Kazakhstan and Karelia -- Two Cases of ‘Stalinist Nation Building’ that Still Resonate Today

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 17 – The Putin regime is not the only group in the former Soviet space looking to the Soviet past. Many non-Russians inside the current borders of the Russian Federation and many in the now independent non-Russian countries surrounding it are doing so as well, less in their cases as models than as warnings about what might happen again.

    This week, there have been two important articles in this regard, one about how Kazakhstan became Kazakhstan but with very different borders (spik.kz/2215-sezd-kotoryj-nachalsja-kak-kirgizskij-a-zakonchilsja-kak-kazahskij.html) and a second about how Moscow created and then disbanded the Karelo-Finnish SSR (apn-spb.ru/publications/article39076.htm).

    The details in each will be fascinating to experts, but the messages they send will reach a far larger audience by reminding all concerned not only that in Soviet times, Moscow frequently changed the borders of Soviet republics but even was prepared to create and abolish them as needed for foreign policy purposes.

    The Kazakhstan case is the less well-known but possibly the more important. In 1925, as a result of pressure from Moscow and pressure from Kazakh nationalists, the Kazakh republic, then within the RSFSR, was renamed the Kazakh ASSR, having been the Kyrgyz ASSR the previous five years.

    The republic changed its capital from the predominantly ethnic Russian Orenburg first to the predominantly Kazakh Ak-Mechet and then to Alma-Ata. The reason for this was to make Kazakhs feel more in control of the situation by accepting their historical name in place of a Russian given one and also to end any confusion with the Kyrgyz republic.

    But perhaps even more important in terms of what may happen in the future, the Kazakh ASSR (which became a union republic a decade later) was dramatically expanded and included Karakalpakistan, which is now a restive autonomy within Uzbekistan – a reminder of how often that land has shifted between Kazakhs and Uzbeks.

     The history of the Karelo-Finnish SSR, which was created in 1940 at a time when Stalin hoped to extend the borders of the USSR to include Finland which had been part of the Russian Empire and then disbanded in 1956 when Khrushchev decided to disband it as part of his effort to smooth relations with Helsinki and the West is better known.

    But at the end of the new article about it, its author poses a question with broad implications. He asks: “What would have happened had [the Karelo-Finnish SSR] not been liquidated? That would have meant that it would automatically have gained independence in 1991.”

    “Separatism would have developed there; and then the Murmansk region would have become an enclave, cut off from Russia, like Kaliningrad.” Given that possibility, some are today inclined to say “thank you” to Khrushchev, arguing that “he may have given Crime to Ukraine but he did restore Karelia to Russia.”