National policy of the 30s. National policy of the ussr

In the early 20s. on the territory of the former Russian Empire there were several independent republics: the RSFSR, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Azerbaijan, Armenian, Georgian, etc. Each republic had its own constitution, state authorities and administration.

During the civil war, the republics entered into a military-political alliance. Armed forces and material resources were combined. Subsequently, a single economic union was established. They merged the people's commissariats of military and maritime affairs, foreign trade, finance, communications, labor, post and telegraph, the Supreme Council of National Economy. All Soviet republics have concluded agreements with the RSFSR and among themselves on economic and financial issues.

At the beginning of 1922, on the eve of the Genoa Conference, a diplomatic union of the Soviet republics was concluded. The RSFSR transferred the right to protect the interests of all republics. Russia could now conclude and sign treaties and agreements with foreign states on their behalf.

The unification of the republics into one state became possible because they had previously been part of the unified Russian Empire. By 1922, in all the republics, national communist parties closely associated with the RCP(b) were in power. Real prerequisites were created for the final unification of the country under the rule of the Bolsheviks.

In August 1922, a commission was created from representatives of all the republics. She had to work out the terms of the unification. According to the project of the Commissar for Nationalities, Stalin, the republics were part of the RSFSR on the basis of autonomy. The plan of "autonomization" was sharply criticized by Lenin. Lenin's project provided for the voluntary unification of equal Soviet republics into a union state - the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The creation of the supreme bodies of the union was supposed to be based on the participation and representation of all the republics. In both projects, the leading role of the Communist Party was a prerequisite.

In March 1922, the Transcaucasian Federation was proclaimed, which took shape in December 1922 as the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (TSFSR). It included Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia.

the state could join the USSR. The territory of the republics could not be changed without their consent. Foreign trade, naval and foreign affairs, the declaration of war, the conclusion of peace, rail transport, communications, planning, finance, labor, and food remained under the jurisdiction of the single allied government. Moscow became the capital of the new state. The sphere of activity of only republican governments included issues of internal affairs, education, justice, agriculture, health care and social security. Subsequently, the rights of the union republics were reduced to a minimum.

The creation of the union made it necessary to adopt a new constitution. On January 31, 1924, the II Congress of Soviets approved the first Constitution of the USSR. It consisted of two parts: the Declaration on the Formation of the USSR and the Treaty on the Formation of the USSR. According to the constitution, the All-Union Congress of Soviets became the supreme body of state power, and between congresses the Central Executive Committee of the USSR. It consisted of two chambers - the Council of the Union and the Council of Nationalities. The Council of People's Commissars became the supreme body of state administration.

In 1924-1925. the Union included the Uzbek and Turkmen republics. In the late 20's - early 30's. created three more union republics - Tajik, Kyrgyz and Kazakh. In 1936, the Transcaucasian Federation was reorganized. The Azerbaijan, Armenian and Georgian republics became part of the USSR.

In the summer of 1940 Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia lost their independence. They were also included in the USSR as union republics. In the same year, Moldova received the status of a union republic. The formation of the USSR contributed to the strengthening of the communist regime. There was a gradual restoration of the borders of the Russian Empire, now under the rule of the Bolsheviks.

Foreign policy of the Soviet state (1921-early 30s)

In 1920-1921. established diplomatic relations with Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Finland, Poland. Russia finally recognized the independence of these former parts of the Russian Empire. The country emerged from the international isolation of the period of the civil war.

Diplomatic relations were soon established with the southern neighbors. In 1921, agreements on friendship and cooperation were signed with Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey, and Mongolia. In March 1921, a trade agreement was concluded with England. In 1921-1922. similar agreements were signed with Germany, Norway, Austria, Italy, Czechoslovakia. This meant the actual recognition of the country in the international arena. Nevertheless, the major powers have so far refrained from establishing diplomatic relations with Russia until the settlement of all disputed issues.

In October 1921, the government of the RSFSR turned to Western countries with a proposal to convene a conference and discuss mutual claims. The conference opened on April 10, 1922 in Genoa. Representatives of 29 states took part in it. Russia represented the interests of all Soviet republics. The Soviet delegation was headed by People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs GV Chicherin. He made a proposal for a general reduction in armaments and a ban on barbaric methods of warfare. Its participants refused to discuss this proposal. The conference had other goals.

Russia was presented with fair demands to pay the debts of the tsarist and Provisional governments (about 18 billion rubles), to return foreign nationalized enterprises (or to pay their cost). Our country was offered to eliminate the monopoly of foreign trade and provide foreigners with the opportunity to engage in trade and economic activities in Russia. In response, the Soviet delegation demanded compensation for the losses from the intervention (39 billion rubles). The conference participants refused to acknowledge these claims. The government of the RSFSR agreed to pay part of the pre-war debts, subject to a 30-year deferral of payments and the provision of loans. The parties failed to reach an agreement. On May 19, 1922, the conference was adjourned.

At the Genoa Conference, the Soviet delegation achieved serious success. On April 16, 1922, the Treaty of Rapallo (Rapallo near Genoa) was concluded between the RSFSR and Germany. The countries mutually renounced financial claims and established diplomatic relations. After Rapallo, Soviet-German economic cooperation and trade expanded.

In Genoa, they decided to transfer the consideration of all controversial issues to a conference of experts. It took place in The Hague in the summer of 1922. The Soviet delegation made a concession. The Bolsheviks agreed to return to foreign firms their enterprises in the form of concessions. The conference in The Hague also ended in vain.

The Lausanne Conference (November 1922 - July 1923) adopted a convention allowing free passage of merchant and warships to the Black Sea for all countries. This posed a threat to the Soviet Black Sea borders.

In December 1922, a disarmament conference was convened in Moscow. It was attended by representatives of Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Finland and the RSFSR. Due to distrust of Soviet Russia, it ended in failure.

1923 Soviet diplomat VV Vorovsky was killed in Switzerland. The Soviet government made some concessions. The crisis has been resolved. The British government took back the ultimatum. IN

1924 Great Britain officially recognized the USSR.

1924-1925 entered the history of international relations as the years of diplomatic recognition of the USSR. During this period, diplomatic relations were established with Great Britain, Italy, Austria, Norway, Sweden, China, Denmark, Mexico, France, and Japan.

The complication of Anglo-Soviet relations occurred in 1926 in. the time of the general strike in England. Russia provided significant financial assistance to the strikers. The British government accused the USSR of interfering in internal affairs, and then of violating trade agreements. Employees of the Anglo-Soviet trade society Arcos were accused of espionage. On May 7, 1927, the Soviet ambassador P. L. Voikov was killed in Poland. Soon England severed relations with the USSR and

annulled the trade agreement of 1921. Diplomatic relations with Great Britain were restored only in 1929.

In 1928, the Kellogen-Briand pact was signed in Paris. Under the terms of the pact, its participants pledged to settle their disputes or conflicts only by peaceful means. Initially, the pact was signed by France, the USA, Germany, Great Britain, Italy (15 states in total). In subsequent years, 48 more countries joined the pact, including the USSR.

At the end of the 20s. from China, violations of the state border, raids on the Soviet consulate, trade and other institutions became more frequent. In the summer of 1929, the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER) was captured. The conflict was resolved, but diplomatic relations were interrupted and restored only in 1932.

The Soviet government signed a non-aggression and neutrality treaty with France in 1932. Soon similar treaties were signed with Latvia, Estonia, Poland, and Finland. In 1933, diplomatic relations were established between the USSR and the USA. This was followed by the diplomatic recognition of the USSR by Czechoslovakia, Romania, Spain, Hungary, Bulgaria, Albania, Colombia, Belgium, Luxembourg. In September 1934, the USSR was admitted to the League of Nations. The Western world recognized the Soviet Union as a great power.

In the 1920s and early 1930s, the foreign policy of the USSR was able to ensure peaceful conditions for existence.

Question number 45: The course towards the construction of socialism in one country. (Stalin's modernization)

In the second half of the 1920s, the most important task of economic development was the transformation of the country from an agrarian into an industrial one, ensuring its economic independence and strengthening its defense capability. An urgent need was the modernization of the economy, the main condition for which was the technical improvement (re-equipment) of the entire national economy. Industrialization policy. The course towards industrialization was proclaimed in December 1925 by the XIV Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (renamed after the formation of the USSR). The congress discussed the necessity of transforming the USSR from a country importing machinery and equipment into a country producing them. His documents substantiated the need for the maximum development of the production of means of production (group "A") to ensure the economic independence of the country. The importance of creating a socialist industry on the basis of improving its technical equipment was emphasized. The beginning of the industrialization policy was legislated in April 1927 by the IV Congress of Soviets of the USSR. The main attention in the early years was given to the reconstruction of old industrial enterprises. The implementation of the industrialization policy required changes in the industrial management system. There has been a transition to a sectoral system of management, unity of command and centralization in the distribution of raw materials, labor and manufactured products have been strengthened. On the basis of the Supreme Council of National Economy of the USSR, people's commissariats of heavy, light and forest industries were formed. The forms and methods of industrial management that took shape in the 1920s and 1930s became part of the management mechanism, which was preserved for a long time. It was characterized by extreme centralization, directive command and suppression of local initiative. The functions of economic and party bodies were not clearly delineated, which interfered in all aspects of the activities of industrial enterprises. Industry development. First Five Year Plan. At the turn of the 1920s and 1930s, the country's leadership adopted a policy of all-round acceleration, "spurring on" industrial development, and the accelerated creation of socialist industry. This policy was most fully embodied in the five-year plans for the development of the national economy. The first five-year plan (1928/29-1932/33) came into effect on October 1, 1928. By this time, the tasks of the five-year plan had not yet been approved, and the development of some sections (in particular, on industry) continued. The Five-Year Plan was developed with the participation of leading experts The Second Five-Year Plan (1933-1937) ), approved by the XVII Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in early 1934, maintained a trend towards the priority development of heavy industry to the detriment of light industry,

agricultural policy. The industrial breakthrough had a heavy impact on the situation of peasant farms. Excessive taxation aroused the discontent of the rural population. The prices of manufactured goods increased exorbitantly. At the same time, state purchase prices for bread were artificially lowered. As a result, the supply of grain to the state was sharply reduced. This caused complications with grain procurements and a deep grain crisis at the end of 1927. It worsened the economic situation in the country and threatened the implementation of the industrialization plan. Some economists and business executives saw the cause of the crisis in the fallacy of the party's course. To get out of this situation, it was proposed to change the relationship between the city and the countryside, to achieve their greater balance. But a different path was chosen to combat the grain procurement crisis. To intensify grain procurements, the country's leadership resorted to emergency measures, reminiscent of the policy of the "war communism" period. Free market trade in grain was prohibited. If they refused to sell grain at fixed prices, the peasants were subject to criminal liability, local Soviets could confiscate part of their property. Special "security officers" and "working detachments" confiscated not only the surplus, but also the bread necessary for the peasant family. These actions led to an aggravation of relations between the state and the rural population, which in 1929 reduced the area under crops. In the course of mass collectivization, kulak farms were liquidated 1 . (In previous years, a policy of restricting their development was carried out.) In accordance with the decrees of the late 1920s and early 1930s, lending was stopped and taxation of private households was increased, laws on land lease and labor hiring were repealed. It was forbidden to accept kulaks into collective farms. All these measures provoked their protests and terrorist actions against collective farm activists. In February 1930, a law was adopted that determined the procedure for the liquidation of kulak farms. results of collectivization. Breaking the forms of management that had developed in the countryside caused serious difficulties in the development of the agrarian sector. Average annual grain production in 1933-1937. decreased to the level of 1909-1913, the number of livestock decreased by 40-50%. This was a direct consequence of the forcible creation of collective farms and the inept leadership of the chairmen sent to them. At the same time, plans for food procurement were growing. Following the fruitful year of 1930, the grain regions of Ukraine, the Lower Volga, and Western Siberia were seized by a crop failure. Emergency measures were again introduced to fulfill grain procurement plans. Collective farms seized 70% of the crop, up to the seed fund. In the winter of 1932-1933 many newly collectivized farms were engulfed in famine, from which, according to various sources, from 3 to 5 million people died (the exact figure is unknown, information about the famine was carefully concealed). The economic costs of collectivization did not stop its implementation. By the end of the second five-year plan, more than 243,000 collective farms had been organized. They included over 93% of the total number of peasant households. In 1933, a system of mandatory deliveries of agricultural products to the state was introduced. The state prices set for it were several times lower than the market ones. Plans for collective farm crops were drawn up by the management of the MTS, approved by the executive committees of the district Soviets, and then reported to agricultural enterprises. In-kind payment (in grain and agricultural products) for the labor of MTS machine operators was introduced; its size was determined not by collective farms, but by higher authorities. The passport regime introduced in 1932 limited the rights of peasants to travel. The administrative-command system of managing collective farms, high levels of state deliveries, low procurement prices for agricultural products hampered the economic development of farms """!

SOCIO-POLITICAL DEVELOPMENT

Soviet society in the early 1930s. The economic transformations of the late 1920s and early 1930s radically changed the structure of the population.

7% of rural residents worked at state agricultural enterprises - in state farms and MTS. Intensive industrial construction led to the birth of new cities. Urban population in 1929-1931 increased annually by 1.6 million people, in 1931-1933. - by 2.04 million. By 1939, there were 56.1 million inhabitants in cities (32.9% of the total population). The size of the working class increased significantly: from 8.7 million in 1928 to 20.6 million in 1937. Unemployment was eliminated. The main source of replenishment of the working class were the peasants who left the village, the former individual farmers. In the years of the first five-year plan, people from the village made up 68%, and in the period of the second - 54% of the total number of new recruits. The social psychology of the new workers was dominated by features of a peasant mentality and gradations. The influx of yesterday's peasants to the construction of five-year plans replenished the ranks of unskilled labor, which led to staff turnover, a drop in discipline, industrial injuries, the production of defective products, and many negative moral and social consequences. However, part of the skilled workers, in connection with the transition to piecework, achieved high rates in the results of their work. Promoted workers appeared, who were sent to study or to leading economic and managerial posts. The position of the urban engineering and technical intelligentsia, doctors, lawyers and other specialists was difficult. Without the experience of educated personnel, it was impossible to industrialize the country, eliminate illiteracy, and improve public health. At the same time, the attitude of the authorities and part of the population towards them was wary. The structure of the rural population has changed. The number of individual peasants decreased several times. Disappeared such social groups as kulaks and farm laborers. Over 90% of the total number of peasants worked on collective farms. They constituted a new social category of the population ("collectivist peasants", the class of the collective farm peasantry). Forced industrialization worsened the living standards of the population. High prices for agricultural products made them difficult to access for a large part of urban residents who received low wages. The deterioration of the material and living conditions of the population, food shortages exacerbated social tension in society. The situation was aggravated by more frequent disruptions in the field of economic development. Capital plans were not carried out. Labor productivity dropped. The quality of manufactured products deteriorated. All this increased the critical mood of the people in relation to the policy pursued. Forced collectivization, accompanied by dispossession, caused armed uprisings by the peasantry. In January - early March 1930 alone, more than 2,000 anti-Soviet demonstrations took place in the countryside. The reduction in the norms for the supply of bread on cards (1932) led to mass demonstrations of protest in cities and workers' settlements (Vichuga, Lezhnevo, Puchezh, Ivanovo Region, Borispol, etc.). General Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks I.V. Stalin attributed the causes of social contradictions and crisis phenomena in the economy to the intrigues of "class enemies." The state emergency, which had become a method of building a new society, was opposed by a part of the party and state apparatus. Member of the Politburo of the Central Committee N.I. Bukharin. The use of means of administrative and economic pressure on the peasantry was not supported by members of the Politburo of the Central Committee A.I. Rykov and M.P. Tomsk. For the purposes of socialist construction, they proposed the use of the principles of NEP. The statement of I.V. did not find approval on their part. Stalin about the inevitability of exacerbation of the class struggle as we move towards socialism. However, the majority of party leaders regarded the views of opponents of the official political course as erroneous. N.I. Bukharin and M.P. Tomsky were removed from the Politburo of the Central Committee, A.I. Rykov was relieved of his duties as Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars. Authoritarian approaches were increasingly asserted in the leadership of the country. The main factor determining the policy of I.V. Stalin and those supporting him, became the desire of the General Secretary to establish sole power. The Constitution of the USSR of 1936. The transformation of the economy and the strengthening of centralization principles in management led to the formation of a new model of society, to the almost complete "nationalization" of the national economy. The changes that have taken place in the economic, socio-political and national-state development of the Soviet Union since the mid-1920s have required changes to the Basic Law. On December 5, 1936, the Extraordinary Congress of Soviets approved the new Constitution of the USSR. It recorded the characteristic features of the administrative-command system that had formed in the country. The Soviet Union was proclaimed a socialist state. The Basic Law reflected the changes in the national-state structure of the USSR, the emergence of new union and autonomous republics and regions. In connection with the liquidation of the TSFSR, independent republics arose: the Armenian, Azerbaijan and Georgian SSR. The Kazakh ASSR and the Kirghiz ASSR were transformed into union republics. The total number of union republics that are directly part of the USSR increased to 11. The voluntariness of the state unification of the Soviet socialist republics was confirmed. The Soviets of Working People's Deputies constituted the political basis of the country. The structure of state power changed: the Supreme Council, which consisted of two chambers (the Council of the Union and the Council of Nationalities), became its supreme legislative body. Among his tasks was the approval of the composition of the government of the USSR. The duties of the All-Union People's Commissariats in the field of legislation, economic development, and strengthening the country's defense capability are expanding. At the same time, the rights of some republican authorities, in particular, in the legislative sphere, were unjustifiably restricted.

The social basis of the state was declared as an alliance of workers and peasants while maintaining the dictatorship of the proletariat. (In practice, this was expressed in the dictatorship of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks and its apparatus.) The socialist economic system and socialist ownership of the instruments and means of production were declared the economic basis of the USSR. This property existed in two forms: state (mines, factories in industry, state farms in the countryside) and collective farm cooperative. In connection with the liquidation of the former exploiting classes and private property, changes were made to the electoral system. Restrictions on suffrage for the rural population were abolished. The system of multi-stage elections to state bodies of power and open voting were abolished. The Constitution legally fixed universal, secret, equal and direct elections to the Councils of all levels. Citizens of the USSR were guaranteed the rights to work, rest, education, material security in old age. Labor was declared the duty of every citizen capable of it, according to the principle: "Who does not work, he does not eat." Freedom of worship was proclaimed. At the same time, freedom of anti-religious propaganda was introduced.

In the book "History of the Communist Party of Bolsheviks. A Short Course", prepared with the direct participation of I.V. Stalin and published in 1938, the new Basic Law was called the Constitution of the "victory of socialism and worker-peasant democracy." However, the socio-political system that has developed in the country and the practical activities of state leaders refuted this assessment.

The formation of a totalitarian system in the country and the establishment of the regime of Stalin's personal power

In mid-1922, Lenin's health deteriorated sharply. A few months later, he finally retired from active political activity. At the end of 1922 - beginning of 1923. the sick leader dictated several short articles. In these works, he touched upon the problems of industrialization, cooperative peasantry, and raising the cultural level of the country. Lenin expressed concern about the future of the party and proposed to increase the composition of the Central Committee by introducing workers into it. In his "Letter to the Congress" he characterized his closest associates (Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin, Pyatakov, Stalin). In his political testament, Lenin did not give preference to anyone. He considered the rivalry between Stalin and Trotsky to be the main danger to the party.

In the first years of Soviet power, stability in the party was ensured by the presence of an undeniable leader. The retirement and death of Lenin on January 21, 1924 had a negative impact on internal party relations. The struggle for power began. Personal rivalry was conducted under the guise of theoretical disputes about the ways of the country's development.

Trotsky was the main contender for leadership in the party. In 1923 he criticized the political and economic course of Zinoviev, Kamenev and Stalin. He substantiated his position in two works: The New Deal and The Lessons of October. Trotsky raised the question of the need for inner-party democracy, the bureaucratization of the party apparatus, and warned of the danger of the degeneration of the party leadership. He exaggerated his role in the October Revolution and the civil war. Trotsky's speech was supported by an appeal to the Politburo by 46 prominent party leaders. Fearing for their position, Stalin, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin and others united against Trotsky. He was removed from the post of people's commissar for military and naval affairs, chairman of the Revolutionary Military Council, and removed from the Politburo. By 1925, Trotsky had lost the opportunity to influence politics.

In 1924, a new split occurred in the Politburo. The "new opposition" came out against Stalin and his ally Bukharin. It included Kamenev and Zinoviev. They were supported by Sokolnikov and Krupskaya. The oppositionists opposed the policy of economic cooperation with the peasantry and proposed to sharply accelerate industrialization. They demanded that Stalin be removed from the post of General Secretary of the Central Committee, which he had held since April 1922. The oppositionists were defeated at the XIV Party Congress in December 1925.

In 1926, Trotsky became close to Kamenev and Zinoviev. A Trotskyist-Zinoviev bloc was formed. Its supporters spoke out against the thesis about the possibility of the victory of socialism in one country, for the accelerated pace of industrialization, against the Stalinist

party apparatus. Time was lost in the struggle against Stalin. From this period, instead of political discussions, the bodies of the OGPU are increasingly used. A new attempt to weaken the influence of Stalin failed. In December 1927, at the XV Congress, about 100 active opposition figures were expelled from the party. Trotsky was exiled to Alma-Ata, and then in 1929 to Turkey. In 1940 he was killed in Mexico.

At the end of 1927, Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky came out in favor of continuing the NEP. They insisted on resolving the emerging contradictions by economic rather than violent measures. Bukharin at this time became the second person in the party. He did not seek personal power, but was dangerous for Stalin, as he was popular.

In 1928, Stalin and his supporters set a course for the accelerated development of heavy industry and forced collectivization. This meant the collapse of the NEP. The confrontation of Bukharin and his supporters with Stalin ended in victory for the latter. By 1930, Bukharin, Rykov and Tomsky were removed from the Politburo. Gradually cutting off rivals, Stalin increased his influence in the party and the country.

In the 30s. sharply increased the number of repressions against potential opponents. Previously, they were held under the flag of the fight against alien elements. Now the repressions were also directed against party members. This policy intensified after the assassination on December 1, 1934 of the first secretary of the Leningrad Regional Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, S.M. Kirov. This period went down in history as the Great Terror.

The organs of the NKVD prepared a number of open political trials of the former leaders of the party, government, and army. In 1936, the process of the "Anti-Soviet United Trotskyist-Zinoviev Center" took place, through which 16 people passed, including Zinoviev and Kamenev. In June 1937, Marshal M.N. Tukhachevsky was sentenced to death. Repressions began against regular officers. In 1938, the trial of the "Anti-Soviet Center-Right Bloc" took place, where Bukharin and Rykov were tried. Millions of Soviet people were subjected to repressions (executions, imprisonment in concentration camps, exile, etc.). Terror eliminated real and potential opponents of Stalin.

In the 30s. resistance to the totalitarian regime did not subside. This struggle manifested itself with particular force during the period of collectivization. Figures of science and culture could not come to terms with the established regime. They did not engage in deep ideological discussions, but rude

interference in the field of creative work forced them to defend their beliefs in their own way.

Resistance came from within the ruling party itself. In 1930, the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR S.I. Syrtsov and a member of the Central Committee V.V. Lominadze spoke. They were against the methods of industrialization and collectivization, the curtailment of internal party democracy. In 1932, an illegal "Union of Marxist-Leninists" was created under the leadership of a prominent figure in the party, M.N. Ryutin. The members of the union demanded the overthrow of Stalin's power.

In 1934, at the 17th Party Congress, a significant number of delegates voted against Stalin. This was one of the last attempts to openly remove Stalin from the leadership of the party and the country.

In 1938, the ambassador to Bulgaria, F.F. Raskolnikov, criticized Stalinism. He refused to return to the USSR.

The struggle against the totalitarian regime was not crowned with success. The protests against Stalin were fragmented and unorganized. A certain passivity of the Soviet people, which was associated with a general fatigue from politics, had an effect. At the end of the 30s. the regime of Stalin's personal power was finally established in the country.

Socio-economic transformations in the Soviet country (late 20s - 30s)

By 1926, the industrial development of the country, thanks to the NEP, reached the level of 1913. Nevertheless, in many respects the Soviet Union was significantly inferior to the West. The industrialization of the country was necessary. All funds were directed to the construction of industrial giants. Growth in the production of consumer goods

nia slowed down. Difficulties began with grain procurement. The country found itself without the currency necessary for industrialization. The Bolsheviks resorted to emergency measures. The free sale of grain was banned, state prices for it (unprofitable for the peasants) were set, and grain confiscation began. The use of hired labor and land leases were abolished. This meant the end of the NEP in the countryside. The peasants refused to sell bread at a loss and reduced the area under crops. In 1928-1929. introduced a card system in the country. Peasant riots and uprisings broke out in a number of regions. Party leaders saw a way out of this situation in the creation of collective farms.

In the autumn of 1929, there was a transition to a policy of forced collectivization and liquidation of the kulaks as a class in the shortest possible time. Complete collectivization was to be completed by 1932. To assist the collective farms, 25,000 workers (25,000 men) were sent to the countryside.

By the spring of 1930, almost 60% of the peasants joined the collective farms. To create them, local authorities used measures of economic and political coercion. Individual farmers were not given goods in cooperation, taxes were increased, they were deprived of voting rights, they were evicted, their property was taken away, dispossessed, arrested, etc. The number of armed uprisings by the peasants increased. The party leadership laid the blame for the excesses on local workers. On March 2, 1930, Stalin's article "Dizziness from Success" appeared in the Pravda newspaper. The peasants began to leave the collective farms. By the summer of 1930, about 20% of the peasants remained on the collective farms. In the same year, forced collectivization resumed. By the end of 1931, in the main grain-producing regions, most of the peasants found themselves on collective farms. By 1940, 4% of individual farmers remained in the country.

It was not possible to provide the country with food. In 1929-1932. The livestock population has almost halved. Despite the growth in sown areas, there was a drop in grain harvests. In 1932-1933. famine broke out in the Don, Kuban, Lower and Middle Volga, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, the Southern Urals, and southern Siberia. It was caused by the seizure of almost the entire crop from the collective farms. The famine claimed several million lives. Only at the end of the 30s. agricultural production again approached the level of 1928. More than 10 million peasants were dispossessed. It was the most active and industrious part of the villagers. Most of the dispossessed ended up in labor camps in the North and Siberia. Few returned.

In December 1927, the first five-year plan (1928-1932) was adopted at the XV Party Congress. It provided for the concentration of all resources on heavy industry. Its volume should have tripled. The funds were supposed to be obtained by reducing the growth rate of light industry, internal loans, foreign trade income, and increasing taxes. This meant a reduction in the standard of living of all sections of the population, and above all of the peasantry. The plan was seen as a law to be followed. Thus, a course was taken to strengthen the command-administrative management of industry, the final rejection of the NEP.

During the years of the first five-year plan, the volume of industrial production grew, especially in the power industry and metallurgy. (Dneproges, Magnitka, Kuznetsk). About 1500 new enterprises were built. Tractor plants in Stalingrad, Chelyabinsk, Kharkov, automobile plants in Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod became the largest in the world. New industries emerged - aviation, automotive, bearing, tractor. In 1930, unemployment was eliminated. However, the cost of production has increased. Labor productivity decreased by 8%.

During the years of the second five-year plan (1933-1937), 4,500 new industrial enterprises were built. In terms of absolute volumes of industrial production in the USSR in the late 30s. came in second or third place after the USA and Germany. The backlog from developed countries in terms of production per capita has decreased. The number of workers has grown from 9 to 23 million people. Labor productivity increased by 60%. In 1935, food and industrial goods cards were abolished. In the third five-year plan (1937-1941), the growth rate of industrial production decreased significantly and did not exceed an average of 3-4% per year. During this period, the volume of production of military products increased markedly.

Not a single five-year plan has been fully implemented. It was possible to achieve results only in some branches of heavy industry, especially the military-industrial complex. Success came at a high cost. The standard of living has fallen, the intensification of labor has intensified, light and food industries, and agriculture have lagged behind.

The domestic political and economic development of the USSR in the late 1930s remained complex and contradictory. This was due to the strengthening of the personality cult of I.V. Stalin, the omnipotence of the party leadership, further strengthening the centralization of management. At the same time, the people's faith in the ideals of socialism, labor enthusiasm and high citizenship grew.

The economic development of the USSR was determined by the tasks of the third five-year plan (1938-1942). Despite the successes (in 1937, the USSR in terms of production came in second place in the world), the industrial lag behind the West was not overcome, especially in the development of new technologies and in the production of consumer goods. The main efforts in the 3rd Five-Year Plan were aimed at the development of industries that ensure the country's defense capability. In the Urals, Siberia, and Central Asia, the fuel and energy base was developing at an accelerated pace. "Backup plants" were created in the Urals, Western Siberia, and Central Asia.

In agriculture, the tasks of strengthening the country's defense capability were also taken into account. The sowing of industrial crops (cotton) expanded. By the beginning of 1941, significant food reserves had been created.

Particular attention was paid to the construction of defense plants. However, the creation of modern types of weapons for that time was delayed. New aircraft designs: Yak-1, MiG-3 fighters, Il-2 attack aircraft were developed during the 3rd Five-Year Plan, but they failed to establish their widespread production before the war. By the beginning of the war, the industry had not mastered the mass production of T-34 and KV tanks either.

Major measures were taken in the field of military construction. The transition to the personnel system of recruiting the army has been completed. The law on universal conscription (1939) made it possible to increase the size of the army by 1941 to 5 million people. In 1940, general and admiral ranks were established, complete unity of command was introduced.

Social events were also driven by defense needs. In 1940, a program for the development of state labor reserves was adopted and a transition was made to an 8-hour working day and a 7-day working week. A law was passed on judicial liability for unauthorized dismissal, absenteeism and lateness to work.

In the late 1930s, international tension increased. The Western powers pursued a policy of concessions to fascist Germany, trying to direct its aggression against the USSR. The culmination of this policy was the Munich Agreement (September 1938) between Germany, Italy, England and France, which formalized the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia.

In the Far East, Japan, having captured most of China, approached the borders of the USSR. In the summer of 1938, an armed conflict took place on the territory of the USSR in the area of Lake Khasan. The Japanese grouping was thrown back. In May 1938 Japanese troops invaded Mongolia. Parts of the Red Army under the command of G.K. Zhukov defeated them in the area of the Khalkhin-Gol River.

At the beginning of 1939, the last attempt was made to create a system of collective security between Britain, France and the USSR. The Western powers dragged out negotiations. Therefore, the Soviet leadership went for rapprochement with Germany. On August 23, 1939, a Soviet-German non-aggression pact was concluded in Moscow for a period of 10 years (Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact). It was accompanied by a secret protocol on the delimitation of spheres of influence in Eastern Europe. The interests of the USSR were recognized by Germany in the Baltic and Bessarabia.

On September 1, Germany attacked Poland. Under these conditions, the leadership of the USSR began to implement the Soviet-German agreements in August 1939. On September 17, the Red Army entered Western Belarus and Western Ukraine. In 1940, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania became part of the USSR.

In November 1939, the USSR began a war with Finland in the hope of its quick defeat, in order to move the Soviet-Finnish border from Leningrad in the area of the Karelian Isthmus. At the cost of enormous efforts, the resistance of the Finnish armed forces was broken. In March 1940, the Soviet-Finnish peace treaty was signed, according to which the USSR received the entire Karelian Isthmus.

In the summer of 1940, as a result of political pressure, Romania ceded Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina to the USSR.

As a result, significant territories with a population of 14 million people were included in the USSR. The foreign policy agreements of 1939 delayed the attack on the USSR for almost 2 years.

Indigenization policy

The policy of indigenization, which began after the XII Congress of the RCP (b) (April 1923), had a significant impact on the socio-political and cultural development of the USSR in the 1920s. The congress set before party organizations the task of increasing attention to the training and education of indigenous cadres, promoting them to the party apparatus and state bodies, using national languages in party and economic work, and in the publishing sector.

Remark 1

Legal proceedings, general education, special and higher educational institutions, theaters, concerts, cinema, periodicals, and publishing were translated into national languages.

For employees, a period, usually a year, was set for the transition to national languages. A wide network of state courses for their study was created. In 1926, more than 65% of indigenous children were taught in their native language. Significant progress has been made in the indigenization of the higher and secondary special schools, scientific institutions and organizations.

Considering the process of indigenization, it should be noted that, like any social phenomenon, it was of a complex nature, accompanied by certain difficulties and even mistakes. Thus, the ongoing rotation of personnel often led to the removal from their posts of experienced, qualified workers of other nationalities. Contrary to the moods of parents and children, Russian schools were closed. Many Russians were recorded as non-Russians. Among some scientists, there was a desire to ignore the common destinies of the Russian and other peoples. There were even proposals to change the Cyrillic alphabet to the Latin alphabet.

The strengthening of I. Stalin's position during the internal party struggle for power in 1923-1928 led to the tightening of the Soviet political regime. In an effort to further strengthen his position in the party and among the working masses, J. Stalin explained all the difficulties on the path of building socialism as the intrigues of "internal enemies" and "external enemies." The thesis that as we move towards socialism, the class struggle will inevitably intensify, became fundamental to all his subsequent policy. And this could not but affect the policy of indigenization. Stalin skillfully uses national relations in his own interests - the achievement of absolute personal power.

After the February-March Plenum of the Central Committee of the CPSU in 1927, the process of struggle against the so-called "bourgeois nationalism" began. In the 1930s, a large-scale persecution of the national intelligentsia began, especially through the creation of fictitious "counter-revolutionary" organizations ("Union for the Liberation of Ukraine" (SOU), "Polish Military Organization", "Trotsky-Nationalist Bloc", etc.). Over time, the indigenization policy was discontinued.

Return to the imperial model of national politics

Nationality has become a universal label for classifying and governing citizens. During this period, nationalities ceased to be considered equal. There was a certain ideological hierarchy of nations headed by the "great Russian people". Accordingly, other non-Russian republics were considered "younger sisters" in the Soviet "family of nations". A new category has appeared, the so-called “enemy people”. If in the 1920s The USSR was a state of equal nationalities and unequal classes, then in the late 1930s. it turned into a state of equal classes and unequal nationalities, where the center was increasingly identified with the Russian nation.

Remark 2

So, the Soviet state built its interethnic policy under the slogan of “friendship of peoples”, which was reproduced in textbooks, the media, political rituals, numerous exhibitions, visual propaganda, and was fixed in toponyms (names of streets or districts).

Positive and negative trends in the course of national policy

In the Soviet Union, weeks of national fraternal cultures of one union republic were often organized in another. At the same time, lawsuits took place, where belonging to a crime was determined by a national attribute (for example, the “case of Jewish doctors” or “bourgeois nationalists”), ethnic deportations and repressions, a policy of forced mixing of the population due to labor migration.

But at the individual level, we can talk about such processes as the intensification of contacts between cultural figures and scientists from different Soviet republics, which contributed to the process of creative and cultural exchange.

The number of translations of works of art, joint exhibitions of ordinary citizens with their national heritage and the work of neighboring peoples grew. The policy of intensive mixing of the population through labor migration contributed to an increase in the number of interethnic marriages and creative mutual enrichment.

Remark 3

The interpenetration of cultures took place through individuals who, from birth, had one nationality, but, living within the framework of another republic, made a significant contribution to the development of society, which became their second homeland.

At the same time, ordinary residents of the Soviet republics in everyday life faced such phenomena as:

unwritten practices of limiting social mobility for representatives of certain nationalities,
rooting of interethnic stereotypes and prejudices,
hidden inter-ethnic conflicts and manifestations of xenophobia,
assimilation and Russification.

“The phenomenon of Stalin's national policy in the USSR in the 20-30s. XX century.”

Rostov-on-Don

Introduction

Chapter I. Internationalism and the Russian Question

§ 1. Formation of the doctrine

§ 2. Break with patriotism

§ 3. Denial of the past

Chapter II. Socialism in one country and changing attitudes

§ 1. Evolution of views

§ 2. Course correction

Conclusion

Notes

List of used sources and literature

Introduction

Relevance of the topic. The influence of the Stalinist national policy model on interethnic relations continued until the tragic end. However, even now it can be asserted with full confidence that the collapse of the USSR and the current problems in the relations of the peoples inhabiting it are due to the miscalculations of the Bolshevik leaders, including I.V. Stalin. As a result, today's Russia and the emerging countries of the near abroad are nation-states, the contours of which were laid after 1917 during the implementation of the Bolshevik doctrine, based on the idea of world revolution.

After the collapse of the USSR, the “Russian question” also escalated. A new understanding of the nation as fellow-citizenship emerged. The collapse of the USSR confronted researchers with an indisputable fact: the national question, which has been repeatedly proclaimed finally resolved in our country, makes the peoples of the former USSR pay dearly for the incompetence of scientists and politicians. Exposure of I.V. Stalin led, as modern science admits, to negative consequences. Under the flag of the fight against Stalinism, people are often called to abandon everything positive that is in the theoretical heritage and experience in resolving the national question in the Soviet era.

The degree of knowledge. The problems of resolving the national question in the USSR were reflected in a huge number of scientific and popular works, specialized periodicals, documentary and statistical collections, testimonies of participants in events related to the development and implementation of the relevant policy. Publications of the greatest scientific value and reflecting the features of the historiographic stages in the study of the problem are presented in the monograph by A.I. Vdovin “The Russian Nation: National-Political Problems of the 20th Century and the National Russian Idea”, published in 1995.

The domestic historiographic heritage on the national question contains many studies in which national policy was studied. At the same time, in relation to works published in the 30s - 80s. XX century., A critical assessment is fair. They did not differ in scientific depth and were based on schematism. These works are characterized, in addition, by dogmatic assessments and conclusions that are inadequate to historical reality. The political atmosphere forced researchers to ignore the real contradictions of national processes.

Deviations from the given line were subject to devastating criticism, and publications that fell under it were withdrawn from scientific circulation. Such a fate befell, first of all, the works of outstanding Russian thinkers and scientists expelled from Soviet Russia after the civil war: N.A. Berdyaeva, I.A. Ilyina, P.A. Sorokina, N.S. Trubetskoy, G.P. Fedotov and others. Ostracism was indulged in by all the authors of the Russian diaspora who adhered to other political convictions.

The same attitude was towards the developments on the national question by L.D. Trotsky, N.I. Bukharin, S.M. Dimanstein, I.P. Trainin, who belonged to the Bolshevik cohort, but were subsequently rejected for political reasons. The theoretical core of the Soviet science of nations and national relations, which acted as the methodological basis of historical research, for a long time was the works of V.I. Lenin and I.V. Stalin. V.I. Lenin, as you know, especially singled out I.V. Stalin as the author of the article “The National Question and Social Democracy”, written in 1913. It was on his recommendation that I.V. Stalin was placed at the head of the People's Commissariat for Nationalities in the first Soviet government.

In the 20s. 20th century he was presented in scientific and propaganda literature as a faithful disciple and conductor of Lenin's national policy. Even then, the special quality of this orthodoxy was considered the “strength of argumentation”. The danger of an impeccable perception of the proletarian leaders with their methods for the final solution of the national question was not noticed by anyone. CM. Dimanstein, a well-known researcher of national issues, who was repressed in 1938, presented such approaches as “an innocent delusion that can be corrected in the future.”

In the 30s. 20th century the national policy of the Soviet state was no longer referred to except as “Leninist-Stalinist”. Many publications by I.V. Stalin as a theoretician of Bolshevism in the national question. In some of them, I.V. Stalin presented himself as a fighter against those who proposed “forming the USSR ... on the basis of the entry of individual republics into the RSFSR”, that is, an opponent of his own plan of autonomization.

In the historical literature of the 40s. 20th century I.V. Stalin is portrayed not so much as a follower of Marx and Lenin, but as the creator of Marxist theory, the creator and leader of the Soviet multinational state, the personification of the “Leninist-Stalinist” and simply “Stalinist” friendship of peoples. M.D. Kammari, one of the main authorities in the theory of the national question, corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR in 1953-1965, in 1949 published an article with the characteristic title "The Creation and Development of the Marxist Theory of the Nation by I.V. Stalin" .

In the works of this author, it was stated that “Comrade. Stalin created the Marxist theory of the nation, comprehensively developed the program and policy of the party in the national question, discovered the most expedient forms of uniting the national Soviet republics into a single union state. Against the background of such statements, official biographers wrote much more modestly: “Stalin, together with Lenin, crushed the opportunist views and dogmas of the Second International on the national question. Lenin and Stalin worked out a Marxist program on the national question.” Superiority was unconditionally given to Stalin only in practical matters: "There is not a single Soviet republic in the organization of which Stalin would not take an active and leading part."

The turn that emerged immediately after Stalin's death in assessing his contribution to the accomplishments of the country, in particular to the theory and practice of resolving the national question, did not immediately affect the situation in historical science. Definiteness in this regard appeared only after the XX Congress and the publication in 1956 of Lenin's article “On the Question of Nationalities or “Autonomization”, which significantly changed the idea of I.V. Stalin as an infallible leader. Peculiar methods of practical participation in solving the national question during the formation of the USSR allowed V.I. Lenin to call Stalin a "Great Russian bullshit".

Correction of mistakes made by I.V. Stalin, which, in fact, resembled the political campaigns of his own era. In 1956, articles by V.V. Pentkovskaya and S.Ya. Yakubovskaya, in which for the first time in Soviet censored publications attention was drawn to Lenin's assessment of the Stalinist plan for autonomization. And she, as you know, was negative. At the turn of the 50s - 60s. 20th century the first attempts were made to overestimate the contribution of I.V. Stalin in the theory of the nation. M.D. Kammari, in particular, tried to make some adjustments to the ideas about the stages of rapprochement and merging of nations.

However, the impulses of the 20th Congress soon dried up. After the displacement of N.S. Khrushchev, further de-Stalinization of the theory of the national question was stopped. Stalin's mistakes in the national question in the historiography of the 60s - early 80s. 20th century come down to two aspects. They concerned the promotion of a plan for autonomization and the adoption of decisions on the deportation of peoples during the Great Patriotic War. But in both cases there were extenuating circumstances. It was also stated that I.V. Stalin did not insist on the implementation of his plan and immediately accepted the Leninist directive, and the deportations are to some extent justified by the most severe conditions.

The names of V.I. Lenin and V.I. Stalin in the literature of the 60s - the first half of the 80s. 20th century were divorced, and errors in the theory and practice of solving the national question were allegedly corrected. The definition of "Leninist-Stalinist" to refer to the national policy of the 20s - 50s. disappeared from the lexicon of politicians and authors of scientific works. But the overcoming of Stalinism, in my opinion, did not happen. Conducted in the 50s and the second half of the 60s. discussions on the theory of the nation proved unproductive.

In one of the articles summing up, it was noted that “... the well-known definition of a nation, formulated by I.V. Stalin, is a generalization of everything that was said by K. Marx, F. Engels and V.I. Lenin” and “… scientific Marxist definition”. It was claimed to represent "part of the Marxist-Leninist theory of the nation." Definition of nation I.V. Stalin, meanwhile, reflected the developments of the Austrian school of nasiology at the beginning of the 20th century, which did not fit the realities of Russia. However, it was not questioned.

In the book “Marxist-Leninist Theory of the Nation and Socialist Practice” published in 1985, it was stated that in their theoretical constructions, most researchers proceed from the well-known four signs of a nation, the first three of which practically do not cause objections. The concretization of the fourth was not clear. In the historiography of the 60s - early 80s. 20th century a situation developed, the originality of which was noticed by the famous Soviet scientist M.V. Kryukov. In his opinion, when presenting the history of national relations, they went along the path of simple silence: “Stalin disappeared from the pages of ... studies, but his concepts remained” .

This is explained by the fact that under the conditions of the cult of personality, Lenin's works could not decisively influence historiography. I.V. Stalin, proclaiming himself a true Leninist, sought to substantiate any of his theoretical innovations with references to a teacher. This technique was used not only by I.V. Stalin, but also by many representatives of Russian science, formed in his time, and, to some extent, generations of their students. As a result, it turned out that while denying the role of I.V. Stalin as a theoretician, his ideas were attributed to V.I. Lenin. M.V. Kryukov noted that the main meaning of the works written in the 60s-80s "was reduced to a persistent search in Lenin's works for confirmation of his priority in formulating certain provisions known to us from Stalin's speeches" .

An attempt to overcome the Stalinist approaches to the theory and practice of solving the national question was made at the turn of the 80s - 90s. In addition to the works of A.P. Nenarokov and M.V. Kryukov, it was undertaken by A.N. Melnikov. A section of his book “Reflections on Nations” had a defiant title: “Whose ideas do we live by? Stalin and Bauer against Marx, Engels and Lenin. T.Yu. Burmistrova, on the contrary, insisted on a critical analysis of Stalin's works and the rejection of dogmas born during the years of the personality cult. She proved the fallacy of the notion that Stalin defined the nation.

According to the theory of I.V. Stalin, “a nation is a historically established stable community of people that has arisen on the basis of a commonality of four main features, namely: on the basis of a common language, a common territory, a common economic life and a common mental make-up, manifested in the commonality of the specific features of national culture” . Careful analysis of the wording reveals that the nation is not defined in it. Here are the signs of ethnicity. I.V. Stalin that “only the presence of all the signs taken together gives us a nation”, that “the absence of at least one of these signs is enough for a nation to cease to be a nation”, things do not change.

The analysis shows that V.I. Lenin did not express his approval of this definition of a nation. He never reproduced or even mentioned it in his articles. He noted the existence of two Marxist theories on the national question: Bauer's idealistic theory of the nation, in which the main thing is the national character, and Kautsky's historical-economic theory, for which the main thing is language and territory. The approval concerned the clarification of the content of the Bolshevik party program on the national question. The idea of national self-determination was also supported.

The division of I.V. served the same purpose. Stalin of peoples into nations and nationalities. The assignment of a people to the category of nationalities (a people that did not have all the characteristics of a nation) in the post-revolutionary period was used to limit the number of peoples - likely contenders for the status of a union republic. Although since the 1950s 20th century stopped talking about the Leninist-Stalinist national policy, but Leninism was not separated from Stalinism. The crisis experienced by the country after the collapse of the USSR showed the failure of science and politics, divorced from real development processes.

In the historical literature during the Soviet period, it was noted that the national policy in the USSR was largely determined by ideas about Soviet federalism. It was presented as a form of transition for peoples who stood at different stages of economic and cultural development to complete state unity of nations, to a single socialist republic without separating parts in its composition on a national basis. At the same time, the federation was conceived as a form that ensures the rapprochement and merging of nations. Forcing the process, starting with the formation of the USSR and accelerating it from the end of the 30s, allows us to draw a conclusion about the policy of internationalization.

It was believed that the Russian nation was responsible for the historically established actual situation of the peoples of the Russian Empire and was obliged to eliminate this inequality through concessions. In the mid 30s. In the 20th century, in the context of the impending war and the proclamation of the victory of socialism, it was announced that distrust between peoples would be overcome and friendship would triumph. However, the further forcing of rapprochement was to be ensured again by the Russian people, named for this great and first among equals.

For the same purposes and at the same time, he was “assigned” another ambiguous title of “elder brother”, who now allegedly voluntarily, unlike in the 1920s, took care of other Soviet peoples. At the same time, the Russians were assigned the main role of fighters for the communist happiness of all the peoples of the Earth. During the war and post-war years of the regime of I.V. Stalin, the inconsistency of national policy in the USSR intensified. This period is characterized even by gross arbitrariness. A number of the peoples of the Volga region, the Caucasus and the Crimea in full force were evicted from their places of original residence.

National policy, as well as theory, was not subjected to de-Stalinization either after the 20th Congress or at subsequent stages. Dynamism in the development of the system, characteristic of the 20-30s. (the formation of new national-state entities, raising their status), was lost in subsequent years. The theory of national relations has not received any development. Basically, it remained Stalinist. The prospect of a complete merger of nations was not ruled out, but this goal was not forced. In the 60-80s, Russian historiography was replenished with a large number of works on the Soviet people as a new historical community.

This idea is closely connected with the formulation of the community of nations under socialism expressed in JV Stalin's article "The National Question and Leninism". Written back in 1929 and first published in 1949, this article, apparently, was in demand. It also contained a provision on the use of national languages. The Russian language was proclaimed as a means of international communication. The nation was supposed to be attributed by all means to the category of ethnic communities.

Meanwhile, world science did not know the limitations of schematism, which allowed it to avoid the total ethnicization of national problems. The principles of the domestic science of nations did not allow explanations for the processes taking place in the country. Some researchers have proposed to call this direction natsiology. From the point of view of international terminology, “Soviet people” is no less legitimate concept than all other “peoples” expressing state affiliation. It would not be a mistake to use the term "Soviet nation" as an equivalent of the Stalinist term "Soviet people".

In the USSR, it was not used due to fears that this could mean the abolition of nations as ethnic communities. As a result, adherence to the Stalinist definition of the nation played a negative role in the collapse of the state. Without its own “nation” and the “Soviet people” equivalent to this concept, the USSR in the eyes of many ill-wishers remained nothing more than a “colonial empire”, “obliged” due to historical regularity to leave the world stage. It is argued that with the formation of the USSR, Russian chauvinism became the principle of national policy. The proclamation of a multinational community served only as a way to involve the Russian people in the management of the “prison of peoples”, the “Kremlin empire”. Separatism is sanctified by the fight against the consequences of Stalin's national policy.

Sources. Available collections of documents, periodicals in which articles of Soviet leaders were published, collected works of V.I. Lenin, I.V. Stalin, L.D. Trotsky and others. The newspapers and magazines available in the library funds, published in the study period of the 1920s-1930s, are used. 20th century

Goals and objectives. In the thesis, an attempt is made to analyze the phenomenon of Stalin's national policy in the USSR in the 20-30s. XX century, which still remains not studied in its entirety, especially in accordance with the criterion of historical objectivity. It was this criterion that was maintained in the selection and systematization of the material. In addition, a problem-chronological approach was used, which, in my opinion, is the most appropriate for the disclosure of the topic.

To achieve the intended goal, the following tasks have been identified:

Make a comparative comparison of internationalism and the Russian question.

Consider the formation of the Bolshevik doctrine of national policy before 1917, during the Civil War and in the first years after its end.

Find out the reasons for the break with patriotism and its consequences.

Show for what purposes the denial of the past was carried out and how it affected the ideological situation.

To trace how the setting “socialism in one country” to change approaches in national policy in the USSR in the 30s. 20th century compared to the previous period.

To analyze the evolution of the views of the Bolshevik leaders and to determine the contribution of I.V. Stalin in updating the doctrine.

Set the course correction parameters and its features on the eve of the Great Patriotic War.

Correlate official declarations and historical reality, existing inconsistencies and the position of the leadership.

ChapterI. Internationalism and the Russian question

§ 1. Formation of the doctrine

The myth of the wise organizer of the happy life of the Soviet peoples was created on the basis that I.V. Stalin in late 1912 - early 1913 with the blessing of V.I. Lenin prepared and published the article "Marxism and the National Question", some provisions of which have already been analyzed in the previous sections. This article of the leader was called "the theory and programmatic declaration of Bolshevism on the national question."

And although at that time I.V. Stalin fully adhered to the provisions of Lenin's thought, this was his first approach to creating his own national-state doctrine. In its finished form, it was formed by the mid-1930s. Recall that I.V. Stalin then defined a nation as “a historically established, stable community of people” that arose on the basis of a single language, territory, economic life and mental makeup (culture). Experts believe that this was not his merit, but rather K. Kautsky, who wrote approximately the same thing ten years earlier.

But I.V. Stalin, trying to go further than his predecessors, came to conclusions, the correctness of which is more than doubtful. For example, opposing sovereign statehood as another sign of nation formation, he argued that the process of creating new states, inherent in the transition period from feudalism to capitalism, had already been completed, and the nations that had "awakened to independent life" were, so to speak, "late". But the First World War, which soon began, as a result of which a number of new states were formed on the ruins of old empires, refuted this thesis.

Despite this discrepancy with reality, I.V. Stalin remained faithful to the definition he formulated until the end of his life, believing that nations, having received the status of some modern specific principalities and renouncing sovereign rights, would be able to coexist as part of a single country (empire), until, as a result of building communism, they merge into a single nation. Meanwhile, historical experience shows the opposite. The state develops stably only when there exists in it, being a political subject, only one nation, even if it is a multi-ethnic one.

The only innovation in the article by I.V. Stalin, according to modern scientists, there were arguments about national-cultural autonomy. His criticism of this platform in the RSDLP was not distinguished by depth, for it was based on narrow-party short-term tactical considerations. As an alternative, I.V. Stalin put forward a project of "regional autonomy", which provided for the transfer by the center to certain units (Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine and the Caucasus) of certain powers of self-government. And those in the space assigned to them had to ensure the implementation of a set of rights (“language, schools, etc.”) of extraterritorial national minorities.

Initially, the Bolsheviks thus preached the inequality of peoples, since their rights were made dependent on the number of ethnic groups, as well as the size and location of the territories they occupied. In comparison with the Soviet theory and practice of nation-building, criticized in 1913 by I.V. Stalin's program of cultural-national autonomy was by no means as curious as he tried to present it. It contained, in general, a rational scheme. With a homogeneous administrative-territorial division of the country (into provinces), the main socio-political and economic life of the population is directed by central, as well as unified regional and municipal bodies.

Only the humanitarian sphere is regulated by ethnic communities. These are, first of all, national culture, education, information, religion. In order to guarantee the freedom of cultural development of a particular nationality, not only in the places of its compact residence, but also throughout the country, it was envisaged that the communities be vested with the right to elect central public national councils (“cultural-national parliaments”) with headquarters in the capital of the state.

Since cultural-national autonomy was projected on the basis of the principle of extraterritoriality, it, by definition, favored centripetal tendencies and served as a deterrent to national separatism, which is inherent precisely in territorial autonomies. But this was precisely what suited the Bolsheviks least of all, who declared that national problems in tsarist Russia could be solved only through a revolutionary explosion, and not reforms.

On March 22, 1917, the Provisional Government issued a decree declaring: "All established ... restrictions on the rights of Russian citizens, due to belonging to a particular religion, creed ... are canceled." This extended to nationality as well. I.V. Stalin, who had returned to Petrograd from Siberian exile by that time, responded in Pravda with a special article. In it, he argued that with the victory of the revolution in Russia and the removal from power of the old aristocracy, which imposed national oppression, "the actual conditions necessary for national freedom" arose.

I.V. Stalin advocated the introduction of "regional autonomy" for individual national outskirts. First of all, they meant Ukraine, the Transcaucasus, the Baltic states and the granting of the right to self-determination to Finland and Poland. Putting forward this program, I.V. Stalin apparently believed that socialism in Russia would be preceded by a long period of capitalist development. Such a conviction appeared in him, most likely, under the influence of L.B. Kamenev, with whom he became close during his last exile.

However, soon I.V. Stalin abruptly changed his point of view. This happened upon arrival in Petrograd from exile V.I. Lenin. Under the influence of the latter, he did not hesitate to leave L.B. Kamenev and agreed with the leader. At the famous April All-Russian Conference of the RSDLP (b), he made a report on the national question, where he supported V.I. Lenin, who demanded from his associates the recognition of the guaranteed right of the peoples of Russia to self-determination up to complete political secession.

The leader of the Bolsheviks, who believed that the creation of favorable conditions for a socialist revolution would be facilitated by the maximum possible strengthening of national separatist tendencies in Russia and, as a result, the destruction of the foundations of its statehood. He unambiguously declared: “We are indifferent to the separatist movement, neutral. If Finland, if Poland, Ukraine secede from Russia, there is nothing wrong with that…”. He called opponents within the party who did not accept this position chauvinists.

Playing along with the centrifugal nationalist forces and intending to use them, if necessary, to seize power in the country, V.I. Nevertheless, Lenin was forced to take care that, in achieving this goal, to preserve a territorially larger country for the Bolsheviks. To do this, at the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets (June 1917), he put forward the slogan of transition to a federation: "Let Russia be a union of free republics." And although V.I. Lenin and his comrades-in-arms remained essentially unitarians, just like the European socialists, starting with Karl Marx.

However, they had no choice but to officially fix the principle of federation in the legislation of the Soviet republic as a kind of counterbalance to the forced slogan about the right of peoples to free self-determination. After all, V.I. Lenin, like the White Guards, stood up for a united and indivisible Russia. However, one thing is the rhetoric about federalism and the right of nations to self-determination, and the other is the real policy of self-preservation of the state, which is inherent in Machiavellianism to one degree or another.

It is possible that it was this shadow side that predetermined the choice of V.I. Lenin in favor of the sovereign I.V. Stalin, when in October 1917 he began to decide who in the Soviet republic should be made in charge of national relations. Including I.V. Stalin to the first Soviet government, V.I. Lenin entrusted him with the leadership of the newly formed People's Commissariat for Nationalities. By this appointment, he clearly pursued the goal of acquiring an intelligent and executive assistant for the conduct of national policy. The ordered executive scheme of relations, of course, suited I.V. Stalin.

Although he entered the highest echelon of the new government, he did not yet possess such political weight and influence as, say, Trotsky, Zinoviev or Kamenev. The time for decisive hardware battles for the redistribution of power on the Kremlin Olympus was yet to come. Being a brilliant tactician, I.V. Stalin preferred to wait for the time being, gradually increasing his political weight. Remaining in the shadow of the teacher and restraining his own ambition, he did not want to publicly reveal his special position on the national question. It differed from Lenin's and had, according to experts, a hidden "chauvinist bias."

In form, the position of I.V. Stalin was simpler, straightforward and not so sophisticated. Hiding his adherence to the great power with dogmatic rhetoric, he continued to insist that the primary thing for the party is "self-determination not of the bourgeoisie, but of the working masses of this nation." True, in March 1919, at the VIII Congress of the RCP (b), where the “Left Bolsheviks” G.L. Pyatakov and N.I. Bukharin proposed to replace the slogan of self-determination of nations in the program of the party with the formula “self-determination of the working classes of each nationality”, I.V. Stalin preferred to prudently keep silent.

He understood that the last word would be for V.I. Lenin, who then remarked in his hearts: "Scrape another communist - and you will find a Great Russian chauvinist." Argue I.V. Stalin was all the more senseless because the same 8th Congress finally rejected the idea of organizing the party on a federal basis, equating the central committees of national communist parties with ordinary territorial committees. Thus, the party, with its centralized structure and rigid vertical, assumed the role of the main supporting structure of the new state, firmly holding all the peoples under the rule of the Bolsheviks into a single whole.

As a result, the slogan of the self-determination of nations turned into a kind of decorative element. Becoming in April 1922 the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), I.V. Stalin made the most of this post to implement his own national-state concept, which was initially embodied in the well-known “autonomization plan”, which caused the first serious quarrel with V.I. Lenin. Having prepared in August a draft resolution of the plenum of the Central Committee of the RCP (b), recognizing “it is expedient to formally join the independent Soviet republics: Ukraine, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia into the RSFSR”, I.V. Stalin intended, in spite of everything, to defend his views.

His version of the national-state structure of Russia after the revolution provided for the extension of the competence of the authorities and administration to similar structures of the republics. I.V. Stalin believed that the success of his plan would be ensured by favorable conditions on the Soviet power exchange. It is known that in one form or another all the independent Soviet republics, with the exception of Georgia, supported the plan of I.V. Stalin. In addition, in 1920 - 1921. they concluded agreements on a military-economic and diplomatic alliance with the RSFSR.

This de facto meant their renunciation of sovereignty in favor of the latter. It seemed that all that remained was to de jure formalize their merger with Russia, which, in fact, was going to be done by I.V. Stalin. However, V.I. Lenin proposed a fundamentally different, liberal-cosmopolitan model for the unification of the Soviet republics. He was determined, despite his own ill health, to fight for her to the end. September 26, 1922, having met in Gorki with I.V. Stalin, he strongly criticized the "autonomization plan", putting forward the idea of creating the so-called "Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia" instead.

According to the Leninist scheme, the construction of a complex federal structure was envisaged, on the upper tier of which the previously “independent” Russia, Ukraine and Belarus were to be located, a step below - Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, which were part of the union as part of the Transcaucasian Federation. Even lower were the autonomous republics. Of course, without a rigid party-administrative connection, such a model of the national-state structure could hardly function. However, this circumstance worried the revolutionary romanticist least of all.

For Lenin, the creation of the USSR was the beginning of a grandiose project called the "World Federative Republic of Soviets." He announced it back in March 1919. From the end of 1922, the imagination of the “Kremlin dreamer” and his closest associates was dominated by utopian plans for the “awakening East” “with hundreds of millions ... the peoples of Asia, just about ready to act ". Hope was also pinned on the proletarian revolution in Germany, so desired by the Russian Bolsheviks, the victory of which was associated with the beginning of the triumphal march of communism through the countries of Europe.

I.V. Stalin was forced to give in, which, however, did not remove the tension in his relations with V.I. Lenin, whom he accused of “national liberalism” behind his back. The latter declared to Great Russian chauvinism "a fight not for life, but for death." For V.I. Lenin, the fanatical prophet of the new faith, who suffered painfully from the thought that his days were numbered and that along with his health he was losing power in a vast country, Great Russian chauvinism became something like a nightmarish ghost of old Russia so unloved by him.

Thus, a man-made mutation of the Russian statehood took place, which as a result turned into something purely in the communist spirit and devoid of historical roots. Knowing today's sad result of this experiment, V.I. Lenin, you involuntarily come to the conclusion that the unrealized plan of I.V. Stalin, who provided for the preservation of Russia as the basis of the Soviet state, could be more viable in the temporal perspective. However, this statement is purely hypothetical.

Only one thing is obvious: the “USSR project” was the last brilliant victory of V.I. Lenin. Being on his deathbed, he could triumph when his student, speaking at the First All-Union Congress of Soviets, which established the USSR, called the created by the will of V.I. Lenin the Soviet federation as a prototype of the “coming World Soviet Socialist Republic” and branded pre-revolutionary Russia as the “gendarme of Europe” and the “executioner of Asia”. However, already in 1923 I.V. Stalin, outwardly in solidarity with V.I. Lenin in attacks on Great Russian chauvinism, called it "the main danger."

An offensive was launched against local nationalism. The “national deviationists” who had previously sought protection from the leader were also subjected to harsh criticism. But to strengthen his power in the Kremlin, I.V. Stalin was forced to flirt with the national bureaucracy. He announced the beginning of the implementation of the course towards the so-called indigenization of personnel in the national republics. It was proposed in 1921 and provided for a gradual transition to the formation of administrative apparatuses in the national republics “primarily from local people who know the language, way of life, customs and customs of the respective peoples” .

The support of the national party elite was by no means superfluous for I.V. Stalin, who meanwhile directed his main efforts to replace the power of the nomenklatura oligarchy with his own one-man dictatorship. The system of government, consonant with traditional Russian autocracy, was in the interests of large sections of the Soviet bureaucracy. A new national-state idea was also required. And such a doctrine, based on the theory of building socialism in one country, was adopted by the authorities from the end of the 1920s. Realizing that it would not be easy to achieve unanimity, I.V. Stalin carried out ideological restructuring gradually.

§ 2. Break with patriotism

The coming of the Bolsheviks to power in Russia in 1917 meant, among other things, that they were able to direct, in accordance with their political programs, the processes of rapprochement and merging of nations in the country and the world, since the October Revolution in their ideas was the beginning of a new world era. The course towards world revolution assumed a break with the ideas of patriotism and the beginning of the construction of a single world socialist republic. These ideas were inherent in a significant part of Russian intellectuals who were in opposition to the pre-revolutionary political regime. Among the first adherents of such ideas were representatives of the Russian socialist intelligentsia.

V.I. Lenin and the Bolsheviks considered themselves not cosmopolitans, but internationalists who were supposed not to deny nationality as such and even the smallest nationality to recognize the right to a free independent existence. Nevertheless, in the internationalist doctrine it was asserted that “the proletarian party strives for rapprochement and further merging of nations”, that there is no contradiction between the propaganda of the freedom of secession of nations and the propaganda of their merging “there is not and cannot be”.

In the minds of many Bolsheviks, being an internationalist meant renunciation of nationality as such. For example, L.D. Trotsky, explaining his position on the national question, wrote: “The national moment ... played almost no role in my personal life ... Marxist education deepened these sentiments, turning them into active internationalism.” Answering the question whether he considers himself a Jew or a Russian, L.D. Trotsky said: “Neither one nor the other. I am a social democrat, an internationalist.” L.M. Kaganovich emphasized that he was only a Jew by birth, but "he was never guided in his work by national motives."

L.Z. Mehlis also claimed: "I'm not a Jew, I'm a communist." According to colleagues, the famous historian A.Ya. Avrekh was proud that he was "neither Jewish nor Russian, but only a Marxist-internationalist." It is believed that the attitude towards Russia, towards the Russian nation, demonstrated by the leaders of the Bolsheviks and ultra-internationalists in the post-revolutionary years, was the result not of their ethnic origin, but of an “international-cosmopolitan worldview” .

In this regard, it is appropriate to make an explanation about the nature of the connection that exists between the concepts of "internationalism" and "cosmopolitanism". There are no differences between them: they pursue the same goal - the fusion of nations. Perhaps this can explain the position of the witness of the “last Stalinist atrocity” Ya.L. Rapoport. Comprehending for many years the “doctors' case” of 1953 and the “struggle against cosmopolitanism” that preceded it, the scientist pathologist believes: “The fight against cosmopolitanism had nothing in common with the theoretical fundamental differentiation of two concepts: cosmopolitanism and internationalism. Once upon a time, in the works of Marxist theoreticians, they coexisted peacefully…” .

Cosmopolitans and internationalists in practice turned out to be hostile to the national idea. For example, when the Zionists, who advocated the creation of conditions for the "revival and flourishing" of the Jewish nation, in April 1920 turned to V.I. Lenin, they met with a complete misunderstanding of the latter. The leader of the proletarian revolution told M. Gorky, who acted as an intercessor, that he had an extremely negative attitude towards Zionism. IN AND. Lenin referred to the fact that national movements are reactionary. The Zionists dream of adding another nation-state to the existing ones.

Formulating the theses for the II Congress of the Comintern (June 1920), V.I. Lenin called for a struggle against “national prejudices”, which “is all the more brought to the fore, the more topical the task of transforming the dictatorship of the proletariat from a national one (that is, existing in one country and incapable of determining world politics) into an international one (i.e. dictatorship of the proletariat, at least in several advanced countries, capable of having a decisive influence on all world politics)” . Proletarian internationalism was defined accordingly.

The interpretation of internationalism in the spirit of equality and friendship of peoples, as V.I. Lenin, corresponded to petty-bourgeois ideas about internationalism. Its essence in the Bolshevik doctrine is expressed in the words: "Not national culture ... but international (international), merging all nations in the highest socialist unity." Socialism was seen by V.I. Lenin by a society that gigantically accelerates the rapprochement and merging of nations.

N.I. Bukharin understood this attitude in such a way that the Russian people must be artificially placed in a position lower in comparison with other peoples and at this price “buy for themselves the real trust of the formerly oppressed nations.” M.I. Kalinin called for placing the small nationality in noticeably better conditions than the large one. These installations were carried out just as long as the USSR existed, they, according to modern experts, to a certain extent caused its collapse.

An example of a revolutionary who understood internationalism in ultra-left terms was, as noted, L.D. Trotsky. National culture in the Trotskyist interpretation is a synonym for bourgeois culture, which in the transition period to socialism had to share the fate of this class. The revival of nations under socialism, and even more so invented by I.V. Stalin considered the “flourishing” of national cultures by the Trotskyists as the most dangerous form of nationalism.

V.A. Vaganyan, a well-known author of works on the philosophical problems of culture in the 1920s, one of the founding members of the Society of Militant Materialists and a member of its presidium, presented the cultural revolution unfolding in the USSR as a phenomenon "opposite to national culture." The formation of a socialist community was conceived at the same time as a process of ousting elements of national culture and building up elements of international culture.

On a global scale, according to L.D. Trotsky, it is possible to resolve the national question only by ensuring for all nations "the possibility of unrestricted accession to world culture in the language that this nation considers its mother tongue." The diversity of languages, of course, acted as a factor slowing down this process. “Already now,” wrote V.A. Vaganyan, the existence of many national languages is a colossal obstacle to the economic communication of peoples.

Apparently, it is no coincidence that in L.D. Trotsky of the Red Army, the study of Esperanto until 1923 was a special sign of internationalism. This artificial international language was conceived as being able to replace national languages in the future. In the second half of the 20s. 20th century a similar role on the scale of the USSR was assigned to the Russian language. It was presented as the language of “the all-Union communist culture… But to all this, the Russian language is the interethnic language… of the Union…, it is the language… of the single union economy”.

When the USSR was formed in 1922, disputes were about the initial form of the future unity of the peoples of the world, which could become a transitional form of rapprochement and merging of peoples in the world socialist community. IN AND. Lenin demanded the creation of the USSR instead of the proposed I.V. Stalin of the Russian Socialist Soviet Republic, not so much because of fears of strengthening centralism and Russification, but foreseeing the possibility of other countries joining as the revolution in the East and West succeeds.

In the views on the form of state unity V.I. Lenin in September-December 1922 moved to a position close to that which I.V. Stalin occupied in June 1920 V.I. Before the Second Congress of the Comintern, Lenin sent the “Initial Outline of Theses on National and Colonial Questions” to a number of his associates, including I.V. Stalin, who was at that time at the front in the south of the country, and asked them to make their comments. I.V. Stalin then proposed to include in the theses a provision on a confederation as one of the forms of rapprochement between the working people of different nations.

I.V. Stalin doubted that with such an approach, the peoples of even foreign countries would immediately agree to establish a federal connection with Soviet Russia “of the Bashkir or Ukrainian type.” Proceeding from these considerations, Lenin's theses on transitional forms of rapprochement between working people of different nations were proposed to “introduce (along with federation) a confederation. Such a setting ... would enrich them with yet another transitional form of rapprochement between working people of different nations and would make it easier for nationalities that were not previously part of Russia to achieve state rapprochement with Soviet Russia.

Recalling this speech of his in defense of the confederation, on April 25, 1923, Stalin reminded the participants in the meeting of the section of the 12th Congress on the national question: Lenin’s proposal at the time was that “we, the Comintern, will strive for the federation of nationalities and states. I then said... it won't work. If you think that Germany will ever join your federation with the rights of Ukraine, you are mistaken. If you think that even Poland, which has developed into a bourgeois state with all the attributes, will join the Union on the rights of Ukraine, you are mistaken. That's what I said then. And Comrade Lenin sent a formidable letter - this is chauvinism, nationalism, we need a central world economy, controlled from one body.

As for the final form of state and national socialist unity, it did not cause any disagreement among the Bolsheviks in the first years of the revolution. It was considered an enduring truth (according to the “ABC of Communism” by N.I. Bukharin and E.A. Preobrazhensky) that over time, when the World Federative Union “turns out to be insufficient to create a common world economy ..., a single world socialist republic will be created” .

Trotskyist ideas about the ways of establishing socialism on planet Earth were most in line with the ultra-revolutionary mentality of the first years of Soviet power and all of the 1920s. national history. L.D. Trotsky did not contradict V.I. Lenin, the key idea of whose theoretical heritage can be expressed by the proposition: “The cause of the world proletarian revolution (is) the cause of creating a world Soviet republic”. L.D. Trotsky did not in the least contradict the Constitution of the USSR of 1924, which declared the international state formed at the end of 1922 open "to all socialist Soviet republics, both existing ones and those that will arise in the future" .

L.D. Trotsky supported the well-known point of view of Rosa Luxemburg: “Under capitalism, national self-determination is impossible, but under socialism it is superfluous.” Being, according to his own observations, Russified aliens, they opposed their abstract internationalism to the real needs of the development of the oppressed nationalities. L.D. Trotsky believes that in this way they objectively revived the old tradition of Russification and great power, which is hard to agree with. Abstract internationalism could not in any way correspond to the real needs of the Russian people as well. It was no coincidence that the People's Commissariat of National Affairs did not see any need for a Russian commissariat, while other nations had such.

The desire to solve national problems in the country with the help of the People's Commissariat for National Affairs without representing and taking into account the interests of the Russian people was expressed not only in the absence of a special department, but also in the fact that the very participation of Russians in the work of the commissariat was considered not at all obligatory, if not harmful. Almost all 20s. 20th century passed in anticipation of the world revolution and readiness for it. The first generation of Soviet people was brought up not for the defense of the motherland, but for world ideals. IN AND. Lenin spoke at the IX Party Conference (September 1920) about the need for red intervention in the West, in the same spirit M.N. Tukhachevsky about the campaign against Warsaw, L.D. Trotsky planned an invasion of India. M.V. Frunze wrote: "We are the party of a class advancing towards the conquest of the world."

G.E. Zinoviev, in his opening speech at the Fifth Congress of the Comintern on June 17, 1924, noted with regret that there had been a mistake “in assessing the tempo” of the world revolution, “and where it was necessary to count in years, we sometimes counted in months.” The error in terms (by more than an order of magnitude) explained why "we still have to conquer five-sixths of the earth's land mass so that there is a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics throughout the world." Nevertheless, after three years, the pace “calculated” by G.E. Zinoviev had to be recognized as inaccurate.

In 1927, the calls for the anniversary of the revolution under the 13th number read: “Long live the world October, which will turn the whole world into the International Union of Soviet Socialist Republics!”. And the following was said about the timing: “The first ten years of the international proletarian revolution brought the capitalist world to its grave. The second decade will bury him.” M.N. Pokrovsky, who headed in the early 20s. 20th century school of history, which switched over to the position of the Bolshevik doctrine, noted that “in the transition period to socialism, the proletariat finds its fatherland, the former exploiting classes lose it” .

However, the territorial boundaries of the fatherland supposedly did not mean anything: “The proletariat does not know territorial boundaries ... it knows social boundaries. Therefore, every country making a socialist revolution enters the USSR.” This continues until “the whole world becomes the fatherland of the working people.” The historical traditions of Soviet patriotism, with such an interpretation of it, were conducted in the vast majority of cases no earlier than from 1917. Thus, continuity in history was broken.

§ 3. Denial of the past

The Conference of Marxist Historians in January 1929 “established” the complete unacceptability of the term “Russian history”, due to the fact that this old term, inherited from tsarist Russia, was allegedly saturated with great-power chauvinism, covered up and justified the policy of colonial oppression and violence. According to M.N. Pokrovsky, “the term Russian history”. It was further established that, starting from the 16th century, tsarist Russia "more and more turns into a prison of peoples", the liberation from which took place in 1917.

Academician Pokrovsky enclosed the term “Great Russian nationality” in quotation marks in his works, thereby emphasizing that the nationality as such had long since ceased to exist. In this case, it was an attempt to translate the term into a language without a national future. It turned out that there was no invasion of Russia even by Napoleon, and "the war was started by Russian landowners." The defeat of the French army was declared an accident. The Crimean Republic is “due compensation for all grievances, for the long coercive and colonial policy of the tsarist regime.”

N.I. remained a passionate exposer of old Russia until the end of his days. Bukharin. They reigned in Russia, in his image, nothing more than “wild landowners, ideologists of serfdom, mediocre generals, illustrious bureaucrats, thieving bankers and stockbrokers, nosy factory owners and manufacturers, cunning and lazy merchants, ... patriarchs and archbishops of the Black Hundred clergy.” The rules of the “Romanov dynasty with its wretched head, grand princes-stealers, fortune-tellers, Rasputins, ... icons, crosses, senates, synods, zemstvo chiefs, policemen and executioners” .

The peoples annexed to Russia were divided by Bukharin into two categories - into peoples like the Georgian, "with ancient cultural traditions that tsarism was unable to destroy," and peoples like the Asians, which "were thrown back by tsarism hundreds of years ago." The only worthy tradition could only be “the tradition of hatred for the royal fatherland”. Speaking at the XVII Party Congress, N.I. Bukharin said: "Not so long ago, our country ... a country of Asian slave rates ...".

It was the Bolsheviks who were needed, wrote N.I. Bukharin, in order “from an amorphous, unconscious mass ... to make a shock brigade of the world proletariat!” . After the confrontation between the USSR and Nazi Germany, which emerged in the early 1930s, N.I. Bukharin had no doubts about the victory of the USSR, that “a red star would shine all over the earth, and the past as an era of “civilized barbarism” would forever sink into ... the river of time.” Patriotism of the old type was subject to immediate oblivion.

Such views were engendered by an atmosphere of political impatience, the expectation of a world revolution, which persisted in certain circles of Soviet society even after 1929. The conclusion of the Soviet-German non-aggression pact, the outbreak of the Second World War gave rise in the USSR to a new surge of hopes for a world revolution. Already in 1939, Pravda wrote about a future war with the participation of the USSR as “really domestic”, “the most just and legitimate”, as a war in which V.I. Lenin: “The first hundred million people on earth were pulled out of the imperialist war ... by the Bolshevik revolution. The next ones will vomit … all of humanity.”

The reunification with the USSR in 1940 of large territories of the former Russia with a population of about 23 million people was perceived as a confirmation of Lenin's prophecy. The participants in the meeting of the VII session of the Supreme Council, which accepted four new republics into the USSR, told the readers of Pravda about the visions born by the words of the hymn “and if the great thunder strikes.” Regarding the war with Finland, the following explanation was given: "Each such war brings us closer to that happy period when there will be no more of these terrible murders." The Bolshevik leaders also expressed the following vision of the future: “What happiness and joy of victory will express the views of those who accept the last republic into the brotherhood of the peoples of the whole world!” .

Even in 1941, not only a premonition of an imminent war was expressed, but also the hope associated with it for the victory of the world revolution. As you know, the next year had to be met by ceding the territory of the six union republics of the USSR to the Nazis, but confidence in the triumph of world socialism was not shaken for long. In April 1945 I.V. Stalin in a conversation with I.B. Tito and M. Djilas outlined his changed point of view on the problem. “In this war,” he remarked, “not like in the last one, but whoever occupies the territory, plants his social system where his army comes. Otherwise it can not be".

And if, as a result of the second world war, Europe does not become entirely socialist, then this will happen in the third, which will not have to wait so long. When one of the interlocutors expressed the idea that “the Germans will not recover over the next fifty years”, I.V. Stalin objected: “No ... in twelve or fifteen years they will be on their feet again ... In fifteen or twenty years we will recover, and then again!” . Faith in the triumph of the world revolution has undergone such a transformation.

Meanwhile, as far as Russia proper is concerned, until the beginning of the 1930s, as already noted, semi-official historical science strengthened the basis for a nihilistic “reading” of its pre-revolutionary history. Russian historical literature of the 19th century, like Russian classical literature, was criticized on the grounds that it was allegedly great-power through and through. The prominent Russian historian V.O. Klyuchevsky. The largest pre-revolutionary historians S.M. Solovyov and B.N. Chicherin. Of contemporaries, the same fate befell Yu.V. Gauthier, P.G. Lubomirov and others.

Academicians S.F. were accused of “zoological nationalism”. Platonov, S.B. Bakhrushin and other historians convicted in the so-called "case of the Academy of Sciences" fabricated in 1929-1931. . His contemporaries called it differently: “Platonov's case”, “monarchist conspiracy”, “Platonov-Tarle case”, “four academicians' case”, etc. It was also called the "case of historians", since two-thirds of the 150 convicts were historians of the pre-revolutionary school, museologists, archivists, local historians, and ethnographers. The “case” marked one of the most acute stages in the struggle of Marxist historians with the “bourgeois school of historians” and, at the same time, the taming by the Bolsheviks of the obstinate Academy of Sciences, which included full members until the end of the 1920s. 20th century there was not a single communist.

The beginning of the “case” can be started with a conversation with the manager of the affairs of the Council of People's Commissars N.P. Gorbunov with the indispensable secretary of the Academy of Sciences S.F. Oldenburg on March 31, 1928, it was directly stated to the Secretary: “Moscow wishes to see Bukharin, Pokrovsky, Ryazanov, Krzhizhanovsky, Bach, Deborin and other communists elected.” To this end, the government added the same number to the previous 42 rates of academicians. However, out of 10 communist scientists nominated for open academic vacancies, according to the voting results on January 12, 1929, some proteges turned out to be unelected, as “the most aggressive in ideological terms.”

The government then announced its intention to close the country's highest scientific institution. Saving the Academy of Sciences, on February 13, academicians accepted the ill-fated troika into their ranks. The authorities and their supporters, along with a radical change on the collectivization front, longed for victory in the struggle against the old scientific intelligentsia. It didn't take long to find a reason for the massacre. The wide popularity and the highest scientific authority of the leadership of the Academy of Sciences put this institution in a special position among other departments.

On October 30, 1929, a government telegram signed by the Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR A.I. Rykov “on the results of the verification of archival funds” . At his request, S.F. was forced to resign. Oldenburg, S.F. Platonov, the President of the Academy A.P. Karpinsky. S.F. were arrested. Platonov, professor of Leningrad State University B.A. Romanov, academicians N.P. Likhachev and E.V. Tarle. In order to give the proper scale to the “case”, the Moscow group of scientists was attached to the Leningrad group of scientists, which was allegedly headed by Academician M.M. Theological.

October 10, 1930 at the Komakademiya headed by M.N. Pokrovsky, long before the completion of the investigation into the “case” of historians, the report of S.A. Piontkovsky “Great Russian bourgeois historiography of the last decade”, which contained a sharp criticism of the works of Yu.V. Gauthier, S.F. Platonov, P.G. Lyubomirov and a number of other scientists. The speaker came to the conclusion that they "defended the interests of Great Russian proprietors." The speaker called "to help them die as soon as possible, to die without a trace and a trace" .

The same opinion was shared by other participants in the “discussion”, the leitmotif of which was the accusations of Russian historians and nationalism. It was stated, for example: “Klyuchevsky is ..., first of all, an ardent Russifier”, etc. The nature of the discussion and its “scientific” results can be judged by the following words of the preface to the collection: “Tarle, a direct agent of Entente imperialism, was in the closest alliance with the Germanophile monarchist Platonov...”. The final speeches are sustained in the same spirit. It seems that after such meetings of the “scientists”, the relevant bodies could only carry out the sentences.

When summing up in 1931 the results of the struggle of Marxist historians “against the open and hidden enemies of the proletarian dictatorship and ideology”, the most fruitful results were borne by the “struggle against the opponents of the national policy of Soviet power, against representatives of great-power and national chauvinism (exposing Yavorsky, bourgeois Great Russian historians and others )”, as well as “exposing ... historians (Tarle, Platonov and others)”. The combined efforts of investigators from science and from the political police led to a series of sentences handed down in the “case” of Russian historians.

They were sentenced to 3 to 10 years, the “participants” of the military section of the conspiracy were shot (A.S. Putilov, who previously headed the Archives of the USSR Academy of Sciences, and others). The main participants in the “monarchist conspiracy” were exiled. One way or another, most representatives of Russian historical thought by the beginning of the 30s. 20th century forcibly removed from their studies because of their supposedly Great Russian chauvinism, and therefore counter-revolutionary. There were practically no major specialists left in the library of the Academy of Sciences, the Archaeographic Commission. Only B.D. survived from the old professorship. Grekov, who was arrested in 1930.

The very word "Russian" in certain circles of Soviet society until the early 30s. 20th century associated with the concept of "great power". For example, in an article opening the first issue of the Soviet Ethnography magazine, which began to appear in the USSR in 1931, instead of the magazine published until then simply called Ethnography, it was proposed to drop the word “Russian” from the name of the famous Leningrad museum. The situation with the study of Russian history began to change for the better only with getting rid of the dictates of the “Pokrovsky school”.

The overthrow of the school of “militant fighters against Great Russian nationalism” and opponents of the “objective-scientific” activity of the old historiography was carried out after the remarks of I.V. Stalin, A.A. Zhdanov and S.M. Kirov in 1934 about the abstracts of textbooks on the history of the USSR and modern history, published in 1936. However, this turn did not interfere with the activities of the OGPU. Specialists in the history of ancient Slavic writing, folklore, and the history of Slavic languages, etc. were subjected to repression. .

In the Moscow and Leningrad investigative cases, an abundant “compromising evidence” was collected on other scientists. Among them are Academicians V.I. Vernadsky, M.S. Grushevsky, N.S. Derzhavin and others. The issue of the arrest of academicians was decided at the highest level. Historian M.S. Grushevsky, apparently, escaped arrest only in connection with his death (November 25, 1934). He was declared the head of the "counter-revolutionary center", but not Russian, but Ukrainian. Slavists found themselves in a particularly disadvantageous position due to the fact that at that time there was a struggle against “pan-Slavism”, relations with the Slavic countries of the “cordon sanitaire” were extremely tense. Even the common origin of the Slavic languages and peoples was “refuted” by Academician N.Ya. Marr. According to him, the Russian language "... is closer to Georgian than ... to ... Slavic".

Contrary to the usual linguistic ideas about the gradual disintegration of a single proto-language into separate, but genetically related languages, the “new teaching” stated the exact opposite. In accordance with the asserted version, languages arose independently of each other, then they underwent crossing processes, when, as a result of interaction, two languages turned into a new third language, which was equally a descendant of both languages. N.Ya. Marr in his theories was guided by the ideas of the 20s. 20th century about the imminent world revolution, on the hopes of many still have time to talk with the proletarians of all continents in the language of the world.

Similarly, wrote N.Ya. Marr, “just as humanity is moving from handicraft disparate farms and forms of society to one common world economy ... so the language from the original diversity is advancing with gigantic steps towards a single world language” . In the USSR, he saw not only the creation of new national languages, but also how, as a result of their interpenetration, the process of “removing a multitude of national languages by the unity of language and thinking” develops. Since the founding in 1921 of the Japhetic Institute (Institute of Language and Thought since 1931), its plans included the development of problems of the language of the future.

In February 1926, a group on applied linguistics was scheduled to be established, which "had the task of establishing the theoretical norms of the future universal language" . One of the main theses of the “new doctrine of language” was that “the future world language will be the language of a new system, a special one that did not exist before ...”. It was this thesis that was repeated by I.V. Stalin at the 16th Congress. “In the period of the victory of socialism on a world scale, when socialism will grow stronger and enter everyday life,” he said, “national languages must inevitably merge into one common language, which, of course, will not be either Great Russian or German, but something new” .

The “revolutionary” linguistic theory of Academician N.Ya. Marr, whose most important “achievement” was “approved” at the party congress, was highly valued for other “dignities” as well. In the report “Fundamentals of planning research work”, with which N.I. Bukharin spoke on April 6, 1931 at the 1st All-Union Conference on planning research work, it was noted: “In any case, with any assessment of the Japhetic theory of N.Ya. Marr must be recognized that she has an indisputable great merit as a rebellion against great-power tendencies in linguistics ... ".

“Teaching” N.Ya. Marr, who had such support, was imposed for a long time even after the death of the scientist on December 20, 1934, as the only one acceptable to Soviet science. However, the denial of N.Ya. Marr of national boundaries, the special role of the Russian language on the territory of the USSR, the complete rejection of the old science, the demand to speed up the creation of an artificial world language - all this forced I.V. Stalin in the post-war years to oppose his theory. This was also influenced by the friendship of N.Ya. Marra with M.N. Pokrovsky, the similarity of some of his ideas with the ideas of N.I. Bukharin.

After I.V. Stalin on questions of linguistics in 1950 N.Ya. Marr, as well as M.N. Pokrovsky turned out to be a "vulgarizer of Marxism". In the assessments of modern scientists, “new thinking about language” is characterized as “absolutely unscientific theory ... which included the most ridiculous and fantastic ideas, combined with political phraseology characteristic of the 20s and early 30s.” . The idea of a world revolution cost Russia dearly. Throughout the 20s. 20th century the denial of its historical past and patriotic feelings did not stop. Great-power chauvinism of the Great Russians was seen everywhere, which was “rooted out” with unprecedented cruelty.

An experiment was carried out on subjects of the former Russian Empire to prepare them for entry into the co-citizenship of the future World USSR. Moreover, the program and charter of the Communist International, adopted at the VI Congress of the Comintern (August 17 - September 1, 1928) give reason to assert that our compatriots at that time were considered not so much citizens of the USSR, but rather world socialist fellow citizenship. The USSR was portrayed as a state in which "the world proletariat for the first time truly acquires its own fatherland."

It was believed that "in the event of an attack by the imperialist states on the USSR ... the international proletariat must respond with the most courageous and resolute mass actions and the struggle to overthrow the imperialist governments under the slogan of the dictatorship of the proletariat and union with the USSR." A powerful revolutionary explosion in such a case "should bury capitalism in a number of so-called civilized countries" in order to take a gigantic step "in the direction of the final world victory of socialism."

Based on the foregoing, the following is obvious. As subsequent historical events showed, the liberation from fundamental delusions dragged on for many years and required huge sacrifices. Approve forever characteristic of the 20s. 20th century ideas about internationalism, patriotism, the Russian language, Russian history and its leaders failed.

ChapterII. Socialism in one country and changing attitudes

§ 1. Evolution of views

Noted by V.I. Lenin's period of "the sharpest divergence from patriotism" turned out to be relatively short-lived. Socialism was carried out not in the Trotskyist version, but in the Stalinist version as "socialism in one country." The idea of a world revolution was filled with new content. Gradually, the “bolshevik-statesmen” overcame the “cosmopolitan communists” in the leadership of the party. From the point of view of L.D. Trotsky, such a development was an unacceptable deviation from the classical principles of Marxism, possible only thanks to “national Bolshevism”.

His supporters argued: “Stalin ... threw out the Leninist program of the world revolution and by the autumn of 1924 replaced it with the nationalist lie of “socialism in a separate country”; "Stalin and Bukharin, with their ideology of 'socialism in a separate country', serving the nascent bureaucracy, trampled on the internationalist communism of Lenin and Trotsky." In connection with these changes in theoretical settings in the 30s. 20th century ideas about the nation as “Soviet fellow-citizenship” began to take shape.

This was largely fueled by the illusion that in the second five-year plan it would be possible to completely liquidate classes and completely destroy the causes that give rise to class differences. But a much more important factor that made it necessary to look for additional opportunities for rallying the population around ideas with a higher unifying potential than the propaganda of international class solidarity of workers, and the union of workers and peasants within the USSR, was the rise to power of Hitler in Germany and the policy of this country directed against communism.

Under the influence of this factor, the views of the leaders of the USSR turned towards patriotism in its new Soviet interpretation. To educate Soviet people in this spirit, it was decided to use the possibilities of historical science and propaganda of historical values. On May 15, 1934, a joint resolution of the government of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks “On the teaching of civil history in the schools of the USSR” was adopted. This was followed by an editorial in Pravda, the title of which was the call "For the Motherland!". Soviet patriotism, "love and devotion to one's homeland" was proclaimed the highest virtue of the Soviet people. The provisions on state crimes were supplemented by articles on treason, which implied severe penalties.

This symbolized the beginning of a new stage in the relationship between the Soviet government and Soviet society, the implementation of national policy in the Stalin era. The authorities let it be known that they ceased to consider the USSR as the fatherland of the world proletariat exclusively and recognizes it, first of all, as the fatherland of the people living here. This became an omen, signifying, if not a rejection, then at least some retreat from revolutionary adventurism. The ruling regime made it clear that in domestic and foreign policy it would be guided by the national interests of the Russian and other peoples of the country united with him.

Opponents of the CPSU (b), Mensheviks and Trotskyists driven abroad and their supporters inside the USSR, regarded the appearance of the word “motherland” as proof of the counter-revolutionary degeneration of the Stalinist regime. They considered it impossible under any circumstances to rehabilitate the word "homeland", which is "discredited in the revolutionary and socialist consciousness." It was recalled that this word was the banner of the White Guards in their struggle against the revolution. It has been argued that the Bolshevik dictatorship “evokes from the masses of the people those spirits that bring death not only to it, but to the revolution” with the word “motherland”.

In other words, it was proposed to wage the forthcoming war as a "national-patriotic" and not "people's revolutionary" warrior, to stake exclusively on "the unity of the world proletariat." L.D. Trotsky as a “Bolshevik-Leninist” also condemned the “Bolshevik-Stalinists” for their turn in 1934. This turn allegedly meant that in the USSR “the course towards international revolution was liquidated along with the expulsion of Trotsky”, that Stalin’s supporters “act, think ... only in Russian”, and in the USSR the developing process “from revolutionary patriotism to national reformism” was completed.

One of the most important roles in the refutation of accusations of this kind was to be played by N.I. Bukharin. He wrote many articles directly related to understanding the changes in the ongoing national policy, the essence of the “new forms of community life” born of socialism, and the development of a new national-state ideology. . At the same time, they continued to be assured that the USSR remained the state in which the proletariat first found "its fatherland." The very concept of the homeland was filled with concrete and increasingly diverse content.

N.I. Bukharin assured that love for the motherland, as well as Soviet patriotism, “is not ... stupid national narrow-mindedness ... It is love for work, culture, the historical future of mankind, love for the noblest ideas of the age.” In his understanding, "Soviet patriotism is the valor of the entire international proletariat ...". The victory of communism in the forthcoming "fight of the giants" did not arouse any doubt in the author's mind. Thus, a key concept was found, which later served as the basis for ideas about the essence of that community of people, which, according to N.I. Bukharin, took shape in the Soviet Union in the 30s. 20th century

In the editorial of Izvestia, whose editor-in-chief was N.I. Bukharin, on January 27, 1935, it was noted: “The working masses of the Union of different nationalities have rallied into the heroic people of our country.” In an atmosphere of a kind of "dizziness from success" in the most diverse areas of the country's restructuring in 1935-1936. For the first time, it was said from the lips of influential politicians that “the national question in our Soviet country can be considered finally resolved”, that “the final and irrevocable victory of socialism in the USSR” has been achieved.

One of the first N.I. Bukharin also argued that a new historical community of people was emerging in the country. A new community, according to his ideas, grows on the basis of the socialization of production and new property relations. On the same basis, there is an unification between the working people of different nationalities, which is facilitated by the unity of purpose, the unity of leadership, the unity of the planned economy. The growth of economic and cultural ties leads to an extraordinary rallying of peoples who are developing their culture, national in form and socialist in content.

As a result, a new community is born. So, according to N.I. Bukharin, a new reality is growing: “the heroic Soviet people, multinational and uniting the forces of the proletariat, the collective farm peasantry and the Soviet intelligentsia…”. This process, considered it necessary to note the creator of the concept of a new community, has not yet come to an end, “because there are remnants of the old order” in the economy and in the minds of people. In subsequent works, N.I. Bukharin wrote that the process of forming a new historical reality is taking on a complete outline.

Summing up the results of 1935, he again noted that on the basis of the high rise of the national republics and regions, the expansion of ties between peoples, the conclusion suggests itself about the formation of a homogeneous size, that is, the Soviet people. In an article dated May 1, 1936, N.I. Bukharin writes about a single people as not an ethnographic, but a social category. On the other hand, on the basis of “the Leninist-Stalinist national policy, the material and cultural growth of the national regions, a new multinational community is being created, a single Soviet people, with a new content, where, with the growth of national cultures, the closest bonds of indestructible friendship grow” .

Finally, in one of his last articles, published in June 1936 after a year and a half of development of the topic, N.I. Bukharin introduces a theoretical clarification: “For the first time, an integral people has grown up in our country, united and sovereign, consolidated vertically (classes) and horizontally (nations)”. However, N.I. Bukharin, despite his enormous contribution to the Stalinist doctrine of national policy, failed to become a recognized developer of the theory of the “new community”. Merits were attributed to the leader himself. The rehabilitation of Russian national values took place during the Great Patriotic War with the support of I.V. Stalin.

Even on the eve of this test, it began to be noted that "hatred of the Russian people includes, of course, hatred of everything Soviet." From now on, it was not proper for the communists to interpret history in the spirit of “leftist internationalism”. It was this phrase that was chosen to define the essence of Bukharin's "theory". I.V. Stalin did not write anything about the "new community". In 1929, he completed work on the article "The National Question and Leninism", in the process of creating which he came to the conclusion that "in the future, before national differences and languages begin to die out, giving way to a common world language ...".

This conclusion essentially did not differ from the provisions of L.D. Trotsky, G.E. Zinoviev, other representatives of “leftist internationalism”, who proceeded from the fact that “with the victory of socialism, nations should merge together, and their national languages should turn into a single common language.” They defended the idea that "the time has already come to eliminate national differences." In his closing remarks on the report at the 16th Congress, I.V. Stalin emphasized: “The theory of the fusion of all nations, say, the USSR into one common Great Russian nation with one common Great Russian language, is a national-chauvinist theory ...” .

Difference I.V. Stalin from the “deviators” lies only in the fact that the latter were ready to speed up the processes of merging nations already in the situation of the early 30s, and I.V. Stalin carried out the same task into an indefinite but, apparently, not too distant future. In certain cases, it became simply unsafe to advocate the development of national cultures in the USSR. In essence, it was established that the flourishing of socialist nations in its only correct and legitimate interpretation should in no way mean resistance to assimilation, much less a struggle against it. The latter was already regarded as a crime.

Ideas about the flowering of national culture have become very peculiar, turning into the complete opposite of the original meaning of the word “flourishing”. This idea is expressed, in particular, by L.M. Kaganovich, "Stalin's People's Commissar". Concerning the state of the national question, he once remarked: "... the socialist nations need to be more and more united for their flourishing." Some scientists, proving that I.V. Stalin was not a supporter of the merger of nations and could not pursue such a policy, they cite Stalin's reference to Lenin's work "The Childhood Disease of 'Leftism' in Communism" as evidence. It contains an indication that national differences "will persist ... long after the dictatorship of the proletariat has been realized on a world scale." But this should not be misleading.

Speech by V.I. Lenin is talking about "national differences" and not about "nations". Meanwhile, it is obvious that the historical time of existence of those and others does not coincide. In other words, V.I. Lenin only stated that the time will come when there will be no nations, but national differences will still remain. I.V. Stalin wrongly identified these phenomena. Thus, the practical national policy from the 30s. 20th century I.V. Stalin began to direct in a new direction. He claimed his own, different from N.I. Bukharin, “national Bolshevism” as an attempt to transform the population of the country into a kind of new community of people, the main value of which would be a kind of patriotism rehabilitated in 1934, the lofty concept of “Motherland”.

“Russianness”, which appeared in the distinctive features of the affirmed “new community”, was allowed out of necessity. It was easier to rally a new community around the Russian people than on its denial and discredit of its past. Therefore, already at the end of the 30s. ideas about the Russian language as the language of international culture are affirmed. Russian culture in itself was worth little if it did not become Soviet. Previously, the entire official ideology was based on the fact that the Soviet people were guided by love for the revolution and communism, a sense of brotherhood and solidarity with the working people of all countries, and not by love for their fatherland.

The concepts of "fatherland", "motherland", "patriotism" belonged to the pre-revolutionary past and carried a negative connotation of the old, tsarist Russia. In the 30s. they received the highest sanction from the leader himself. The Stalinist doctrine of nations, developed during this period of time, came close to establishing a new idea of a “socialist historical community” arising from the unification of “separate groups of nations” around “zonal economic centers” and using a “separate common language”. N.I. Bukharin, as already noted, wrote in 1935-1936. about the “Soviet people” that appeared in the USSR, which did not have any common features with the Russian people and was even considered as a counterbalance to it. However, the opinion of I.V. Stalin, whose views were different. It was also based on the adjustment of the national policy pursued in the USSR.

§ 2. Course correction

A new interpretation of the Soviet community I.V. Stalin portrayed it as the result of the development of the best features of the Soviet nations and, above all, the Russian people. The substratum of its culture to a large extent was also Russian culture. The first indications of the emergence of the Soviet people in its Stalinist interpretation appear after the adoption of the Constitution of the USSR in 1936. In connection with the centenary of the death of A.S. Pushkin was, for example, declared: "The Soviet people, united in their national diversity, solemnly honors Pushkin as a milestone in their history." Now, in contrast to previous assessments, it was emphasized: “Pushkin is deeply national. Therefore, he became an international poet”, and the Russian people, it turns out, “have the right to be proud of their role in history, their writers and poets”.

For the first time, it began to be said about the disinterested help of Russia and Russians to other republics and peoples of the country. “The RSFSR,” noted, for example, in the editorial of Pravda on January 16, 1937, “is the first among equal republics in the Soviet family. Its industry accounts for 70% of the industrial output of the entire Union... With all its might, the RSFSR promotes the rapid growth of other fraternal Soviet republics. It was further stated that “if earlier among other peoples inhabiting Russia, the idea of tsarist oppression was often associated with the word “Russian”, now all nations freed from capitalist slavery have a feeling of deepest love and strongest friendship for their Russian brethren...” .

Other assessments were given to Russian culture. It was noted that it “enriches the culture of other peoples. The Russian language became the language of the world revolution. Lenin wrote in Russian, Stalin writes in Russian. Russian culture has become international, for it is the most advanced, the most humane, the most humane.” Variations on these themes later no longer leave the pages of the periodical press and propaganda. A peculiar result of the achievements and obvious overlaps in the development of this topic is presented in the articles of the Small Soviet Encyclopedia, published in March 1941, i.e. shortly before the war. One of them said: “The Leninist-Sgalinian national policy made the friendship of the peoples of the Soviet Union indestructible. She created a single great Soviet people.

In contrast to the early 1930s, when it was still emphasized that in the pre-October historical past “Great Russians, being in the minority (43% of the population of Russia), oppressed 57% of the rest of the population in the most barbaric, most unacceptable way.” Now the opposite is being asserted: “For many centuries the great Russian people have been creating the history of their country together with other peoples of Russia and at the head of them waged a heroic war of liberation against violence and abuse of their beautiful homeland by boyars and tsars, royal executioners, landowners and capitalists” . There were also other accents in assessments of the past.

The idea began to take root that “the Russification nationalist policy of the barbarian tsarism and the bourgeoisie was always hostile to the great Russian working people, the friend and organizer of the revolutionary struggle of the working people of all oppressed nationalities against the gang of Romanovs, Purishkeviches, Milyukovs and Kerenskys.” In Soviet times, “the worst enemies of the people – Trotsky, Bukharin with their bandit gangs, bourgeois nationalists” who “tried to discredit Russian culture” were portrayed as the successors of the anti-people policy in Soviet times.

THEY. Bukharin said: “Judas-Bukharin, in his bestial hostility to socialism, wrote about the Russian people as the “nation of the Oblomovs.” It was a vile slander against the Russian nation, against the courageous, freedom-loving Russian people.” The Encyclopedia fixed the Russian people in its place as “first among equals”, revered and loved by all other peoples of the USSR, because of its “high revolutionary virtues”, “noble qualities”, “beautiful language”, “wonderful, most advanced culture” . In this regard, the cessation of persecution of the church seems not accidental.

About the primacy of Russian culture, the Encyclopedia wrote: “Russian literature and Russian art occupy the first place among ... examples of world human genius. There is no such branch of world science and human activity, where the Russian people would not be represented by their most talented sons. The theme of the fight against anti-patriots, outlined even earlier (in July 1936) and at the 18th Congress, is also present here. It was argued that representatives of the autocratic regime and the counter-revolution were never patriots, but "were always inveterate enemies of Russian culture, despising the beautiful, rich and vibrant Russian language, dishonoring Russian national dignity" .

Thus, the emerging “new historical community of people”, due to the gigantic weight of the Russian component, began to take on clearly Russian national tones: the language of interethnic communication, Soviet Russian-speaking culture, etc. I.V. Stalin saw a single community that had developed mainly on a Russian basis. For him, it was a coming objective reality, a theoretical inevitability. I.V. Stalin, from his personal experience and the experience of his comrades-in-arms, who are proud of their true internationalism, saw that it is possible to get rid of national likes and dislikes in a much shorter period of time.

I.V. Stalin said about himself at the famous reception in the Kremlin on May 24, 1945: “I am not Georgian. I am Russian of Georgian origin.” He also felt himself to be a “real internationalist”, of which there were many in the USSR at all times, and in which the Bolshevik Party tried to turn the entire population of the country. But we must not forget that the Bolsheviks were distinguished by their ability to force the peoples of the USSR to go through historical paths equal to centuries in ten years. This allows us to assume with a high degree of probability that the time required for the final solution of the national question and the completion of the formation of a new historical community of internationalists, the Bolsheviks also tried to minimize.

In December 1935, the era of eternal friendship between the Soviet peoples was announced. The principle “nationality-communist”, generated by the Marxist thesis “the proletariat has no fatherland” and the revolutionary slogan of proletarian class solidarity, could also be implemented in political practice. Thus, in my opinion, there were enough grounds for proclaiming the emergence of a special community of internationalists. The intention to speed up the rapprochement and merging of nations can to some extent explain the unprecedented eviction during the war years of a number of peoples from the Caucasus and the Crimea, which can undoubtedly be regarded as a continuation of Stalin's national policy of the 1930s. 20th century

The deportation of these peoples from their original places of residence and their resettlement mixed with other “brotherly” peoples could be considered by I.V. Stalin, not only punishment, but also a kind of “lesser evil”, which in the end turns into good, because it could contribute to the approach of the very future in which “all peoples ... countries ... will merge into one Eurasian community” .

In any case, the tendency to accelerate the formation of a new community of peoples of the USSR and its coloring in Russian national tones was developed even on the eve of the Great Patriotic War. And this process is fully reflected in the scientific literature. Works on national relations in the USSR, published in the subsequent period, contained more and more detailed provisions on the processes of consolidation of nations in the conditions of the Soviet system, on the strengthening of their interconnection and interdependence, which developed into a "genuine multinational economic and cultural socialist community" .

It is characteristic that in questions about the fate of national languages, the position of I.V. Stalin was often perceived, say, to the left of the one that he indicated in thematic publications. V.M. Molotov, for example, assured in his declining years: I.V. Stalin “believed that when the world communist system wins, and he led everything towards this, the language of Pushkin and Lenin will become the main language on the globe, the language of interethnic communication.” The desire to fully expand the influence of the Russian language as one of the world languages became noticeable immediately after the end of the Second World War.

At that time, scientific journals published in foreign languages and promoting the achievements of Soviet science abroad were even closed. To justify this action, the following argument was put forward: “By publishing our works in Russian, we force foreign scientists to respect the great Russian language - the international language of the era of socialism.” A new turn in the way of solving the national question in the USSR, which appeared in the mid-30s, according to the plan of I.V. Stalin could in no way mean a slowdown in the pace of socialist restructuring of society, and hence the solution of the problems of rapprochement and merging of nations. It only meant that a new benchmark had been adopted to guide these processes.

Ideas about a “new historical community” were clarified. Many authors who evaluate this turn are inclined to explain it by I.V. Stalin from internationalism and the transition to the positions of Great Russian chauvinism, as a result of which the Russians allegedly gained advantages by curtailing the rights and opportunities for the development of other peoples. Soviet Jews often appear among the victims. “In the mid-1930s, the progress of Soviet Jewry as a nationality reached its zenith. But the impact of two forces delayed its development,” writes an Israeli author, a native of Russia, R. Einstein.

One of these forces allegedly were “traditional anti-Semitic prejudices”, which I.V. decided to use. Stalin to strengthen their positions. The main thing was the “revival of Russian national consciousness”, identified by this scientist with “Russian national ...”, “great-power chauvinism”. There was, in his opinion, a fatal reorientation, when I.V. Stalin announced the possibility of building socialism in the Soviet Union alone. It seems more likely that the “exceptional role” of I.V. Stalin, most likely, could try on not so much for the people as for himself personally.

Deprived of any national feelings, like L.D. Trotsky and other “true internationalists”, I.V. Stalin, most likely, considered the peoples as a cover "in the struggle for personal total power." At the same time, sovereignty, of course, served as an element of the policy pursued. But if we evaluate it from a national point of view, then in this case we can rather agree with those who call it "great-power internationalism." The implementation of the Marxist principle of "equality of conditions for all nations" required, as is well known, the preliminary "equalization of the level of development of all peoples." This is precisely what “genuine internationalism” consists of, and its consequences are the same for every people who take it as a norm of behavior.

R.A. Medvedev, in the Oxford edition of his book “On Stalin and Stalinism” (1979), correctly, in my opinion, noted that the reasons for the purges of 1936-1938. were much deeper: “Under the guise of purges, deep social and (no less important) national transformations took place, as a result of which a new stratum of people came to power, mostly of peasant origin, among whom there were practically no more foreigners (Jews, Latvians, Lithuanians, Poles etc.). … Stalin simply raised this new stratum to power: he did not create it.”

The “friendship of the Soviet peoples” manifested itself in the expulsion of Jews from their posts in the state apparatus and public life in order to please the “national cadres”. It should also be taken into account that representatives of more than one nationality suffered in various political campaigns. Jews, on the contrary, in the total number of victims, according to modern experts, were a minority, and perhaps not too significant. As for the special place that Jews occupied for a long time in the elite strata of Soviet society, it also has reasons that are by no means mystical, but quite real. Jews took a disproportionate part in the revolution. And this statement is not unique. The Black Hundreds seem to have nothing to do with it.

Justifying, for example, the need to create a Jewish Autonomous Region, M.I. Kalinin stressed that "Jews are a very important Soviet nationality, deserving of it with their past." Taking into account the special conditions created by the revolutionary government for Soviet citizens of Jewish nationality, the head of the Soviet state expressed complete confidence that in the event of an attack on the USSR, "Jewish working masses would fight in the forefront for the Soviet Union." The remark about who, defending the Union, will have to fight in the forefront, is very important.

I.V. Stalin did not want to admit that in the upcoming war the Russians could not, as the logic of M.I. Kalinin, to stay in second or third roles. Apparently, this is the true reason for the turn in national politics, and the promotion of the Russian people to the center of the “zonal community”, and all the immoderate glorifications that began in the mid-30s against the Russian people, their history, language, culture, etc. However, such pragmatic calculations of the leader of the Bolsheviks in no way signified his transition to the Great Russian chauvinist position. In this case, the point of view that I.V. Stalin was no more an anti-Semite than he was an anti-Tatar, Kalmyk, Georgian, or Slav.

Thus, during the 1930s 20th century views on the supranational community of people in the USSR have undergone great changes. Not having had time to take shape in any complete system of ideas about the world socialist community, during this period they began to be concretized in the views on the Soviet people as a new social community. One of the attempts to create a detailed system of ideas about this community belongs to N.I. Bukharin, the author of the concept of the "Soviet people", acting to replace the traditional nations and nationalities.

The author did not see the historical roots of this community deeper than the layers of 1917. This community did not reveal any common features with the Russian people, it was considered rather as an antipode to it. More vital was the interpretation of the Soviet community of people as a result of the development and unification of the best features of the Soviet nations and, above all, the most numerous Russian people. The germs of such ideas about a new community are contained in the Stalinist theoretical legacy. In many ways, they were a kind of derivative of the results of the national policy of the 30s. 20th century

It led to a relative leveling of the levels of socio-economic and cultural-political development of the peoples of the USSR. The special role of the Russian people was recognized not only in socialist transformations, but also in pre-revolutionary national history. These factors largely determined the reshaping of the national composition of the political, scientific and creative elites of Soviet society.

Let us now consider the role of propaganda, which, as is known, played an important role in the ongoing national policy in the era under study. Her declarations, as you know, did not always coincide with reality. I.V. Stalin, unlike V.I. Lenin, claimed not only the role of the proletarian, but also the national leader. Therefore, he sought to subjugate to himself, along with the party, the whole of society, in all its social and national diversity. April 12, 1936 in the front line of Pravda I.V. Stalin was first called "the father of the peoples of the USSR." Even earlier, the epithet “great” was also firmly attached to his name.

For I.V. Stalin in the first place was still the utopian idea of communism, despite the ongoing ideological changes. In the name of this idea, he carried out many atrocities, up to mass repressions and deportations of peoples. The new national-state ideology, formed by the mid-1930s, was transformed into the so-called Soviet patriotism. Speaking in 1931 at the All-Union Conference of Socialist Industry Workers, I.V. Stalin solemnly declared: “In the past, we did not have and could not have a fatherland. But now that we have overthrown capitalism, and the power is with us, with the people, we have a fatherland and we will defend its independence.”

In the interpretation of I.V. Stalin's patriotic idea was something eclectic, bizarrely combining the incompatible - communist dogma and the doctrine of Russian historical greatness. Moreover, the spirit of self-sufficiency and isolationism was much more in demand. Against the backdrop of a sharp condemnation of Russian liberalism as a kind of ideology alien to the national spirit and soil, bureaucratic orders were reproduced with amazing accuracy. The government was called "the authorities", and the idea of domestic policy was limited to the expressions: "hedgehogs" and "clerical secrets".

Turning to the great past of Russia, the pragmatist I.V. Stalin, on the one hand, seemed to acquire in the former greatness of this power an additional ideological justification for his power ambitions, and on the other hand, continuing to stigmatize “damned tsarism”, he could set off his own achievements to his advantage. The theory of the “elder brother” was also actively introduced, which, in contrast to the lifeless declarations of the Stalinist Constitution of 1936 (“The USSR is a free union of equal nations”, etc.), served as a real guide in the field of nation building.

Its essence was simple: since the Russians, dominating in the area of settlement and in numbers over other peoples of the USSR, are in the lead in cultural and economic terms, they are called upon to play the role of "the leading force of the Soviet Union." In the editorial of Pravda of February 1, 1936, it proclaimed: “In the constellation of the union republics, the first magnitude is the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic. And the first among equals is the Russian people.” However, this people was represented by I.V. Stalin by no means as something valuable in itself, worthy of special reverence and prosperity.

The very last step of this pyramid was occupied by extraterritorial national minorities. It is characteristic that the term “natsmen”, which entered Soviet colloquial use, from that time began to acquire a derogatory-scornful, and in common parlance, abusive meaning. Introduced I.V. Stalin, the model of the national-state system was imperial, since it ensured the voluntary-compulsory coexistence of several so-called socialist nations. Like any other empire built on the strength of the center, the authority of the leader and the potential of the people, the USSR, according to A.I. Vdovina was doomed from the very beginning.

This is due, as a rule, to the following realities. Sooner or later, the resources of the center dry up, wise leaders die, and the “elder brother”, under the heavy burden of the integration task entrusted to him, begins to degrade, while the “younger”, marginal peoples, on the contrary, increase their economic and cultural forces due to donor replenishment from the center. . They are increasingly striving for political sovereignty. On the eve of World War II, the Soviet leader was increasingly worried about the specter of another empire - the "patchwork" Austria-Hungary that collapsed in 1918.

To insure his offspring - the Soviet Union from such a gloomy prospect, I.V. Stalin since the mid-1930s. launched a mechanism for the linguistic consolidation of Soviet society, operating on the basis of the Russian national dominant. Although the new national policy bore the chauvinistic flavor of classical Russification, it was driven by purely pragmatic reasons and contained no elements of overt linguistic violence. At the October (1937) plenum of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, it was decided to begin the study of the Russian language in all national schools of the Soviet Union.

On September 1, 1938, it was introduced as a compulsory subject, starting from the 2nd - 3rd grades in the schools of the national republics and regions. Local authorities were instructed, "by exposing and rooting out the bourgeois-nationalist tendencies to undermine the Russian language in schools", at the same time not to lose sight of the fact that "the native language remains the basis of teaching in national schools and is not subject to infringement" . Something similar, but in more explicit and purely directive forms, happened in the Red Army.

Achieving better controllability of its combat units and more effective interaction between them, on March 7, 1937, the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR and the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution to disband the national units that had appeared during the Civil War. And on July 6, 1940, the Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks issued a decision “On teaching the Russian language to conscripts to be drafted into the Red Army and who do not know the Russian language.” Understanding that such steps can be perceived by the nomenclature of the national republics as a manifestation of the great power of the center, I.V. Stalin tried to balance them.

On December 6, 1940, at his insistence, the Politburo ordered to urgently correct the “unfit situation”, when “many leading party and Soviet workers” in the Union and Autonomous Republics do not know and do not study the language of the indigenous nationality. The Nazi invasion of the USSR became a kind of test of the correctness of I.V. Stalin, including the national one. And although the country, contrary to Hitler's prediction, did not collapse according to national criteria, nevertheless, it had to overcome considerable difficulties generated by Stalin's national policy.

Ethnic collaborationism and nationalist movements in the Baltic States and Western Ukraine, which were finally suppressed only decades after the war. The Stalinist leadership responded with forced deportations. After the war, the national problems generated by Stalinism were not overcome. Moreover, in some areas they have worsened, sometimes taking on grotesque forms. The last years of the reign of I.V. Stalin were marked by the growth of official anti-Semitism: the fight against cosmopolitanism, the arrests and executions of Jewish writers and public figures, and finally, the infamous “doctors' case”.

Such shoots gave rise to the seeds of great-power chauvinism, sown in the pre-war decade by I.V. Stalin, who felt that in the global rivalry of the three world ideologies - liberalism, communism and nationalism - the latter confidently takes over. The leadership of the USSR after I.V. Stalin, realizing the potential explosiveness of the national-state doctrine of the “elder brother”, replaced it with an edition of the concept of the Soviet people, aimed at forming a single nation. However, another legacy of Stalin - the "indigenization of personnel" in the national republics was preserved and even increased, which could not but stimulate centrifugal tendencies in the outskirts, which ultimately led to the collapse of the multinational state.

Conclusion

Until 1917 I.V. Stalin adhered to the provisions of Lenin's theory of the "national question". But at the same time, the formation of its own national-state doctrine was also taking place, to which researchers had not previously paid attention. It began with the article "Marxism and the national question." Its formation was completed by the mid-1930s. The definition of a nation given by I.V. Stalin, is recognized by modern science as erroneous and does not reflect the entire spectrum of evolutionary transformations in the development of peoples and states. The correctness of his other conclusions is also doubtful. They have already been refuted by reality.

Despite this discrepancy, I.V. Stalin remained true to his convictions until the end of his life, believing that nations, having received the status of some modern specific principalities and renouncing sovereign rights, would be able to coexist as part of a single country (empire), until, as a result of building communism, they merge into a single nation. Criticism of national-cultural autonomy was not distinguished by depth, because it was based on narrow-party short-term tactical considerations. As an alternative, I.V. Stalin put forward a project of "regional autonomy", which provided for the transfer by the center to certain units of certain powers of self-government.

The program of cultural-national autonomy was by no means as curious as he tried to present it. It contained a rational scheme. With a homogeneous administrative-territorial division of the country (into provinces), the main socio-political and economic life of the population is directed by central, as well as unified regional and municipal bodies. Only the humanitarian sphere is regulated by ethnic communities: national culture, education, information, religion. It was envisaged that these communities would be given the right to elect central public national councils (“cultural-national parliaments”) with headquarters in the capital of the state. This is similar to the reforms that were developed and proposed by P.A. Stolypin.

Cultural-national autonomy was projected on the basis of the principle of extraterritoriality. It favored centripetal tendencies and served as a deterrent to national separatism, which is inherent precisely in territorial autonomies. The Bolshevik leaders were betting that the national problems in tsarist Russia could be solved only through a revolutionary explosion, not through reforms.

Under the influence of V.I. Lenin in 1917 I.V. Stalin abruptly changed his point of view. His views were based on the recognition of the right of the peoples of Russia to self-determination, up to and including complete political secession. The leader of the Bolsheviks, who believed that the creation of favorable conditions for a socialist revolution would be facilitated by the maximum possible strengthening of national separatist tendencies in Russia and, as a result, the destruction of the foundations of its statehood.

However, they had no choice but to officially fix the principle of federation in the legislation of the Soviet republic as a kind of counterbalance to the forced slogan about the right of peoples to free self-determination. In form, the position of I.V. Stalin was simpler, straightforward and not so sophisticated. Hiding his adherence to the great power with dogmatic rhetoric, he continued to insist that the primary thing for the party is "self-determination not of the bourgeoisie, but of the working masses of this nation."

The party, with its centralized structure and rigid vertical, assumed the role of the main supporting structure of the new state, firmly holding all the peoples under the rule of the Bolsheviks into a single whole. As a result, the slogan of the self-determination of nations turned into a kind of decorative element. The Bolshevik version of the national-state structure of Russia after the revolution, formed under the influence of I.V. Stalin, provided for the extension of the competence of the authorities and administration to similar structures of the republics.

Summing up, first of all, it is necessary to take into account the fact that, due to ignorance of Russia and the specifics of the formation of its outlying periphery, after 1917, a shift in the codes of ethno-national development was allowed. As a result, a shift also occurred towards Eurasianism, which, according to scientists, was only one of the trends in the formation of the Russian state before this milestone, but by no means prevailed.

Therefore, the project of I.V. Nevertheless, Stalin must be recognized, despite his affirmed assessments, as more realistic and responding to the greatest extent to the existing possibilities of maintaining integration on a Russian basis. The project of V.I. Lenin proceeded from the inevitability of the world revolution and assumed a more amorphous state formation, with the gradual inclusion of all foreign countries in it after the establishment of the “Soviet system” in them. Because of this, the strengthening of Eurasianism took place only after 1917, including, to a certain extent, in connection with the implementation of the idea of “internationalism”, which assumed external solidarity on a class basis. However, the success of this implementation was caused, as an unbiased comprehension of the facts shows, by superimposition on the general civil poly-ethno-national synthesis that already existed within the country.

It was thanks to this that it was possible under those conditions to preserve the integrity of the geopolitical and civilizational space that had been developing over many centuries. However, the phenomenon of Stalin's national policy cannot be idealized, as was done at the time of the formation of ideas about it in the 1920s and 1930s. 20th century It modified the emerging state-political balance and the direction of the continental interaction associated with it. Because of this, the previously established general civil ties were gradually transferred to a different level of cohesion, which created the prerequisites for their subsequent break.

At the same time, the Bolsheviks also allowed a shift towards Western European realities with the established ideals of nation-states. The experience of colonial empires was also borrowed, in which more or less strong civilizational contacts were also established, but with the obvious overwhelming role of the cultural and religious values of the metropolises. In the colonial empires, in addition, there was no continental geopolitical interaction and the general civil state fusion that took place in Russia. Meanwhile, the need for “the right of nations to self-determination up to secession” was proclaimed for it, even in those regions where there was a mixed composition of the population.

In these specific contact zones of the past, it was necessary to observe the principle of equality of all peoples, with the provision of cultural and national autonomy for them and with the obligatory preservation of the unifying civilizational fundamental principle: the freedom to use the Russian language and culture. This pattern continues to this day. Violation of the existing civilizational balance in these zones has so far only led to devastating consequences. Ignorance of the peculiarities of Russia predetermined strategic miscalculations, which turned into a disintegration of the country a few decades later and a large-scale tragedy for those who found themselves outside the usual state borders.

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In August 1922, a commission was created from representatives of all the republics. She had to work out the terms of the unification. According to the project of the Commissar for Nationalities, Stalin, the republics were part of the RSFSR on the basis of autonomy. The "autonomization" plan met with sharp criticism from Lenin. Lenin's project provided for the voluntary unification of equal Soviet republics into a union state - the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). The creation of the supreme bodies of the union was supposed to be based on the participation and representation of all the republics. In both projects, the leading role of the Communist Party was a prerequisite.

On December 30, 1922, the First Congress of Soviets of the USSR approved the Leninist plan. The Declaration and Treaty on the Formation of the USSR were adopted. The agreement was signed by the RSFSR, Ukraine, Belarus and the Transcaucasian Federation. It stated that the independent Soviet republics voluntarily and on equal terms enter into a state union. Each republic has the right to secede from the union. Any state could join the USSR. The territory of the republics could not be changed without their consent. Foreign trade, naval and foreign affairs, the declaration of war, the conclusion of peace, rail transport, communications, planning, finance, labor, and food remained under the jurisdiction of the single allied government. Moscow became the capital of the new state. The sphere of activity of only republican governments included issues of internal affairs, education, justice, agriculture, health care and social security. Subsequently, the rights of the union republics were reduced to a minimum.

In 1924 -1925. the Union included the Uzbek and Turkmen republics. In the late 20's - early 30's. created three more union republics - Tajik, Kyrgyz and Kazakh. In 1936, the Transcaucasian Federation was transformed, the Azerbaijani, Armenian and Georgian republics became part of the USSR.

Foreign policy of the Soviet state (1921-early 30s)

Diplomatic relations were soon established with the southern neighbors. In 1921, agreements on friendship and cooperation were signed with Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey, and Mongolia. In March 1921, a trade agreement was concluded with England. In 1921-1922. similar agreements were signed with Germany, Norway, Austria, Italy, Czechoslovakia. This meant the actual recognition of the country in the international arena. However, the major powers have so far refrained from establishing diplomatic relations with Russia until all contentious issues are settled.

In October 1921, the government of the RSFSR turned to Western countries with a proposal to convene a conference and discuss mutual claims. The conference opened on April 10, 1922 in Genoa. Representatives of 29 states took part in it. Russia represented the interests of all Soviet republics. The Soviet delegation was headed by People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs G.V. Chicherin. He made a proposal for a general reduction in armaments and a ban on barbaric methods of warfare. Its participants refused to discuss this proposal. The conference had other goals.

On May 8, 1923, British Foreign Secretary Curzon accused the Soviet government of conducting anti-British propaganda in the Middle East. In an ultimatum, England demanded that the Soviet representatives be withdrawn from Iran and Afghanistan. On May 10, 1923, Soviet diplomat V.V. was killed in Switzerland. Thief. The Soviet government made some concessions. The crisis was settled, the British government took back the ultimatum. In 1924, Great Britain officially recognized the USSR.

The complication of Anglo-Soviet relations occurred in 1926 during the general strike in England. Russia provided significant financial assistance to the strikers, the British government accused the USSR of interfering in internal affairs, and then of violating trade agreements. Employees of the Anglo-Soviet trade society Arcos were accused of espionage. On May 7, 1927, the Soviet ambassador P.L. was killed in Poland. Voikov. Soon England severed relations with the USSR and annulled the trade agreement of 1921. Diplomatic relations with Great Britain were restored only in 1929.

The Soviet government signed a non-aggression and neutrality treaty with France in 1932. Soon the same treaties were signed with Latvia, Estonia, Poland, and Finland. In 1933, diplomatic relations were established between. USSR and USA. This was followed by the diplomatic recognition of the USSR by Czechoslovakia, Romania, Spain, Hungary, Bulgaria, Albania, Colombia, Belgium, Luxembourg. In September 1934, the USSR was admitted to the League of Nations. The Western world recognized the Soviet Union as a great power.

In the 1920s and early 1930s, the foreign policy of the USSR was able to ensure peaceful conditions for existence.