Paul
Goble
Staunton, February 3 – During the
last eight years of his life, Stalin organized attacks not only on ethnic
groups on the periphery but on two major communities at the center of political
life of the Soviet Union, against the Jews in the infamous Doctor’s plot which
was cut short by the dictator’s death and against the ethnic Russians in the still-murky
Leningrad affair.
In a 6,000-word article on the “Stoletiye”
portal, Vladimir Kuznechevsky, a historian at the influential Russian Institute
for Strategic Studies, reports on his investigation into Stalin’s war against
his ethnic Russian colleagues and argues that war provides lessons for the
future (stoletie.ru/territoriya_istorii/leningradskoje_delo_i_russkij_vopros_883.htm).
The
events now known as the Leningrad Affairs, Kuznechevsky says, were of course
about the struggle for power under and even more in anticipation of the death
of Stalin. But they were also about
policy and about Stalin’s fears that Russian nationalism could develop in ways
that would threaten the Soviet Union.
When
Stalin promoted two younger Russians, Nikolay Voznesensky and Aleksey
Kuznetsov, and suggested they could be the next generation of leaders,
Kunechevsky says, he opened a “Pandora’s box” by threatening the positions of
his much closer party and state colleagues, most of whom were like himself not
ethnically Russian.
The
latter felt threatened both personally – they might not have a chance to
succeed Stalin – and politically – the Russian cadres were openly promoting the
idea that Moscow should change course in two ways, shifting from armaments to
consumer goods and from support of the non-Russian republics to improving life
for the Russians in the Russian Federation.
Those
concerns were certainly hinted at in the trials and more directly stated in now
declassified party documents, Kuznechevsky says, but the real evidence that the
so-called Leningrad Affair was an anti-Russian measure is that “more than 32,000 ethnic Russian leaders of the party, state
and economy” were subjected to repression as part of it, removed from their jobs,
dispatched to the GULAG or executed.
What
is most striking from the archives, the RISI investigator says is that “only
ethnic Russian leaders were subjected to repressions” as part of this case.
Those
who try to defend Stalin’s actions as reasonable moves against a conspiracy
within the leadership never talk about this, Kuznechevsky says, nor do they
focus on what the ethnic Russian party and state leaders were really concerned about:
the impoverishment of the ethnic Russians in order to support the non-Russians.
According
to the RISI author, the affair happened because of Stalin’s fears about the new
portion of the top leadership of the USSR which came to power at the end of the
war “not from the union republics but from the central oblasts of Russia” and
who believed that the Russians should be compensated for their contribution to
victory.
That
allowed their opponents within the leadership to argue, Kuznechevsky says, that
the “Leningraders” were wanted to create a Russian Communist Party and thus set
the stage for the demise of the centralized Stalinist state which unlike most
empires impoverished the center in order to develop the borderlands.
The
RISI historian cites with approval Harvard’s Terry Martin that Stalin took such
extreme measures against the “Leningraders” because he “was panically afraid of
the awakening of Russian national self-consciousness, viewing that as the
greatest threat to his indivisible power in the USSR.”
That
argument always Kuznechevsky to raise the question that interests him most: “Is
an ethnic Russian government possible in Russia?” or, put another way, is it a good idea for people
to “strive for an ethnically pure Russian government in Russia?”
That
is not a simple question, the RISI historian says. Ethnic Russians do form an overwhelming part
of the population and define the culture of almost all its residents. From that perspective, “the Leningraders”
raised the right question and correctly insisted that “the state-forming nation
which makes up an absolute majority of the population cannot remain at the
third-level positions and roles in the political administration of society.”
Those
denounced in the Leningrad Affair were not the only ones who felt at the time
that Stalin’s successor would have to be an ethnic Russian. Anastas Mikoyan, an Armenian, wrote in his
memoirs exactly the same. If the “Leningraders” or better the pro-Russian
faction had won, Kunechevsky says, citing another expert, the USSR would not
have fallen apart as it did.
Of
course, it might have disintegrated in another way had the rise of Russian
nationalism sparked more nationalism in the non-Russian republics and regions.
But Kunechevsky’s article is important even if it is not ultimately correct on
that point.
On
the one hand, he provides a wealth of archival about one of the darkest periods
of Soviet history. And on the other, even as Vladimir Putin tries to impose a
common history on the country, articles like Kuznechevsky are a reminder that
history doesn’t fit neatly into a single procrustean bed and that arguments
about the future are often made in discussions about the past.
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