History of the Soviet Union

4

The Making of the Soviet Union

The country which the Bolsheviks took over in 1917 was the largest territorial state on earth. It was also a great multinational empire, containing a bewildering variety of peoples: their formation as nations and their absorption into Russia had been going on ever since the Middle Ages.

The Tatar invasion began the process. We saw in the first chapter that the rule of the eastern hordes did much to develop Russians’ sense of their identity as a nation. But it also divided them. Those Russians in the north-west who remained outside the Tatar empire developed their language and culture (Bielorussian) separately: this later became the official language of a Lithuanian state, which in its turn amalgamated with Poland. Thereafter Bielorussian became largely a peasant language, which absorbed marked Polish elements, while agriculture and land tenure tended to follow Polish patterns. In the south and south-west another branch of the old Russian nation, the Ukrainians (which means ‘border folk’), also evolved separately, first under Tatar, then Polish rule. Like the Bielorussians, some of them became Catholics, while even some of those who remained Orthodox in their liturgy recognized the Pope as head of their church (the so-called Uniate Church). They absorbed many Cossacks, or ‘freemen’, fleeing from taxation, military service and serfdom in Muscovy. These became fiercely independent local communities of fighting men, living in a kind of no man’s land between Russia, Poland and Turkey. Their traditions were invoked when Ukrainian national feeling began to revive in the nineteenth century, even though by that time Cossack units had been reintegrated into the Russian army, and indeed were performing internal security duties for the tsar.

By the time the Bielorussians and most Ukrainians were reabsorbed into Russia during the partitions of Poland in the late eighteenth century, their languages and cultures were very distinct from that of Great or Muscovite Russia; but the nations themselves were largely peasant, while the urban and rural elites were composed of Russians, Poles or even Jews.

Over the centuries the course of Russian expansion brought under Russian rule many people who had no kinship with Russia at all. Already in the sixteenth century the Russians were beginning to reverse the Tatar invasion (though at a much slower pace), conquering territories in the Volga basin still inhabited by Tatars as well as by Bashkirs and other pagan or Islamic peoples. In the eighteenth century the Russians conquered the last independent Tatar Khanate, in the Crimea, and began the subjugation of the Islamic mountain peoples of the Caucasus–which, however, took them nearly a century. The Caucasians proved to be fierce fighters and under their leader, Shamil, waged a jihad or ‘holy war’ against the infidel invaders.

During the mid- and late nineteenth century Russian armies struck across the steppes and deserts of Central Asia, into the oasis regions beyond, in the foothills of the mountains, where a variety of Turkic peoples lived, again of Islamic faith. The aim of the advance was partly better to secure existing frontiers, partly to acquire Central Asian cotton, and partly the desire for sheer military glory. Once the armies had passed, the nomad Kazakh people of the steppes were gradually displaced from their best grazing land by Russian and Ukrainian peasant settlers, while in the oasis regions of Turkestan, colonies of Russian workers immigrated to the towns, including eventually large numbers of railwaymen, as the railway followed conquest and trade. The resentment aroused among the local population by this incursion culminated in a major anti-European rising in 1916: much blood was shed on both sides, and many Central Asian Muslims fled across the border into China.

Just beyond the Caucasus mountains, surrounded by Muslims on all sides (and with Turkey just across the border), were two of the oldest Christian peoples in the world, the Georgians and the Armenians. They both came under Russian rule in the early nineteenth century. Although they tended to regard the Russians as uncouth upstarts, both peoples acquiesced in Russian suzerainty, for it meant the protection of a strong Christian power against Islam. In other respects the Georgians and Armenians were very different from one another. The Georgians were a rural people, mostly nobles or peasants, though with a lively intelligentsia: they had a reputation for immense national pride, love of their homeland and lavish hospitality. The Armenians, on the other hand, were more urban and cosmopolitan, successful bankers and traders, often to be found outside their homeland, throughout the Caucasian region, and indeed the whole Middle East.

Along the coast of the Baltic Sea, Peter the Great in the early eighteenth century conquered regions which had been ruled since the Middle Ages by the Teutonic Knights and their German descendants. There German landowners and burghers of Lutheran faith ruled over a largely peasant population of Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians. The Estonians spoke a language related to Finnish, but the other two nations were completely isolated in the European community of languages. During the nineteenth century they began to generate their own native intelligentsia, often centred on the church to begin with: by the early twentieth century, with the coming of industry to these relatively advanced regions, a native working class was beginning to develop. In fact the growing national consciousness led to especially violent clashes there in the 1905 revolution.

The annexations of Poland in the late eighteenth century brought several million Jews into the Russian Empire. Speaking Yiddish and practising their own faith, they ruled themselves in self-governing communities (the kahal) under the general protection of the crown. Most of them were traders, artisans, innkeepers and the like. They were usually prohibited from owning land, so that very few practised agriculture. The Imperial government decided to restrict them to the territories where they already lived, which became known as the Pale of Settlement. Only Jews with higher education or certain professional qualifications were permitted to live elsewhere. Official discrimination against them was aggravated by powerful popular prejudice, which sometimes flared up into violent pogroms, especially from the 1880s onwards. Jews began to seek a way out of their situation, some by setting up their own socialist party (the Bund), others by calling for the establishment of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine (the Zionists).

Altogether, the peoples of the Russian Empire were at very different stages of national integration by the early twentieth century: some were still primitive nomadic clans, while others had their own literate intelligentsia and working class. In all cases, however, the social changes of the time–urbanization, industrialization, the growth in commerce, the rise of primary education–tended to intensify and accentuate national feelings, both among Russians and non-Russians. More and more citizens of the empire were faced with the question: do I belong primarily to the Russian Empire or to my national homeland? On the answer depended language, culture, career, often religion.

The 1917 revolution posed the same question again, in even sharper form. Marxism had no ready formula for the national question. Marx himself had tended to underestimate the whole thing, assuming that the existing industrial nations of Europe had a natural right, at least for the time being, to speak for the proletariat everywhere, while ultimately national differences were less important than economic ones.

In the spectrum of European Marxism, Lenin occupied an intermediate position on the national question. Unlike the Austrian Marxists, Otto Bauer and Karl Renner, he did not regard nations as permanent historical entities: he held that they were conditioned, like all other social formations, by economic forces. On the other hand, he did not believe, like Rosa Luxemburg, that as soon as the socialist revolution took place they could all be merged forthwith in an international community. Like most Marxists, Lenin was inclined to underestimate the strength of national consciousness as a social force, but he was very well aware that in the circumstances of 1917, the desire of the subject nations of the former Russian Empire to enjoy greater independence was a powerful potential ally. His observations of the Austro-Hungarian Empire had made him conscious of the power of national feelings during what he called the ‘bourgeois’ revolution.

Besides, during the First World War, Lenin became increasingly impressed by the revolutionary potential of the colonized nations of the world, especially those in Asia. In Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916) he developed the view that the class struggle was now taking place on an international scale, and that the colonized nations as a whole were being exploited by the advanced industrial nations of Europe and North America. It followed that, at the present stage of history, the slogan of national self-determination was a revolutionary one, and in particular that the subject nationalities of Russia, led if necessary by their ‘national bourgeoisie’, should be encouraged to over-throw their oppressors and decide their own future.

Lenin, then, viewed national aspirations as real and powerful. Nevertheless, he did believe that in the long run they were secondary. And since Lenin always tended to hope that ‘the long run’ might be speeded up, the result was considerable ambivalence on the national question, an ambivalence reflected in his policy after October. His intention was that nations of the old Russian Empire should be allowed either to declare their complete independence from Soviet Russia or to join the new state as a constituent part of it. He did not envisage any intermediary position. In fact, however, as it turned out, what most nations actually desired in 1917 was neither complete independence nor total assimilation, but some form of associate or autonomous status within a multinational federal state.

In this significant way, the Bolsheviks were out of tune with the aspirations of the nationalities. Furthermore, in the absence of world revolution, Lenin was in no position to offer them genuine internationalism: the most he could extend to them was membership in a multinational state dominated in numbers, language, culture and administrative power by Russians. Without the safeguards of a federal structure, this threatened to mean actual Russification, the very evil against which they had struggled, with Lenin’s support, under the tsars. This danger was intensified by the Bolsheviks’ explicit subordination, in theoretical terms, of national independence to ‘proletarian internationalism’: as Lenin frequently reiterated, the primary concern of the proletarian party was ‘the self-determination, not of peoples, but of the proletariat within each nation’.

In order to meet these dilemmas, the Bolsheviks in government had from the beginning to compromise, and to accept in practice what they denied in theory, a federal structure. The Declaration of the Rights of the Toiling and Exploited People, of January 1918, explicitly called the new Soviet state ‘a federation of Soviet national republics’. At that stage, of course, even this was a mere aspiration, since the Bolsheviks did not control most of the outlying regions of the empire in which the intended national republics were situated: federation was accepted temporarily as preferable to disintegration. Nevertheless, the use of the word had long-term implications. It harmonized with the Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia (2 November 1917), which recognized the equality and sovereignty of all peoples, abolished all national privileges and restrictions, and established the right to self-determination ‘up to and including secession and the formation of an independent state’.

To deal with the manifold and delicate problems of relations with the nationalities, Lenin set up a People’s Commissariat of Nationality Affairs (Narkomnats for short) under Stalin. It mediated in conflicts between national groups, and advised generally on the ways in which Bolshevik policies would affect the non-Russians. As more nationalities gradually passed under Soviet rule, Narkomnats also became a real instrument of political influence. At its head was a ‘collegium’, a kind of large committee on which elected representatives of the nationalities sat. Narkomnats thus collated and aggregated national opinion as well as providing a means by which orders could be passed down from above.

Whenever national self-determination clashed with ‘proletarian internationalism’, it was the latter which took precedence. This can be seen even in the case of Finland, which had been a Russian protectorate for only a century. It is true that when a non-socialist government led by Svinhufvud declared independence, the Soviet government in Petrograd recognized this. It also, however, simultaneously supported a Red rising inside Finland, designed to instal a pro-Soviet government in Helsinki. This rising was crushed after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, when the Germans intervened on the side of the Finnish Whites. Here for the first time a danger appeared which was to recur frequently: that of Red troops being regarded by the local population as Russifiers and being therefore resisted as foreign invaders.

The history of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania was somewhat similar. In Estonia and Latvia a National Council took advantage of the Soviet Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples and announced their independence from Russia, only to be arrested by Red Guards who installed a Soviet regime. These in their turn were swept aside by the German occupation troops following the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. Then, after November 1918, with the defeat of the Germans, all three national movements struggled to consolidate the existence of independent republics in a dual war against both the Red Army and local socialists (who were especially strong in Latvia). They succeeded in this, at least partly owing to armed support both from irregular German units and from the British navy, which was trying to clear the region of both Russian and German influence. In this way Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania became independent republics which lasted till 1940.

Poland’s independence from Russia was already a fait accompli when the Bolsheviks came to power, since the whole of the Congress Kingdom (the Russian sector of Poland) had been occupied by the Germans in 1915. Recognition of this was a pure formality. What reopened the question was the decision of Pilsudski, the Polish leader, in 1920, to invade the Ukraine and attempt to reincorporate territory which had been ruled over by the Poles before the partitions of the late eighteenth century. The Poles did very well at first, and in fact captured Kiev, but the Red Army then regrouped itself from its victories over Denikin and managed to drive the Poles back out of the Ukraine. The question then arose: should the Red Army profit by its impetus, pursue the enemy into Poland itself, and try to set up a Soviet republic in Warsaw? On this the Soviet leaders were themselves divided, and their divisions were significant. Trotsky took the immaculately internationalist line that socialist revolution in Poland should proceed from the efforts of the Polish workers themselves: for the Red Army to invade would merely persuade them that the Russians had returned, albeit under a new banner, to occupy and rule over their country as before. Lenin, on the other hand, took the view that circumstances were once again favourable for world revolution: encouraged by the heroism of the Red Army against their own bourgeoisie and landowners, the Polish workers would rise against their native oppressors and overthrow their government. Beyond that, too, the revolution might spread to Germany and even the rest of Europe. For a brief intoxicating moment the dreams of October 1917 returned: a Polish Provisional Revolutionary Committee, headed by the Social Democrat Marchlewski, waited in Moscow to take up the reins of power in Warsaw (a scene to become familiar in Europe in 1944–5), while Stalin began to elaborate plans for the creation of a super-confederation of Soviet republics, to include Poland, Hungary and Germany.

This Polish war brought the final stage in the reintegration of part of the old officer corps into the new Red Army. General Brusilov, perhaps the most distinguished of the former tsarist commanders, and a man who had hitherto held aloof from the Communists, published an appeal in Pravda: ‘Forget the wrongs you have suffered. It is now your duty to defend our beloved Russia with all your strength, and to give your lives to save her from irretrievable subjugation.’ Many fellow officers responded to his words. And in case anyone should worry about the revival of Russian nationalism in Communist guise, the internationalist Radek provided a ready justification: ‘Since Russia is the only country where the working class has taken power, the workers of the whole world ought now to become Russian patriots. …’ This was of course only an extension of the arguments Lenin had used to justify the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk: it marked a stage in the eventual emergence of the doctrine of ‘socialism in one country’.

In the end, the Red Army failed to capture Warsaw for reasons which have been the subject of controversy ever since (Trotsky ascribed the failure to Stalin’s military insubordination). Lenin, however, summed it up as follows: ‘The Poles thought and acted, not in a social, revolutionary manner, but as nationalists, as imperialists. The revolution in Poland which we counted on did not take place. The workers and peasants, deceived by Pilsudski, … defended their class enemy and let our brave Red soldiers starve, ambushed them and beat them to death.’

The war of 1920 showed, in fact, that Soviet Russia was prepared to act as a new kind of great power with a traditional army, and that its actions would be so interpreted by its neighbours, even where the ostensible aim was the promotion of international proletarian brotherhood. The ambiguity of Soviet ‘fraternal aid’ has remained to the days of the ‘Brezhnev doctrine’.

The immediate result was a frontier settlement relatively favourable to the Poles. By the Treaty of Riga, concluded in October 1920, Poland was awarded territories that included large numbers of Bielorussian and Ukrainian peasants, and until 1939 her eastern frontier ran only just west of the capital of the Soviet Bielorussian Republic, Minsk.

The Ukraine offers an example of a national movement which, though far from negligible in pre-revolutionary Russia, received considerable fresh impetus from the revolutions of 1917. Ukrainian nationalism had been slow to develop in nineteenth-century Russia, partly because of government repression (it was livelier across the border in Austria-Hungary, where the authorities were less opposed to it). Something of a flowering followed the revolution of 1905, with the easing of national restrictions, and a Ukrainian urban intelligentsia began to develop, particularly in Kiev and the western regions. It remained true, however, that the great majority of Ukrainian speakers were peasants, and that the towns were very strongly influenced by Russian, Jewish and Polish cultural life. Many of the industrial workers were Russian, especially in the modern industries of Kharkov (the largest city in the Ukraine), the Krivoi Rog region and the Donbass: generally the eastern Ukraine had a much higher proportion of Russians than the west.

After the February revolution, a Ukrainian central Rada (Ukrainian for soviet) convened in Kiev, elected rather haphazardly (though no more so than the Russian soviets of the time) by those inhabitants, particularly in the towns, who felt themselves to be Ukrainian. In June, after abortive negotiations with the Provisional Government, this rada issued a ‘Universal’ (or decree, in old Cossack usage) proclaiming an ‘autonomous Ukrainian republic’. The rada was under pressure from a Ukrainian Military Congress, representing Ukrainian officers and soldiers from the Imperial Army: they had gathered in St Sophia’s Square in Kiev and vowed not to disperse until such a proclamation appeared.

During the summer of 1917 a great variety of congresses met, representing Ukrainians from all walks of life: from peasant communes and agricultural cooperatives, from zemstvos and municipalities, from universities and schools, from hospitals and army units. All of them took a pride in using the Ukrainian language and in stressing those traditions which distinguished them from the Russians. What was taking place was the explosive creation of a Ukrainian nation, discovering and confirming its identity in this multiplicity of organizations and meetings, rather as the Russian working class was doing at the same time. For most urban Ukrainians at this moment, however, national, not social, consciousness was paramount. It is not clear that the same was true of the peasants, many of whom shared the grievances and aspirations of their Russian counterparts, and wanted above all more land.

After the October revolution in Petrograd, the rada (in its Third Universal, of 7 November 1917), supported again by the Ukrainian Military Congress, confirmed the existence of a Ukrainian People’s Republic, and promised an early land reform and the convening of a Ukrainian Constituent Assembly. At this stage the rada did not insist on complete independence from Soviet Russia–Ukrainian intellectuals had always thought of themselves as part of Russia, but wanted to be a self-ruling part–yet, all the same, bitter disputes soon broke out between Kiev and Petrograd. With encouragement from the Bolsheviks in Petrograd, soviets of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies, separate from the rada, were established in Kiev and other Ukrainian towns: because of the national composition of the population, these were normally dominated by Russians. Troops loyal to the rada closed some of these soviets down, rather as the Bolsheviks themselves were doing to their opponents in other parts of Russia; but in fact Ukrainian national feeling was so strong, even in the soviets, that when an all-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets opened in Kiev in December, it turned out to have a non-Bolshevik majority anyway. The Bolsheviks, dismayed by this result, withdrew from it and called an alternative congress in Kharkov, where they could be surer of working-class Russian support. So in the Ukraine too the Bolsheviks found themselves acting as agents of Russification.

In this way the scene was set for civil war on Ukrainian territory, with Red troops and Ukrainian military formations facing one another. The Reds succeeded in capturing Kiev before the fighting was halted by the German occupation of the Ukraine in March 1918.

During the following two and a half years at least eight different kinds of regime ruled in the Ukraine, and not one of them was able to consolidate itself, or even to claim the adherence of a majority of the population. This was not only because of the multiplicity of forces interested in the region, but also because of the divisions of interest in the population itself. It is scarcely surprising that the Germans, the Poles and the Whites under Denikin (who would have crushed Ukrainian autonomy) were unable to command mass support. But it is perhaps more surprising that the rada, or the later Ukrainian nationalist government under Petlyura, were not able to attract a more stable following. This may have been because, as Vinnichenko, leader of the rada government, later confessed, the rada had not done enough to win over the peasants by carrying through a thorough land reform. After all, the great majority of Ukrainian speakers were peasants, for whom the agrarian issue was at least as important as the national one: to ignore their interests was to deprive oneself of a vital source of support. This impression is strengthened by the enthusiastic support given by many Ukrainian peasants to Makhno, the Anarchist leader, who seems to have filled a much-felt need, without being able to lay the foundations of stable and lasting government because he had so little support outside the peasantry.