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National Deviation in the Soviet Union

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

John S. Reshetar Jr.
John S. Reshetar Jr.*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Extract

National deviation or, in Soviet parlance, “bourgeois nationalism” has figured prominently in the party literature since the establishment of the Stalinist regime. It is a conveniently generic heresy and has been applied to national groups which had hardly any bourgeoisie worthy of the name prior to the Revolution. It is a label which is applied to real or imagined, to actual or potential non-Russian opponents of the regime within the country in an effort to discredit them by associating them with real or imagined external enemies. In the pre-war period, as well as to a certain extent since the war, “bourgeois nationalists” were linked with the revolutionary national non-Russian governments of the 1917–1920 period which unsuccessfully resisted the Bolshevik onslaught. Those who were charged with national deviation in the 1930's were accused of having aided foreign intelligence services in an attempt to facilitate the return of the old order and of wanting to turn the Soviet Union into a colony of the capitalist states.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , April 1953 , pp. 162 - 174
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1953

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References

1 The author wishes to express his gratitude to the Russian Research Center of Harvard University and to the Human Resources Research Institute of the Air University for making it possible for him to interview refugees from the Soviet Union as a staff member of the Refugee Interview Project in Western Germany during 1950 and 1951. He also wishes to acknowledge an indebtedness to Mr. Michael Luther, who participated in the interviewing and who is now associated with him as a staff member of the Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System.

2 G. Alexandrov et al., Polhičeskij slovar’ (Moscow, 1940), p. 70.

3 Social'nyj i Nacional'nyj sostav V.K.P.(b), itogi vsesojuznoj partijnoj perepisi 1921 goda (Moscow, 1928), p. 118.Google Scholar

4 Stalin, J. V., Sočinenija (Moscow, 1947), V, 49.Google Scholar

5 Ibid., VIII, 149 ff. contains the complete text of the letter.

6 See Zatonskij's, V. Nacional'na problema na Ukraϊni (Kharkov, 1927), pp. 35 f. and 87 ff.Google Scholar

7 Skrypnyk, Mykola, Statti i promovi (Kharkov, 1931), II, Part II, 10f.Google Scholar

8 See Centrd'nyj ispolnitel'nyj komitet, 3 sozyva, 2 sessija, stenografičeski otčet (Moscow, 1926), pp. 392–544.Google Scholar Of special interest are the attack on Ukrainization made by Larin (Lurye) on pp. 458 ff. and the reply by Gregoryj Petrovskyj, President of the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee, on pp. 498 ff. 9 Pravda, July 8, 1933.

10 Pravda, March 19 and 20, 1937.

11 See Barghoorn, Frederick C., “Stalinism and the Russian Cultural Heritage,” Review of Politics, April, 1952, pp. 178–203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 See Pap, Michael, “Soviet Difficulties in the Ukraine,” Review of Politics, April, 1952, pp. 204–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 XVI Z'ϊzd komunističnoj partii (bil'šovikiv) Ukraϊni, materiali z'ϊzdu (Kiev, 1949), pp. 39 and 46.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., pp. 71 ff. The Seventeenth Congress of the Communist Party of Ukraine, which was held in September, 1952, was the occasion for further attacks against “serious errors and distortions of a bourgeois nationalist character.” See Pravda, September 29, 1952.