Paul Goble
Staunton, June 26 – The final years
of the Austro-Hungarian Empire have many lessons for Russia today, Harun
Sidorov says. The overriding one is that “empires which ignore the aspirations
of the people included them and instead of addressing those problems engage in
an adventurist foreign policy are doomed.”
And at the same time, the Russian
commentator says, the discussions of those known as the Austro-Marxists (Otto
Bauer and Karl Renner in particular) whom Lenin and the Bolsheviks attacked so
diligently show that there is a way forward besides the disintegration of the
empire into increasingly mono-ethnic nation states (region.expert/austria/).
That way, Sidorov argues, combines
“federalism, territorial autonomy, and extraterritorial autonomy” so that all
groups can have their views represented and no one group dominates all the
others. It is, however, very much an
open question whether Russia’s Russians or its non-Russians will learn from
that history.
Faced with the rise of nationalism
in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Bauer and Renner argued that the country could
remain in one piece only if “the peoples of the empire could form their own
national corporations across its entire territory” rather than seceding to
become independent nation states, thus sparking conflict and the end of the
empire.
At the same time, Sidorov says, they
argued for a tough anti-imperialist position in foreign affairs because they
believed that the empire could only survive if it reformed and could not be
reformed if it engaged in expansionist and militarist adventures. There simply
weren’t the resources to do both at the same time.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the
Austro-Marxists were attacked by the hurrah patriots in Vienna; but more
surprisingly, they were also attacked by Lenin, Stalin and the Bolsheviks. The
first accused the Austro-Marxists of being “Germanophobes and ‘national
traitors’ even though the policies of the hurrah patriots led as the
Austro-Marxists predicted to collapse.
Anyone who reads the works of Bauer
and Renner now, Sidorov continues, can see that they were Austrian patriots and
more concerned about preserving Greater Austria than were their supposedly more
patriotically-minded opponents. Despite that, the influence of Bauer and Renner
spread to Russia, attracting both support and opposition there.
Non-Russian and especially the
social democrats among them were much taken by the Austro-Marxist ideas about
extraterritorial cultural autonomy and opposition to imperialism. But the
Russian Bolsheviks weren’t. Lenin saw autonomy as undercutting a united
economy, and he wanted to use Russia as a base to spread world revolution.
As a result, Stalin in his
programmatic 1913 essay on the nationality question presented Bolshevik ideas
as a response to the Austro-Marxists and rejected autonomy for non-Russians be
it territorial or extra-territorial.
What he offered instead was “’oblast autonomy’” and a pledge to
eliminate discrimination against all in a single socialist Russia.
Lenin
agreed, but he was forced by two circumstances – the exigencies of a brutal
civil war and the fact that most social democrats among the non-Russians were Mensheviks
rather than Bolsheviks and Austro-Marxist rather than Stalinist in their orientation
– to make the compromises that led to the formation of the union republics and
the USSR.
Sidorov
concludes that both non-Russians and Russians should learn from this:
Non-Russians should see that support for federalism can provide them with much
that they want and certainly can protect them from any suggestion that they are
traitors or committed to the disintegration of Russia.
And
Russians should see that pushing a centralist and militarist policy will lead
to exactly the opposite outcomes they hope for, the disintegration of the
country and the rise of a number of more ethnically homogeneous states at least
initially very much at odds with one another. And they should learn that what
looks like patriotism is the most unpatriotic of positions.
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