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Restructuring and the Non-Russian Past

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Stephen Velychenko
Stephen Velychenko*
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Extract

The official interpretation of the histories of the nations of the USSR emerged between 1934 and 1953 on the basis of decrees signed by Stalin and/or the Central Committee. This interpretation subsumes the histories of the non-Russian Republics within the “history of the USSR” that begins not in 1917 or 1922 in Moscow, but in prehistoric Asia. The official view recognized the non-Russian nations and republics as separate historical entities, yet imposed upon their pasts a Russocentric statist framework while denying the Russians a separate history of the RSFSR. Within this scheme the history of non-Russian nationalities before they became part of the tsarist state was built around the idea of “oppression” of “the people” and their “struggle” against native and foreign ruling classes. Russian and non-Russian “working people” were assumed always to have been “fraternal” while non-Russian political leaders, before and after incorporation, were judged according to their sympathy and/or loyalty to Russia. Russian political and cultural tutelage of non-Russians was stressed and activists in nineteenth-century national movements were labelled “reactionary” if they were not radical socialists. Official historiography admitted that non-Russians suffered political and cultural oppression but not economic colonialism under tsarist rule. In keeping with the logic of Lenin's The Development of Capitalism in Russia, the official view argued that tsarist economic development was “progressive” for non-Russians because it centralized production and tied “outlying regions” of the empire to the world market. Accordingly, the non-Russian “national bourgeoisie” were “reactionary” because both threatened the integration supposedly demanded by the forces of production. By contrast, during the twenties and the thirties, Russian/non-Russian relations in the Tsarist Empire were presented in terms of Lenin's Imperialism the Highest Stage of Capitalism. Historians argued that tsarist centralism impeded the development in non-Russian provinces and that “national liberation movements” were “progressive” responses to Russian economic colonialism.

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Type
Articles
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , Fall 1994, pp. 325 - 335
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 Association for the Study of Nationalities of Eastern Europe and ex-USSR 

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References

Notes

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