The Multiethnic Soviet Union and its Demise

145 Pages·2022·0.834 MB·English

by  Brigid O'Keeffe

To my students

FIGURES
1 Map of contemporary Eurasia xvi
2 Soviet poster, “Working Woman of the East! Join the
Ranks of the Builders of Socialism!” 28
3 Stranded ship in the Aral Sea, Uzbekistan 33
4 Stalin Meets with Collective Farm Workers from
Tajikistan and Turkmenistan 42
5 Red Army soldiers raise the Soviet flag over the Reichstag 69
6 Friendship of Peoples Fountain 78
7 Huldah Clark among her Soviet classmates, 1961 82
8 Soldier waves a Russian flag, August 21, 1991 108
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe many thanks to the people who helped me in one way or another
as I wrote this book. I owe many more to those whose incredible
scholarship made the writing of this book possible. How I wish there
were enough space in these lines to thank each of you by name.
My family, as always, cheered me along and it made all the
difference. My thanks to the O’Keeffe, Centers, Mueller, and Clovis
families whose love I felt even while we were separated from one
another for very long. Ernie provided comic relief at all the right
times. Zac Centers was reliably by my side as I wrote this book. Thank
you, Zac, for being exactly who you are and for loving me as I am.
Steve Norris had faith in this book before I did. I thank him for
his mentorship, friendship, and unfailing support. Eugene Avrutin
offered essential advice and helpful feedback on the book’s first
draft. At Bloomsbury, Rhodri Mogford and Laura Reeves stewarded
this book from proposal to completion with good care. Anonymous
reviewers generously offered thoughtful suggestions that improved
the final manuscript.
Phil Napoli, Lauren Mancia, Jocelyn Wills, Gunja SenGupta,
Swapna Banerjee, Mobina Hashmi, Peter Blitstein, Iverson Long,
Josh Sanborn, Desi Allevato, and Jackie Levine helped in ways big
and small. Their friendship proved buoyant during challenging times.
Special thanks are owed to Peter Blitstein who read the manuscript in
full and responded to it with incisive feedback.
Evangeline McGlynn created the book’s map. I thank her for her
expertise and patience.
The Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia at New York
University generously extended to me digital library privileges when
I most needed them. I wrote this book during the pandemic and
without access to a physical research library. I would not have been
Acknowledgments
able to write this book were it not for the help of my colleagues at the
Jordan Center.
While writing, I thought often of the teachers who inspired me
along my journey to becoming a professional historian. I thank
especially my mentors at NYU—Yanni Kotsonis, Jane Burbank, and
Bruce Grant, in particular—who transformed my life with their
expertise and good care. I thought, too, of my parents. My dad, Liam
O’Keeffe, taught me in subtle ways how to find my writer’s voice and
always encouraged me to take to my pen. I miss him so very much.
My fourth-grade teacher at St. Mary’s School, Margaret O’Keeffe,
proved a woman of extraordinary talent and enthusiasm for the craft
of teaching. Mom, thanks for showing me how it’s done.
The students whom I have had the honor to teach since I joined the
Brooklyn College History Department in 2009 are the true inspiration
for this book. It is dedicated to them.
xii
A NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY
AND TRANSLITERATION
For the sake of simplicity and ease of reading, I refer throughout
the text to the various union republics not by their official Soviet
titles, but rather by the names they are commonly known today. For
example, instead of referring to the Ukrainian SSR or the Kazakh
Soviet Socialist Republic in the text, I refer to Ukraine or Kazakhstan.
It is my goal to speak plainly yet meaningfully about the centrality of
ethnic politics to Soviet history. To that end, I have made a conscious
effort to avoid introducing Russian words to the text except when it
has seemed either unavoidable or essential.
I have used the Library of Congress system of transliteration for
Russian words except when writing about individuals or places known
to English readers in a different formulation. I refer, therefore, in the
text to Trotsky rather than to Trotskii.
GLOSSARY OF TERMS AND
ABBREVIATIONS
aul nomadic encampment
CIS Commonwealth of Independent States
Comintern Communist International
CPSU Communist Party of the Soviet Union
GARF Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (State
Archive of the Russian Federation)
glasnost’ openness and transparency
Gulag Main Administration of Corrective-Labor Camps
hujum literally “assault;” unveiling campaign launched
in 1927
JAC Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee
kolkhoz collective farm
Komsomol Communist Youth League
korenizatsiia indigenization; Soviet policy of promoting native
cadres and languages within ethnically delineated
Soviet Union republics and other territories.
kulak wealthy peasant; Soviet catch-all term for
“class enemy”
NKVD People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs; the state
security police
paranja head-to-toe robe traditionally worn in conjunction
with a horsehair veil (chachvon) by women in
sedentary Central Asian Muslim societies and
targeted during the hujum (unveiling campaign)
perestroika restructuring; era of Gorbachev’s reforms
RSFSR Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic
Glossary of Terms and Abbreviations
SSR Soviet Socialist Republic, a union republic
USSR Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; also known as
the Soviet Union
VDNKh Exhibition of the Achievements of the People’s
Economy
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CHAPTER 1
REVOLUTIONARIES
In October 1917, the Bolsheviks seized power and formed a new
revolutionary government—one that would usher in socialism for the
diverse peoples of the former Russian empire. At its head was Vladimir
Lenin, a middle-aged revolutionary whose own ethnic heritage
seemed to attest to the multiculturalism of the vast Russian empire
over which the tsars had ruled. Lenin’s family combined Russian,
Jewish, German, Swedish, and Kalymk roots. Yet, for Lenin, ethnic
identity was of little if any personal concern. His primary allegiance
was to socialist internationalism and his first priority was revolution.
Lenin and the Bolsheviks wanted to refashion life on earth, liberate
humanity from the chains of capitalist exploitation, and create a new
type of human being rooted in the life-affirming soil of socialism.
By Lenin’s side in Petrograd in those heady days in October were
comrades who hailed from all over the tsarist empire. A Jew from
Ukraine who had little investment in his own Jewishness, Leon
Trotsky grew up on a farm but preferred to cultivate revolution. In
October 1917, Trotsky’s leadership in the armed uprising in Petrograd
proved indispensable. He soon became Commissar of War and took
responsibility for building the Red Army. Nadezhda Krupskaya, born
into the impoverished Russian nobility, devoted herself to Bolshevism
as an activist, organizer, and educator. She also devoted herself to her
husband, Vladimir Lenin, and his work. After the October Revolution,
Krupskaya joined the work of the Commissariat of Enlightenment.
A child of the Polish nobility who was expelled from high school in
Vilnius for his rowdy Marxist antics, Felix Dzerzhinsky endured years
of tsarist prison in the name of revolution. He led Bolshevik forces
in seizing Petrograd’s central post and telegraph office during the
October Revolution. In the new Bolshevik state, Dzerzhinsky assumed