Paul
Goble
Staunton, February 10 – For the last
five years, because of Vladimir Putin’s Anschluss of Crimea, Russians and the
world have been treated to numerous articles suggesting that Soviet leader
Nikita Khrushchev betrayed Russia by redrawing the border between the RSFSR and
the Ukrainian SSR in order to hand over Crimea to Kyiv.
As a result, the assumption made out
of ignorance or convenience by many in the West that republic borders were
somehow eternal was shaken but not entirely destroyed despite the fact that
they had been changed numerous times during the Soviet period. (See this author’s
“Can Republic Borders Be Changed?” RFE/RL
Report on the USSR, September 28, 1990.)
Now, at least, some Russians and
some citizens of the other post-Soviet states are beginning to focus on the fact
that Moscow at various times and for various reasons redrew the borders and
thus to raise at least implicitly the question of how just the current borders
are or are not – and whether they should be changed.
The latest example of this is in Novyye izvestiya yesterday (newizv.ru/news/society/09-02-2018/ne-tolko-krym-kak-pri-hruschyove-menyali-granitsy-soyuznyh-respublik) based on a blog post by Aleksey
Roshchin (sapojnik.livejournal.com/2557930.html) that in turn draws on a Kazakh article on borders in
Khrushchev’s time (inkaraganda.kz/articles/108697).
Entitled
“Not Only Crimea: How under Khrushchev the Borders of the Union Republics were
Changed,” the Novyye izvestiya notes
that sociologist Roshchin has found interesting material from Kazakhstan
according to which the Soviet leader wanted to transfer Kazakhstan’s Magushlak
peninsula into Azerbaijan.
Many
mistakenly assume that Khrushchev’s moves on Crimea were “somehow extraordinary.”
But that is a mistake: the Soviet leader wanted to take part of Kazakhstan and
transfer it to Uzbekistan and transfer another part of Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan
(or possibly Turkmenistan).
In
the mid-1950s, Roshchin says Kazakh sources say, Khrushchev was prepared to
make these shifts but was blocked only by the resistance of senior Kazakh
officials in general and Zhumabek Tashenev, head of the presidium of the Kazakh
SSR Supreme Soviet and then prime minister of that republic.
Tashenev succeeded in convincing a special
party-government commission in Moscow that taking these steps would be a
mistake; but Khrushchev ignored it and him and in 1956 transferred 418,000
hectares of land from Kazakhstan to Uzbekistan.
But that was far from the end of Nikita Sergeyevich’s plans.
In
1960, he created the Tselina Kray out of Akmolinsk,, Kostanay, Kokshetau,
Pavlodar and North Kazakhstan oblasts. According to Roshchin, “the only individual
brave enough to speak openly against this was Tashenev who said if Moscow went
ahead, Kazakhstan would defend its constitutional rights in international
forums.
Not
surprisingly, Khrushchev was furious, pointedly saying that “the Soviet Union
is a single country and therefore what territories are to be given to whom is a
decision of the USSR Supreme Soviet” and no one else. Tashenev still didn’t back down. But
Khrushchev got his way – the new kray was disbanded only after he was ousted –
and he had Tashenev fired.
With
his chief Kazakh opponent out of the way, Khrushchev then decided in 1962 to
transfer Kazakhstan’s Mangyshlak peninsula, a major oil-producing region, to
Azerbaijan or others say Turkmenistan because both of these republics had long
experience in the petroleum business.
That
attempt at territorial change was blocked by Aleksey Kosygin, then first deputy
chairman of the presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet.
In
1964, Khrushchev was removed for what his opponents and successors described as
“hare-brained scheming.” At least part
of that charge was based on his efforts to redraw borders, a matter of history
that certainly has some potential contemporary applications.
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