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Ethnonationalism and Political Stability: The Soviet Case

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Gail Warshofsky Lapidus
Gail Warshofsky Lapidus
Affiliation:
University of California
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Abstract

While the Soviet system has demonstrated an unusual degree of immunity to the worldwide upsurge of ethnic self-assertion, rising national consciousness among both Russian and non-Russian populations poses a growing, although not necessarily unmanageable, problem for the Soviet leadership. Several issues bearing directly on the resources, power, and status of different nationalities lie at the heart of current debates: the nature and future of the federal system; the pace and pattern of economic development; access to positions of political power; demographic policy; and cultural and linguistic status. Over the long term, the political mobilization of ethnicity is likely to be constrained by both intrinsic and systemic factors, encouraging national elites to focus on strategies and goals that will enhance their power within the system rather than challenging it directly.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 36 , Issue 4 , July 1984 , pp. 555 - 580
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1984

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References

1 Typical of a voluminous body of such writings is the assertion that the U.S.S.R. has created a “fundamentally new social and international community … a single and friendly family of over 100 nationalities jointly building communism,” based on “friendship, equality, multi-faceted fraternal cooperation and mutual assistance.” Fedoseev, P. N., Leninizm i natsional'nyi vopros v sovremennykh usloviiakh [Leninism and the National Question in Contemporary Conditions] (Moscow: Politizdat, 1974), 357–58.Google Scholar All translations are by the author unless otherwise noted.

2 Pravda, October 18, 1961, p. 1.

3 iPravda, February 24, 1981, p. 3.

4 Pravda, December 22, 1982, pp. 1–2.

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7 Pravda, December 22, 1982, p. 2.

8 See, for instance, the work of Merle Fainsod, Alex Inkeles and Raymond Bauer, John N. Hazard, Leonard Schapiro and Adam Ulam, and, among recent writings, Inkeles, Jerry F. Hough. and Bauer's, The Soviet Citizen (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1961)Google Scholar is particularly instructive as a case in point. Although their study demonstrated extraordinary prescience in anticipating many of the key developments of the Khrushchev period on the basis of refugee interviews, it failed to anticipate the emergence of a significant dissident novement in general and of national protest in particular.

9 Cleavages based on functional specialization, for example, are explored by Lodge, Milton, Soviet Elite Attitudes Since Stalin (Columbus, Ohio: C. E. Merrill, 1969)Google Scholar and in Skilling, H. Gordon and Griffiths, Franklyn, eds., Interest Groups in Soviet Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971)Google Scholar; on task differentiation, by Jerry Hough's contribution to Skilling and Griffiths, ibid.; on policy orientation, by Franklyn Griffiths, ibid., and by Kelley, Donald, “Environmental Policy-Making in the USSR: The Role of Industrial and Environmental Interest Groups,” Soviet Studies 28 (October 1976).CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a review of these approaches, see Lapidus, Gail W., “The Study of Contemporary Soviet Policy-Making: A Review and Research Agenda” (Workshop on Contemporary Soviet Policy-Making, Berkeley, Calif, 1980).Google Scholar

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15 For a perceptive treatment of this theme, see Enloe, Cynthia, Ethnic Soldiers: State Security in Divided Societies (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1980).Google Scholar

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18 For a more comprehensive treatment of this thesis, see Lapidus, Gail W., “The ‘National Question’ in Soviet Doctrine: From Lenin to Andropov,” paper presented at the Lehrman Institute, New York, March 16, 1983.Google Scholar See also Connor, Walker, The National Question in Marxist-Leninist Theory and Strategy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).Google Scholar

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23 Ibid., 15 (emphasis added).

23 Morozov, M. A., Natsiia v sotsialisticheskom obshchestve [The Nation in Socialist Society] (Moscow: Politizdat, 1979), 41.Google Scholar In a similar vein, a recent article in Kommunist Moldavii argues that, contrary to the false claims of bourgeois ideologists, the Soviet people do not consider themselves as some sort of “Russian-Soviet nation” in which the ethnic features of the non-Russian peoples are said to have dissolved and disappeared. In reality the international community does not replace the national one, but encompasses it. … The development of the U.S.S.R. proves that the nation is now the definitive form of social development. Even under socialism, it is within the framework of the nation that production and all other social relations … exist.

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26 See, e.g., Nekrich, Alexander, The Punished Peoples (New York: Norton, 1977).Google Scholar

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28 Local elites are not themselves united on these issues, and policy differences cut across both indigenous and Russian elites. See, for example, the study by Zimmer, Teresa, “Ethnic Identity and Policy-Making in Soviet Uzbekistan,” paper presented at AAASS meeting, September 1981Google Scholar, Asilomar, Calif.

29 Ponomarev, B. N., “Leninskaia natsional'naia politika KPSS na etape razvitogo sotsializma i ee mezhdunarodnoe znachenie” [The Leninist nationality policy of the CPSU at the stage of developed socialism and its international significance], in Vospityvat' ubezhdennykh patriotov-internatsionalistov: Po materialam Vsesoiuznoi nauchno-prakticheskoi konferentsii “Razvitie natsional'nykh otnoshenii v usloviiakh zrelogo sotsializma.” Opyt i problemy patrioticheskogo i internatsional'nogo vospitaniia [Rearing Convinced Patriot-Internationalists] (Moscow: Politicheskaia literatura, 1982), 20.Google Scholar

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In the past, when actual equality among peoples had not yet been established, when there still existed significant survivals of the former backwardness of the indigenous nationalities in this or that republic, it was necessary to conduct a policy of indigenization of the apparatus. … But under present conditions, … when there are no longer any backward national districts, the need for such advantages no longer exists.

Tsamerian, I. P., “Vklad XXVI s'ezda KPSS v marksistsko-leninskuiu teoriiu natsional'nykh otnoshenii” [The contribution of the 26th Congress of the CPSU to the Marxist-Leninist theory of national relations], Nauchnyi kommunism 4 (July–August 1981), 63–64.Google Scholar

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32 Pravda, December 22, 1982, p. 2.

33 Lt. Nikitin, Gen. Ye., Agitator amii i flota, No. 23, 1982, 10–14.Google Scholar

34 For a fuller account of these discussions, see Lapidus, Gail Warshofsky, Women in Soviet Society (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979)Google Scholar, chap. 8, and Weber, Cynthia and Goodman, Ann, “The Demographic Policy Debate in the USSR,” Population and Development Review 7 (June 1981), 279–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

35 Tatimov, M. V., Razvitie narodonaseleniia i demograficheskaia politika [Population Development and Demographic Policy] (Alma-Ata: Nauka, 1978), 4.Google Scholar

36 For a discussion of the controversy provoked by Khrushchev's initiatives in 1958–1959, see Bilinsky, Yaroslav, “The Soviet Education Laws of 1958–59 and Soviet Nationality Policy,” Soviet Studies 14 (October 1962), 138–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar More recent conflicts are reviewed in Solchanyk, Roman, “Russian Language and Soviet Politics,” Soviet Studies 34 (January 1982), 23–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

37 Litvinova, G. I. and Urlanis, B. Ts., “Demograficheskaia politika Sovetskogo Soiuza” [The demographic policy of the Soviet Union], Sovetskoe gosudarstvo i pravo 3 (March 1982), 38–46.Google Scholar

38 The inverse relationship between upward mobility and ethnic prejudice, and its special salience in the more educated, intelligentsia strata, is clearly demonstrated in the research of Arutiunian, Iu. Vs., “Konkretno-sotsiologicheskoe issledovanie natsional'nykh otnoshenii” [Concrete sociological research on national relations], Voprosy filosofii 12 (December 1969), 129–39.Google Scholar The potentially divisive impact of economic issues on nationality relations can be seen with greater clarity in studies conducted in Yugoslavia; see Burg, Steven L., Conflict and Cohesion in Socialist Yugoslavia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983)CrossRefGoogle Scholar chap. 2.

39 For two examples of a large number of articles dealing with efforts by the KGB to combat ideological subversion from abroad directed at Central Asia, see Tsvigun, S. in Kommunist 4 (September 1981), 88–89Google Scholar, and Yusif-Zade, Major General Z., in Bakinskii rabochii, December 19, 1980, 3.Google Scholar

40 Horowitz, Donald L., “Multiracial Politics in the New States: Toward a Theory of Conflict,” in Jackson, Robert J. and Stein, Michael B., eds., Issues in Comparative Politics (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1971), 172.Google Scholar