Soviet Nationality Policy Blocked Belarusians, Russians and Ukrainians from Consolidating as One People, Shimov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, February 26 – Had the Bolsheviks not formed an alliance with non-Russian elites in the 1920s and given them key positions in the national republics Moscow created, the the Belarusians, the Russians and the Ukrainians would have consolidated into a single people, according to Vsevolod Shimov.

            The nationality policy of the Bolsheviks known as ‘rooting’ [in which members of particular nationalities were given positions in the structures of the non-Russian republics] made the nationalists a systemic phenomenon of Belarusian life,” the Russian writer says (rubaltic.ru/article/kultura-i-istoriya/28022020-ot-korenizatsii-k-bratskim-narodam-kak-menyalas-sovetskaya-natsionalnaya-politika-v-belarusi/).

            And when Moscow changed course and promoted the idea of “’three fraternal republics’ of the Eastern Slavs, he continues, the damage to a common project had been done, a reality that was made worse because the Soviet government never did away completely with the idea that Belarusians should run Belarus and Ukrainians Ukraine.

            According to Shimov, Bolshevik nationality policy had two aspects. On the one hand, it was “radically cosmopolitan” and believed that the final goal was the promotion of “a universal communist humanity ‘without Russia and without Latvia.’” But on the other, “when struggling with ‘imperialism,’ the Bolsheviks saw various national movements as their natural allies.”

            “The USSR, which arose in place of the Russian Empire was seen as a federation of national socialist republics, the matrix of a future world federation.” Given that view, “the all-Russia idea which presupposed the national consolidation of eastern Slavs into a single Russian people was declared imperialist and chauvinist and the supporters of Belarusian and Ukrainian nationalism were given ‘a green light.’”

            “In the Belarusian SSR, Western Rusism was condemned as a ‘reactionary’ and ‘chauvinist’ phenomenon, and its supporters were subjected to purges and persecution.” But “’the victory’ of the Belarusian nationalists over Western Rusism turned out to be largely Pyrrhic.”

            “In the 1930s, there occurred a transition from the doctrine of ‘exporting revolution’ to the doctrine of ‘building socialism in one country.” And “the feeling of historical optimism connected with the expectation of a rapid world revolution was replaced by the gloomy feeling of a besieged fortress.”

            “Under these conditions, the promotion of a policy which stimulated the development of local national identities at the expense of all-state ones began to be viewed as contradicting and threatening all-union interests,” Shimov continues.

            “As a result, the party and national-cultural elites connected with the realization of the [earlier] policy were subjected to purges and repressions” and legitimating ideas from the Russian Empire were revived albeit in a modified form because “about 80 percent of the residents of the USSR were eastern Slavs.”

            In this new situation, “the doctrine of ‘the three fraternal peoples, connected by common ethno-cultural roots and making their key contribution to Soviet state construction was formed.” That position was only reinforced by the experiences of World War II when these peoples played the key role in the defeat of Hitler.

            Moscow largely but not completely ended its policy of using Belarusians and Ukrainians in key positions and thus allowed “the natural ‘gravitation’ of Russian-language culture,” along with industrialization and urbanization to draw in the Belarusian and Ukrainian populations into the Russian orbit.

            In this way, Shimov says, “the national integration of the eastern Slavs into an all-Russian model occurred. But the process took place largely spontaneously” rather than being the result of a concerted policy and the remnants of “rooting” kept it from affecting the elites as much as it was affecting the masses.

            In the case of Belarus in particular, Shimov argues, “Soviet nationality policy tried to combine two irreconcilable things: to make possible the ethno-political consolidation of the Belarusians and Russians and at the same time to protect Belarusian ‘national uniqueness,’ which had been developed in a completely nationalist spirit.”

            Thus, “the idea of ‘three fraternal peoples’ contained within itself the nationalist idea about Russians, Belarusians and Ukrainians as three separate ethnoses,” with Russian used only for one of them and its application to the others seen as offensive and with national culture based on their respective languages.

            This view led to a situation in which national cultural and political elites were increasingly at odds with the populations over which they ruled, with the former promoting Belarusian and Ukrainian in opposition to Russia and the population becoming ever more Russian and sympathetic to it.

            This division meant that it was the national cultural elites who led the independence movements at the time of perestroika and that Belarus and Ukraine remain divided in this way at the present time. The only way this can be overcome is through the promotion of Western Rusism among the elites so that they can join with their Russian-oriented populations.

            It is very easy to see that this highly problematic and in many respects inaccurate picture of developments in Belarus and Ukraine over the last 150 years is exactly how Vladimir Putin views the world and lies behind both his assessments of Lenin and his policies toward Belarus and Ukraine.