; Its Responsibility for the Nation 197
Conclusions 202
Notes 217
Appendix 229
Postscript to the Second Edition 233
Index 251
Preface
This document is jifS^udy of the relationships between the Russian
and the Ukrainian peoples, and their respective leaders. And its
importance is not confined to those races. For it is one example of the
frustrated aspirations, the restrictions upon choice, and the conse­
quent resentments generated by a failure to understand why people
care for a national and cultural inheritance.
Ethnic groupings indicate one kind of difference between people,
and in any situation are a potential source of friction. The quest of
the Jewish people for a national home at what the Arabs believe to
be the expense of those who were already living there; the suspicion
and intolerance in Ireland; the refusal of General de Gaulle to
commit the French people to participation in a Europe where
decisions are out of the hands of la Patrie; the identification of
political and economic frustrations in Wales, Scotland and Quebec
with being racially in a minority, all exemplify the instinctive feel­
ing of mutual security which, from the first appearance of herds, was
afforded by a primitive insistence on the exclusiveness of the group.
In the United Kingdom, the observance of Human Rights Year
is directed largely against this instinctive and irrational hostility to
strangers, and its propensity to identify them with every frustration
of daily life. And here the aliens have virtually no share in govern­
ment. It is even easier to imagine a conspiracy where a people
inhabiting a territory which it has been taught to regard as its own,
finds itself administered by a government dominated by foreigners.
Even if the administration offers no cause for complaint, the
people will wish to be assured that it controls its own destiny. There
is little evidence to indicate whether the Ukrainian people would
reject a Communist political system, if offered the choice. Certainly
the author of this essay writes as a committed Marxist-Leninist.
X Internationalism or Russification?
But a Ukrainian may be forgiven if he feels that there is a difference
between the position of Poland and Rumania, who appear to enjoy
at least some area of choice over the degree of their cooperation
with Moscow, and that of the Ukraine, which emerged in 1923,
from the troubled period following the Russian Revolution and the
dissolution of the Russian Empire, as part of the USSR.
Of course, the Constitution of the USSR reserves to the Republics
a right to secede. But no method is provided of testing whether the
people of a particular Republic wish to exercise their right. The
most committed admirer of the USSR could hardly pretend that the
Ukrainian people have a means of expressing their choice in free
elections. What is known is that, in the elections to the Constituent
Assembly in November 1917, a two-to-one majority in the Ukraine
voted for the Ukrainian socialist candidates, as against those
associated with Moscow.1
It is tempting to dismiss the difficulty by pointing to the inter­
nationalist tradition of the Socialist movement. In a Socialist
society, what do national differences matter ? Surely Marxism-
Leninism emphasizes the interests which unite working people of all
nations. And the author leaves us in no doubt of his opposition to
chauvinism. But the debate is concerned with who is a chauvinist,
the Russian for seeking to impose his language and culture on other
nations, or the other nations for caring.
In fact, Marxists have had always to operate in a world which
included national rivalries, and have had to consider how these
could be made to assist rather than to hinder their purposes. In many
cases, political awareness, a concern for social justice and a flourish­
ing of culture have been associated with incipient nationalism
among a subject people. In other cases, nationalism has proved the
ventriloquist’s dummy for imperialism, or Fascism.
‘National states and nationalism’, wrote Rosa Luxemburg, ‘are
empty vessels into which each epoch and the class relations in each
particular country pour .their particular material content.’ Hence,
she laid greater stress on the alliance between Polish and Russian
workers than on the principle of self-determination for Poland.
Lenin, on the other hand, understood that the revolutionary forces
within the Russian Empire could be united only if each people
were guaranteed a right of self-determination. Neither of them
approved of the effects of German nationalism, which allied
itself with the militarism of Bismarck. It is perhaps significant
1 Lenin, CW, XXX, p. 270.
Preface xi
that Lenin, while appreciating that Rosa Luxemburg was right
to avoid an alliance with nationalism in Poland, declared that in
her article (in Polish) ‘The National Question and Autonomy’1
she had over-generalized from her Polish experience, and had
consequently underestimated the importance of Ukrainian national
aspirations.2
Perhaps the only distinction of principle is that of Lenin, distin­
guishing between the aggressive nationalism of an oppressor nation
and the defensive nationalism of an oppressed nation.3 And the
author demonstrates beyond peradventure that Lenin intended
on behalf of the Federal Government to pledge self-determination
to the nationalities of .the Union.
A United Naticfftsj7 Seminar on ‘The Multi-national Society’,
convened at Ljubljana in 1965, in which Soviet delegates played
an active part, concluded: ‘... it was the duty of the majority to
recognize that, by encouraging a minority to preserve, if it so wished,
its own cultural heritage, the State would in the final analysis be the
principal beneficiary. Integration, therefore, should never mean the
suffocation of the minority concerned.’
A background paper prepared for the Seminar by Professor
M. G. Kirichenko, of the All-Union Scientific Research Institute
of Soviet Law, emphasizing the same point, quoted with approval a
message addressed by the revolutionary Soviet Government to ‘all
Moslem toilers of Russia and the East’ : ‘From now on, your beliefs,
your customs, your national and cultural institutions, which were
repressed by the Tsarist authorities, are free and inviolable. Organ­
ize your national life freely and without any hindrance. You are
entitled to this.’4 Similar pronouncements were made in relation to
Jews and Cossacks.
And as recently as the 6 November 1967, Dr E. Bagromov,
a member of the Institute of Philosophy, USSR Academy of
Sciences, wrote in The Times'.
1 Przeglad Socjaldemokratyczny, Krakow, 1908-9.
2 Lenin, CW, XX, pp. 411-13; i. a., he says: ‘Whether the Ukraine, for example,
is destined to form an independent state is a matter that will be determined by a
thousand unpredictable factors ... We firmly uphold something that is beyond
doubt: the right of the Ukraine to form such a state.’ Cf. also Rosa Luxemburg,
The Russian Revolution and Leninism or Marxism? Aim Arbor, 1961, pp. 52-4.
8 Lenin, CW, XXXVI, p. 607.
4 The message, dated 3 December (ao November o.s.) 1917, was first published
in Gazela Vremennogo Rabochego i Kresi’yanskogo pravitel'stva, No. 17, 24 November
1917; full text in Istoriya sovetskoy Konslitulsii, Moscow, 1936, pp. 35-7.