Rethinking early Soviet nationality policies within the poststructuralist context: Marxist legacy,Soviet nation-building,and contingency

Introduction

It has been claimed that the framework of Soviet nationality policy(ies) was established during the early Soviet era in the periods of Lenin and Stalin (Brubaker, 1996; Gorenburg, 2003; Slezkine, 1994b; Suny, 1993). ¹ The nationality issue was consistently a challenge, not only for the Bolsheviks, but also for other newly emerged nation states at the beginning of the 20th century. The Bolsheviks could not derive a well-guided policy of nationality issues to follow from the works of Marx and Engels. Thus, they were forced to constitute their own policies against the challenge of nationalism ideology. The framework of the policies adopted in Lenin’s and Stalin’s time ostensibly remained in place, with only minor revisions. Both before and after the Cold War, many scholars attempted to understand the logic underlying Soviet nationality policies. The Cold War era studies highlighted the Russification and cultural and linguistic sufferings of the non-Russian Soviet citizens under the minorities hostile policies of the Bolsheviks. ² In contrast, the post-Cold War era studies emphasized the Soviet style nation-building and development of the non-Russian ethnic groups’ culture and language through the implementation of affirmative action policies by the Bolshevik leadership. Despite all this progress in Soviet Studies literature, many of the post-Cold War era works overemphasized the Soviet nationality policies as if they were a certain set of principles or a list of well-established, certain and clear programs. Most of the post-Cold War era Eurasian Studies literature has omitted the contingent nature of the Soviet nationality policies, rather attempting to understand the features of the Soviet nationality policies within the limits of the structural analyses of the early Soviet period policy implementations. The robustness of the structural analyses, however, is not sufficient to evaluate the challenge of nationalism in the Soviet context. The contingency contribution was still historically highly related to the debates on nationalism ranging from Marx and Engels to those among Austrian Marxists, Rosa Luxemburg, the Jewish Bund, and the Bolsheviks during the revolutionary periods. The multiplicity of the considerations on nationalism allowed the Bolsheviks to approach nationalism ideology through a resilient perspective. The contingency of the Soviet nationality policies was highly related to the elite leadership, patron–client relationship and the negotiations of Moscow with the local elites to determine the particular problems of nationality issues during the 1920s and 1930s. In other words, indeterminacy, conditionality and uncertainty were also foundational features of the early Soviet nationality policies, which were generally neglected under the supremacy of the structural analyses through considering contingencies as errors or deviations. ³ This article attempts to reevaluate the early Soviet nationality policies taking into account its contingent characteristics. The combination of the Marxist legacy, Soviet nation-building and contingency seems to present effective ground to balance and not overemphasize the radical contingency centric evaluations, although such an approach is limited in the literature. ⁴ This article proposes the notion that the formation of the Soviet nationality policies evolved through the combination of a territorially institutionalized ethnicity model and ascribed nationality within a structural framework as well as with contingent, flexible and uncertain policies, which might be evaluated within a poststructuralist context as the neglected constitutional dimension of the previous works of Soviet nationality policy analysis. The uncertainty of the early Marxist discussions on nationalism contributed to the resilient implementation of the nationality policies. This article is divided into six sections. The second section discusses the theoretical framework after the introduction section, which summarizes the content of the article. In the second section, I will clarify how I understand the term poststructuralism and its relation to structuralist analysis. The third section explores the contingent legacy of Marxist nationality policies as well as their impacts on Bolshevik political thought. The fourth section explores the formation of the multinational Soviet state, while the fifth section highlights how the contingency changed the implementation of the early Soviet nationality policies taking the case studies into account. Finally, the conclusion section summarizes the argument of the study and emphasizes the necessity of finding a bridge between foundational and antifoundational aspects of the Soviet nationality policies literature.

Poststructuralism, contingency, and the eventful historical sociology

Although social theorists who are critical of poststructuralist approaches mostly use the term ‘poststructuralism’ in a negative manner, I would like to state that I use the term positively in this article (Sim, 2001: 3–14). I agree with the succinct explanation that ‘Poststructuralism is a fragmentary assemblage of diverse social, political, philosophical thought that not only engages with but also questions the structuralist tradition’ (Peoples and Vaughan-Williams, 2010: 63). In this regard, the crucial point is that I do not perceive poststructuralism as an antagonistic opposite of structuralist tradition. On the contrary, I contemplate that poststructuralist intervention develops and complements structuralist approaches by being critically engaged. By doing so, it significantly improves the structuralist approaches. Since the discussion of poststructuralism and structuralism is beyond the scope of this article, I will highlight some contextual points that are more directly related to this study. To make the conceptual framework of the article more evident, I will initially focus on the ‘Saussure-Derrida discussion’ on linguistic structuralism. I will highlight Saussure’s linguistic structuralism and Derrida’s deconstruction to create analogies between structuralist and contingent aspects of the Soviet nationality policies. At the end of this theoretical section, I will propose ‘eventful historical sociology’ to constitute theoretical correlations with contingent case study examples of the Soviet style nation-building, which will be discussed in the last part of this article.

Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1986 [1916]), in his posthumously published seminal book Course in General Linguistics, focused on the production of meaning and he developed a theory of structure of language, which would become the basis of causal reasoning in different fields. Saussure’s major point with regard to language is that it is above all a system. This system consists of rules and regulations; in other words, a form of internal grammar (Sim, 2001: 4). The structure of any language involves two foundational elements: the ‘signifier’ (e.g. the sound of the word ‘table’) and the ‘signified’ (e.g. the idea of ‘table’) which creates the linguistic structure ‘sign’ (e.g. ‘Table’). What is significant is that there is no intrinsic relationship between the signified and signifier. Meaning is simply based on differences, and it is because of the very structure of language that there is such a thing as ‘meaning’ (Peoples and Vaughan-Williams, 2010: 64). Poststructuralist criticism of structuralist linguistics highlights the overall tidiness of structural analysis in which there is no loose space and everything falls neatly into place. This point is the main argumental framework of this article, which illustrates the necessity of the contingent aspects to understand Soviet nationality policies. Apart from the analytical techniques being used by the structuralist explanations which simply determine the results, the fallacious point is the issue of contingency. As Sim (2001) states, ‘What structuralism seems to allow little scope for is chance, creativity or the unexpected’ (p. 5).

Jacques Derrida’s (2002) contribution demonstrating the instability of the meaning and limits of Saussure’s structuralism is highly important for conceptualizing contingency in Political Theory. Derrida’s point is that meaning is slippery, on the move and endlessly differing and deferring. In contrast to Saussure’s emphasis on spatial differentiation within the linguistic structure, Derrida argued that Saussure neglected the time and deferral dimensions of meaning. Derrida further argued that meaning is secured in the Western political thought through binary oppositions, which is constituted through hierarchy. He offered a critical deconstruction of the texts to reveal the hierarchical constitution of the binary oppositions in which meaning is secured and fixed (Peoples and Vaughan-Williams, 2010: 64–65). Hence, Derrida revealed the inherent indeterminacy of meaning. Signs were not predictable entities according to him. Derrida’s contribution will help to overcome the shortcomings of structuralist analyses of Soviet nationality policies in the context of the concept of contingency. In other words, structuralist approaches, which seem to agree on passport ethnicity and the territorial codification of ethnicity in the Soviet state, did not take into account the extent to which events and individuals affect and transform the system. This neglected ‘unpredictability’ dimension has led me to the understanding of ‘eventful history’ against the structuralism of historical sociology, which did not involve contingent aspects.

In his seminal article, Three Temporalities: Toward an Eventful Sociology, William H. Sewell (1996) attempts to conceptualize the eventful historical sociology idea while criticizing the teleological and experimental structural analysis in historical sociology (pp. 245–280). Sewell’s theoretical background provides an important framework for re-evaluating Soviet nationality policies. The content of Sewell’s theoretical article is in line with my attempt to develop a structuralist analysis of Soviet nationality policies in a poststructuralist context. In this sense, Sewell’s contribution in political theory makes the new perspective that I am attempting to create regarding the concept of nationality in the Soviet context more evident. Sewell (1996) argues that dominant historical sociology, including the works of Immanuel Wallerstein, Theda Skocpol and Charles Tilly is under the influence of the dominant teleological and experimental concepts of temporality, which are seriously deficient and fallacious since these scholars’ theoretical framework was not open for the articulation of contingent events (pp. 245–280). Sewell believes that a much more eventful notion of temporality is required since the course of history is determined by a succession of largely contingent events. For Sewell, not only classical sociologists under the influence of overdeterminism, in other words, under the influence of teleology (to understand the present through future events), but also all 20th century modernization schools as well as Wallerstein’s (1974) grand structural theory to a large extent can be evaluated as teleological. As he points out: ‘In Wallerstein’s analysis, contingencies, choices and consequences are foreordained by the necessity built in the world-system from the moment of creation’ (Sewell, 1996: 248–251). Furthermore, he also criticizes that in his work The Vendée, Tilly (1964) applied linear urbanization teleology which spoiled his comparative study which explained political effects of regional social structures. By casting the subject of his work as a local instance of a universal process, Tilly simply destroyed the contingency aspect of politics. Finally, Skocpol’s (1979) seminal book, States and Social Revolutions, was criticized for destroying path dependency in political analysis by Sewell. In the context of finding a structural logic of revolution, Skocpol claimed that all events, conjectures and stages are connected to each other in an experimental logic. According to Sewell (1996), this ends the capacity of events to transform and affect the structure (pp. 254–262). Criticisms of the important figures of historical sociology are briefly mentioned here in the context of contingency. In this regard, Sewell attempts to explain the integration of structure and contingency with his eventful historical sociology theory. Sewell (1996), in his proposition of eventful sociology, argues that social processes are inherently contingent, dis-continuous, and open-ended (p. 272). Grand transformations are never immune to the change dynamic of small-scale incidences. Structures, social formations, and social systems are continually shaped and reshaped by human actions. What is significant with respect to my argument in this article is that Sewell also highlights that adopting an eventful approach would not require the works of historical sociology to be jettisoned. Instead, structural analysis must be rethought and appropriated by the eventful, contingency oriented analysis (Sewell, 1996: 273).

Contingent cases in Central Asia and the Caucasus discussed in the last part of the article will embody the theoretical framework explored in this section. Nevertheless, I would like to illustrate this theoretical framework more concretely with an example. Although this article focuses on early contingent cases, contingency-related events can in fact be encountered in every period of Soviet nation-building. One of the most important of these concerns Latvia. Korenizatsiya (nativization) policies, for example, were never properly implemented to the advantage of Latvians. When prominent party officials of the Latvian Communist Party began to prioritize local interests in education, attempted to reduce the rate of Slavic migration to Latvia, promoted Latvian personal interests and highlighted concerns on economic autonomy between 1957 and 1959, Moscow chose to suppress the demands ruthlessly, even in the course of Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization campaign. Khrushchev purged two thousand party functionaries, including the movement’s leader. The strategic importance of the region as well as Moscow’s suspicion of locals due to their geographical and ideational proximity to the Western countries motivated Moscow to act in an exceptional way (Commercio, 2010: 45–46). If the Latvians had not persisted in their demands, policies accelerating Russification might not have occurred. This might have lessened the hostility toward the Soviet establishment. Briefly, in contrast to the post-Cold War era scholarship, which attempted to explain Soviet nationality policies in a positive manner and structurally well-established context, the neglected contingency dimension is still waiting to be explored. Hence, a poststructuralist theoretical intervention will provide a better understanding of policy dynamics by articulating the role of events, deviations, and individuals. For example, could Stalin’s policies of quick and harsh collectivization have been implemented if Lenin had not died prematurely? Or, could more democratic results have been achieved in the functioning of Soviet democracy if Lenin had continued? Undoubtedly, these questions cannot be answered without considering the limits of structural explanations. In the next section, the roots of the contingent policy-oriented aspects regarding the Soviet context will be explored taking Marxist nationality policies into account.

The contingent legacy of Marxist nationality policies and their impact on the Bolsheviks

The Bolshevik’s approach to nationalism ideology was relatively ambiguous with regard to the works of Marx and Engels. Therefore, it is even controversial to claim that Marx and Engels created a Marxist nationalism theory (Löwy, 1998). The writings of Marx and Engels mainly emphasized the class struggle and the significant transformations of modes of production. Hence, a reductionist and instrumentalist view emerged concerning the issue of nationalism. In fact, the instrumentalist understanding of nationalism of Marx and Engels was one of the reasons for the contingent nature of the early Soviet nationality policies. On numerous occasions, Lenin made strategic decisions, such as NEP and the establishment of alliances with the peasantry before the October Revolution, which might be reflected as deviance from the classical Marxist texts. Nevertheless, the nationalism issue enhanced the flexibility of the Bolsheviks through their contingency based policies without the fear of inconsistencies with the thoughts of Marx and Engels since no well-shaped, firm and established guidance had been offered by the philosophers regarding nationalism ideology. In other words, although structurally bound within a progressive understanding, Marx and Engel’s stance of nationalism comprised many contingent characteristics. It would be more useful to focus on the classical Marxist approaches on nationalism over two main periods.

The early writings of Marx and Engels can be traced to their famous work, the Communist Manifesto. Marx and Engels praised the bourgeois because of its revolutionary role in enabling the proletarian revolution. The bourgeoisie was evaluated as revolutionary to the extent that it unified the world market, but it also abolished local customs, traditions, and created a new world culture (Marx and Engels, 2020: 35–36). Marx and Engels considered that the process through which national differences would disappear, which had already started through the spread of capitalist production relations, would be completed in the era of proletarian revolutions. The failure of the 1848 revolutions led the philosophers to revise their optimistic points of view with regard to the temporality of the national question. The disillusionment regarding the failure of centralization and revolution in Germany led to the revision of the nationality question. Engels divided nations into two categories: ‘Historic Nations’ and ‘Historyless Nations’. By doing so, an instrumentalist point of view was articulated in the initial conceptualization of nationality. The Western developed capitalist countries such as Britain, France and Germany were defined as historic nations. The countries that were not connected to the capitalist mode of production were defined as historyless nations, including the Slavic nations in Eastern Europe. The philosophers praised the American expansion in California through the antagonism of ‘Energetic Yankees versus Lazy Mexicans’. With regard to the French invasion in Algeria, Marx and Engels expressed similar humiliating antagonism against historyless nations using the label ‘Civilized French versus robber Bedouins’ (Dinç, 2022: 70; Löwy, 1998: 17–18; Marx and Engels, 2010: 365; Munck, 1986: 13).

The later writings of the philosophers on the issue of the conflict between Ireland and Britain influenced the Bolsheviks, especially Lenin. By 1860, Marx had already started to support the Irish in the Irish-British conflict. Marx claimed that the hatred between the Irish and British would continue if they lived together, so the British proletariat would accuse the Irish of decreasing the wages. From the perspective of the British proletariat, the Irish proletariat would become the cause of poverty. Munch and Löwy contended that the Irish issue represented a total break for the philosophers in comparison to their initial approaches on nationalism. The new paradigm presented the seeds of the distinction between oppressed and oppressor nations (Dinç, 2022: 71; Löwy, 1998: 33–36). According to Marx, a nation that suppresses another one can never be evaluated as free (Özkirimli, 2015: 50).

Briefly, the failure of the revolutionary upheavals forced the philosophers to make tactical changes, in which they attempted to locate the nationality question on the side of revolutionary movements. In this context, the Irish case was prominent as this was where Lenin found the seeds of his distinctive argument of nationalism, such as the distinction between oppressor and oppressed nationalisms. Lenin’s optimistic approach to minority nationalism would lead to the constitution of the ethno-federalism and Korenizatsiya policies in the early Soviet era. Lenin and Stalin’s territorial autonomy model and tolerance for the minority nationalisms as opposed to the majority nationalisms or ‘Great Russian Chauvinism’ could be evaluated as one of the major influences of classical Marxist texts on the Bolshevik leadership, which would result in structural implementation. The tangible reflection of this influence was the ethnically codified hierarchical territorial administration of the Soviet state, albeit with several contingent variations formed through complex relationships between the elites of Moscow and the peripheries. Marx and Engels’s Irish case influence did not suddenly emerge; in fact, the Bolsheviks were required to compete with various theoretical nationalism discourses among prominent Marxist figures and actors before the Bolshevik revolution.

The legacy of tsarist nationality policies and the Marxist debate on self-determination before the Bolshevik Revolution

During the 19th century, Russia was faced with a serious identity crisis. On the one hand, it was necessary to produce policies that included different ethnic identities in order to protect its great empire, while on the other hand, Russia wanted to complete its mission of creating a nation-state. Ruskiy and Rossiyskiy ethnic identity labels emerged as a result of this identity crisis. Ruskiy was associated with ethnic Russians and Rossiyskiy was associated with people living in Russia. In other words, if I draw analogies from Brubaker’s concepts, Ruskiy can be categorized as an ethnic dimension of the Tsarist nation-building policies and Rossiyskiy fits into the civic dimension of the nationality policies in the period of late 19th century Russian Tsardom (Brubaker, 2011: 1785–1814; Dinç, 2022: 66). The rise of nationalism around the world meant that priority was given to policies that promoted ethnic nationalism in the Russian state at the end of the 19th century. The last two tsars, Tsar Alexander III and Nicholas II, intensified their Russification policies. In line with the Russification policies, all minority languages were forbidden in schools and Russian remained the mandatory language for all ethnic groups living in the Russian Tsardom. Even in the first Duma elections, ultra-nationalist Russian parties started to become a visible force. The rise of Russian nationalism and the exclusionist, assimilationist discourse it used soon led to the rise of nationalist demands from non-Russian minorities as a reaction, so the ethno-centric, assimilationist solution to the national question in the Russian Empire enhanced the centrifugal tendencies of the non-Russian people (Dinç, 2022: 67–68). Among the non-Russian ethnic groups, there was only one group, the Jews, which could directly and shockingly affect not only the ethnic issue of Russia, but also the Bolshevik revolution (Slezkine, 2004: 110–206).

At the end of the 19th century, most of the European Jewish population (5.2 out of 8.7 million) was living in Russia, constituting approximately 4% of the Russian Empire. In all, 90% of Jews resided in the pale of settlements to which they were officially restricted and they were not permitted to live out of the settlements borders, which included partial territories of Western Russia, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Moldova, Poland and Ukraine. The Jews traditionally concentrated on providing middleman services between the overwhelmingly Christian population and several urban markets (Slezkine, 2004: 110). The abolition of serfdom in 1861 began to change the sociological status of the Jews as a result of rising discrimination against them. In fact, as Slezkine (2004) states ‘Everyone, except for the tsar himself, belonged to a group that was, one another, discriminated against’ (p. 115). Therefore, from Kyrgyz pastoralists to the aliens of the small nations of the North, even the large population of Russian peasants belonged to the very large ‘prison-house of nations’ of the Tsar’s domain (Slezkine, 2004: 115, 95–129). ⁵ When industrialization destroyed the traditional Jewish economy and Jews began to be expelled from the governmental jobs, the Jews in Russia experienced an existential crisis. The Jewish response to the pressure from the imperial government and the pogroms that the government allowed was emigration. Between 1897 and 1915, approximately 1,288,000 Jews of the Russian Empire, almost 80% of the immigrants, went to the United States. The remaining Jewish population, who chose to remain in Russia, joined populist and then Marxist movements, particularly the younger generations (Slezkine, 2004: 121).

Jewish Bund (Union), which had reached 30,000 supporters by the time of the Russian Revolution of 1905, was founded in 1897 even before the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party (RSDLP). The Bund was a secular organization, which opposed tsarism and capitalism through a Jewish minority nationalist perspective. The Bund, whose ideology was initially more Marxist than minority nationalist, began to emphasize the protection of Jewish rights more in the months before 1905. The Bund adopted national-cultural autonomy political demands and wanted Jews to be recognized as a national minority, particularly after 1905. In fact, the Bund became independent from Russian Marxists when they chose to leave the RSDLP in their congress, during which the division between the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks emerged. Members of the Bund also contradicted Lenin’s model based on strict party membership. In this sense, they supported the criticisms of the Mensheviks against the Bolsheviks (Zimmerman, 2003: 29). As Zimmerman (2003) highlights, the Bund was a minority national movement party rather than a Jewish nationalist party. The Bund opposed Zionism and rather wanted every place where the Jews lived to be accepted as their homeland. Thus, the model that would best support the national aspirations of the Jewish population dispersed throughout many regions within Russia was non-territorial autonomy, which contradicted the Bolshevik model of territorial autonomy. In 1910, Yiddish replaced Russian for the first time at the Bund’s Congress. The rising pressure of Zionism pushed the Bund to intensively focus on mother tongue (Yiddish language) education and Jewish cultural rights on the brink of the revolutionary year of 1917. The Bund participated actively in the February Revolution. However, they opposed the Bolshevik’s seizure of power in the October Revolution, which would trigger their dissolution in 1921 (Rosenblum, 2009: 1915). The proportion of Jews was 20%–30% in the Russian Narodniks, and approximately 20% in the Bolshevik party. In this sense, they provided considerable mass support to the Bolshevik revolution. An attempt was made to use this support to discredit the Bolsheviks with the discourse of the white army in the Civil War, based on the rhetoric that Bolshevism equals Judaism (Slezkine, 2004: 182–190).

Besides Jewish minority nationalism’s foundational influence on the Russian revolutions, the issue of nationalism was vigorously debated among prominent Marxist thinkers after Marx and Engels, which resulted in three main approaches. These are as follows: the right of nations to self-determination, an approach identified with Lenin; national nihilism, which is associated with Rosa Luxemburg; and extra-territorial national autonomy, a program developed by Austrian Marxists which was also ideologically shared by Jewish Bund. ⁶ Rosa Luxemburg claimed that the unifying political struggle of the proletariat should not be superseded by a series of fruitless national struggles. In her doctoral thesis, Luxemburg highlighted that the Russian and Polish market had already integrated, and the Polish economy could not exist in isolation from the Russian economy. For Luxemburg, those who supported Poland’s right to self-determination were the feudal Polish nobility of the old order (Löwy, 1998: 31). The national nihilist considerations of Luxemburg remained unrevised until her imprisonment by the German authorities in 1915. The economic centrist arguments of Luxemburg were universally pessimistic against the small nations. According to Luxemburg, ‘The independence of small nations in general, and Poland in particular, is utopian from the economic point of view and condemned by the laws of history’. Luxemburg (1976 [1909]) was concerned that the small nations could play a role as pawns on the imperialist chessboard (Chapter 5; Löwy, 1998: 33).

Another significant approach among Marxists before the Bolshevik revolution was that of Austrian Marxists’ extra territorial cultural autonomy. Unlike the Marxist orthodoxy, the Austrian Marxists, Otto Bauer and Karl Renner, contemplated the nation as a permanent and positive phenomenon (Smith, 1999: 15–17). The Austrian Marxists highlighted not only the territorial autonomy, but also non-territorial cultural autonomy demands of the various nations in multiethnic/multinational states. Undoubtedly, the Austrian Marxists were heavily influenced by the ethnic structure of the Austrian Empire. ⁷ The Austrian Marxists were aware that the issue of nationalism was not a temporary phenomenon and they strove to find a solution to accommodate national differences. However, their arguments were harshly criticized by the Bolsheviks.

The third main approach among Marxists before the Bolshevik revolution was Lenin and Stalin’s proposal of ‘the right of nations to self-determination’. The articles of the program adopted by the Russian Social Democratic Labor Party at its second congress that took into account the national question accepted ‘The rights of all nations in the state to self-determination’, broad local self-rule as well as mother tongue education (McNeal, 1974: 42). The party program was approved by both the Bolshevik and Menshevik fractions. However, there was no reference to federalism or national cultural autonomy in the program. The national minority parties such as the Jewish Bund, Georgian Socialists Federalists, Armenian Dashnaktsutium, and Belorussian Hromada together with Russian Socialist Revolutionaries opposed the program. Essentially, they demanded the division of Russia into federal units. The Menshevik faction of the RSDLP came close to the national cultural autonomy approach of the Austrian Marxists by 1912. Moreover, there was strong support for Luxemburg’s national nihilist arguments among Marxists (Smith, 1999: 15–17). Under these conditions, Lenin urged Stalin to write a polemical work against Austrian Marxists regarding the national question. In 1913, Stalin completed his book Marxism and the National Question. In this book, he defined the nation on the basis of four factors: territory, language, economic life and psychological makeup (Stalin, 2013: 14). According to Stalin, Bauer’s approach on nationality encouraged nationalism, which was considered a bourgeoisie phenomenon. Stalin was concerned about the overshadowing impact of nationalism vis-a-vis proletarian revolution. Stalin vehemently criticized Otto Bauer’s concept of nation, particularly the concept of ‘unity of fate’. He claimed that the nation definition of Bauer was not sufficient to include the Jewish communities who were separated into various areas and spoke different languages. Stalin, as a spokesman for the Bolshevik nationality policies both before and after the revolution, generally followed the position of Lenin. However, some elements of Stalin’s arguments were occasionally disapproved by Lenin. When compared to Stalin, Lenin obviously displayed a tolerant, pro-minority stance. These seeds of conflict would be revealed after the revolution, when the Bolsheviks were challenged by the implementation of their nationality theories, particularly in the case of Georgia (Lenin, 1966: 606; Pipes, 1954: 270–275).

In 1914, Lenin finished his work, named ‘the right of nations to self- determination’ (Lenin, 1964: 393–454). Lenin (1964) emphasized the main tenets of Bolshevik nationality policy. One of the important legacies that Lenin received from Marx and Engels was the distinction between oppressor and oppressed nations. Lenin built his nationality approach on this foundation. Marx’s famous remark, ‘a nation which suppresses another one cannot be free’ was adopted by Lenin, who observed that minorities in Russia were suppressed by the monolithic Russification policies, which led to the start of minority ethnic mobilization under the Russian Tsardom. Therefore, there was a large political space to mobilize and articulate the minorities in the revolutionary struggle. Lenin’s main aim was a global socialist revolution, and the status of minorities in Russia would also become important in the post-revolutionary era. Hence, Lenin was enthusiastic to make compromises for the minorities unlike the important cadres of the Bolshevik party. Lenin (1964) emphasized the territorial autonomy and voluntary secession rights of all nations in Russia (pp. 393–454). Although he was in favor of unity, he was very sensitive against great Russian chauvinist national suppression. Therefore, he adopted a pro-minority oriented nationality policies approach, which led to polemics with Luxemburg concerning the issue of independence of Poland ⁸ (Lenin, 1964: 45–51, 393–454). According to Lenin, the right to self-determination was similar to the right of divorce of couples. However, as Lenin (1964) pointed out, ‘the right of divorce is not an invitation to all wives to leave their husbands’ (pp. 422–423).

In brief, the three main tenets of the nationality question were debated among Marxists together with the nationalist federation demands of national minority parties, such as the Jewish Bund. To a large extent, Rosa Luxemburg had a strong influence on the Bolshevik cadres. However, with the help of Lenin, Stalin successfully imposed his pro-minority nationalism approach with his high standing in the party. The influences of the debate among the three main approaches on nationalism would affect the Bolshevik cadres and shaped the content of the nationality policies after the Bolshevik Revolution in both structural and contingent dimensions. Leninist-Stalinist nationality policy was shaped by classical Marxist texts and debates against Luxemburg, Austrian Marxists, and the Jewish Bund.

Nationality policies after the revolution: Formation of the ethno-federal Soviet state

The initial years of the Soviet nationality policies from the beginning of the 1920s until 1939 can be considered as the most important period in the creation of the multiethnic-multinational Soviet ethnicity regime. The formation of the USSR was dependent on the linkage between territory and ethnicity. Therefore, the federal structure of the USSR can be considered as a form of ethnic federalism. The multinationalist structure of the Soviet Union was also hierarchically institutionalized and this institutionalization provided an efficient framework for sine qua non Soviet nation-building. The enormous state-led effort was implemented to support various non-Russian republics’ nation-building projects. Martin labeled the early Soviet nationality policies as an ‘Affirmative Action Empire’ (Martin, 2001: 1–2). Territorial codification of ethnicity was the most significant peculiarity of the affirmative action policies. The four-tier, Matryoshka doll-style hierarchy of the administrative structure of the Soviet Union was organized in a top-down manner as: union republics, autonomous republics, autonomous provinces and autonomous districts. At the top of the hierarchy were union republics, which were officially measured fully sovereign units, while at the bottom of the hierarchy were autonomous districts, which had low autonomous administrative capabilities. As Slezkine (1994b) highlighted, these districts were created in order to provide ethnic homelands for the indigenous population of the Soviet far North (p. 34). The levels of mother tongue education, cultural institutions, native academies of sciences as well as the spending of budgets for cultural activities in these autonomous units were hierarchically determined based on the autonomous levels of the titular republics (Gorenburg, 2003: 31). This four-level hierarchical administrative institutionalization of the ethnicity and nationness that was seeded in the early Soviet period forged cultural nationalism, which would rise to the surface during the political and economic crises in the 1980s. During the entire Soviet era, the non-Russian nations that had no ethnically federal units were exposed to the strongest assimilation. Hence, the ethnic federal system of the Soviet Union hindered the speed of assimilation of the non-Russian populations considering the particular national hierarchical positions. The individual conception of ethnicity and its concomitant product ‘passport ethnicity’ can be labeled as the second significant dimension of the ethnically codified nationality policies of the Soviet Union. The Soviet regime not only recognized various nations individually, but also acknowledged them as a group and codified them into the internal passports. Therefore, the passport ethnicity regime can be assessed as the instutionalization of multiculturalism. In the 1926 census, citizens were recorded according to their ethnicity. The passport ascription of ethnicity was initiated in 1932 (Aktürk, 2012: 197; Gorenburg, 2003: 197). After that time, every citizen was required to bear their national identity from birth to death except for certain special cases involving mixed marriages.

Affirmative action policies and Soviet nation-building

As explained previously, the administrative structure was only an important institutional part of the wider Soviet nation-building process. As Martin (2001) highlighted, the Soviet Union systematically promoted the national consciousness of its ethnic minorities and established many of the characteristic institutional forms of the modern nation state for them. In addition to the ethno-codified territorial administration, the Soviet State created and trained new national elites. In most of the various non-Russian territories, national languages were declared as the official languages of the local-titular governments. The Soviet State financed the mass production of native language books, journals, newspapers, operas, movies, museums, folk music ensembles and the other cultural and historical outputs (Martin, 2001: 1–2).

A significant aspect of the nation-building process was the promotion of national elites and national languages. In each territory, the Bolsheviks not only declared national languages as official languages, but also national elites were trained and promoted into high-level bureaucratic positions such as leadership positions in the party, government, industry, schools and universities. These twin policies were called Korenizatsiya (Nativization or Indigenization), as mentioned previously. ⁹ Concerning the national culture dimension of Korenizatsiya policies, excessive usage of symbolic national identity was observed throughout the USSR in the era of affirmative action policies. Stalin legitimized these policies and national cultures as being ‘national in form, socialist in content’ (Martin, 2001: 12). Similarly, Yuri Slezkine (1994b) compared the Soviet Union to a communal apartment in which common spaces were filled by Russian identity, but the private apartments were dedicated to the particular non-Russian ethnic groups or nations (p. 430). Therefore, the aggressive promotion of symbolic markers of national identity, national folklore, dress, food, costumes, opera, poets were implemented in each ethnically autonomous unit. However, the politization of national culture was strictly forbidden. The content of the national culture was required to be within the framework of Soviet socialist ideology. The articulation of the national culture in different ideologies was punished as a form of bourgeois nationalism, so the repressive state apparatus was mobilized when the ideological limits of the state were exceeded. ¹⁰ Indeed, the high central ideological control of the state did not permit the devolution of economic and political power to the periphery. Other than cultural autonomy, it is hard to claim that a genuine federation existed within the USSR. ‘Although the 1922-1923 constitutional settlement was called a federation, it in fact concentrated all decision-making power in Moscow. National republics were granted no more power than Russian provinces’ (Martin, 2001: 394–413). Therefore, it is difficult to say that Soviet Korenizatsiya policies had an impact on the central government.

Although the political and ideological autonomy of the non-Russian populations was highly restricted by Moscow, significant efforts were made by the Bolsheviks to reduce the national-regional developmental gap throughout the USSR. Most Cold War oriented scholars are keen to label the Soviet state as an imperial colonialist power. ¹¹ However, the official archival documents demonstrate the exact opposite with regard to economic equalization. For instance, the 1923 Nationalities Policy Decrees called for measures to overcome the real economic and cultural inequality of the Soviet Union’s nationalities. The relocation of factories from the Russian heartlands to the Eastern regions to overcome economic equalization was even considered (Martin, 2001: 14). However, most of the planned sanctions with regard to economic equalization were never institutionalized, and the achievements were modest. Although there was a discrepancy between discourse and implementation, the ‘backward republics’ found the opportunity to lobby for their benefits by distorting official documents in the era of Korenizatsiya. In line with economic equalization and the promotion of native regions, even illegal Slavic migration was temporarily restricted. The Soviet State’s preferential treatment of its minorities in most circumstances created resentment among the Communist Party officials. In fact, the Soviet nationality policies called for Russian sacrifice at the expense of supporting minorities. The majority of Russian territories were assigned to non-Russian republics and ethnic Russians living there were asked to learn minority languages. Moreover, their traditional culture was stigmatized as a culture of oppression. As a great power nation, Russians lacked their own communist party and were not granted their own territory. It is evident that contrary to the Cold War era cliché arguments, the Soviet state did not even implement a neutral policy against its minorities. ¹² Conversely, it promoted and supported minority nation-building processes. The Communist party became the vanguard of non-Russian nationalisms and assumed the duty of guiding them from bourgeois primordial nationalism to Soviet international nationalism, similar to the role it had played in leading the proletariat beyond trade union consciousness to revolution (Martin, 2001: 449).

Revised nation-building and deportation of nations

During the NEP period (1923–1928), non-Russian citizens of the Soviet State enjoyed a golden age in terms of national cultural development. However, throughout the 1930s, the affirmative action policies of the Stalin era experienced a number of changes. From 1928 to 1932, forced collectivization, abolition of the market and industrialization campaign enhanced the centralization of the Soviet State. The resistance to the forced collectivization from various non-Russian ethnic groups together with the rapidly changing atmosphere likely motivated the Bolshevik cadres to question the relevance of nationality. Some events involving non-Russian minority mobilization, such as the Sultan Galiev affair as well as Ukrainian and Belorussian nationalist opposition to the center led to a revision of the affirmative action policies of Stalin. One of the most important revisions was the abolishment of thousands of tiny national territories that had been established during the 1920s. They were either formally or informally abolished during the 1930s. Nevertheless, 35 larger national territories were empowered in 1936 and most of these territories still protect their ethno-territorial structure in the Post-Soviet space. Another significant event was the rehabilitation of Russian national culture. In January 1934, Stalin declared the abolishment of the ‘Great Danger Principle’, great power nationality threat perception of Russian culture. By 1936, Russian nation and culture were praised by Stalin. Consequently, Russians were raised to the rank of first among equals (Martin, 2001: 451–460). If the Russians were at top of the series of nations, there were the small peoples of the North at the bottom. In other words, some of the peoples of the north, the prospective nations, were the last among equals (Slezkine, 1994a: 301–336). This community, which had been discriminated against by Tsarist Russia for 400 years, created a dilemma for Bolshevik policies, which gave importance to modernization and ethnic rights. Providing ethnic rights to this classless community, which was seen as alien and savage by Tsarist authorities, was conversely seen as a primitive communist lifestyle by the 19th-century Russian intelligentsia, would cause the progress of modernism and history to be hindered. It can be said that during the Lenin period, tolerant policies that protected ethnic rights were applied to the communal nomads of Siberia and the Arctic. However, Stalin’s collectivization policies artificially created class divisions in these unsettled, semi-settled nomadic societies. The collectivization of Stalin traumatized the small nations of the Arctic and Siberia, similar to the nomads of the Kazakhstan. Coding shamans and reindeer herders as oppressor classes and creating class implications from tribal life subsequently damaged these communities’ autonomy and cultural rights (Slezkine, 1994a: 200–217). Hence, before the deportation of the nations, Stalin’s collectivization created a rupture between Lenin and Stalin rather than continuity.

Another rupture between Lenin and Stalin may have emerged through the debate on ‘Socialism in one country’. In fact, Stalin’s deportations, revised nation-building, and the issue of demarcation in border areas are also closely linked to discussions of ‘Socialism in one country’. Even if the early writings of Lenin and Trotsky were subject to constant change and revision, the common argument is that socialism does not have a chance to survive in one country. Therefore, the socialist revolution in Russia needed support, particularly from developed Western countries. In his 1906 work, Trotsky was confident that socialism in one country would eventually turn into capitalist restoration. However, he thought that this would mostly be the result of the resistance of the peasantry (Trotsky, 1978: 15). Likewise, Lenin also highlighted at the Fourth Party Congress in 1906 that ‘To hold on to victory, to avoid restoration, the Russian revolution needs a non-Russian reserve, it needs aid from that side [. . .] the socialist proletariat in the West’ (Lenin, 1962: 17). Between 1917 and 1923, there was a change in the ideas that Lenin shared with Trotsky. Lenin put forward the thesis that socialism could exist in one country, but that it would be an incomplete socialism. In fact, Trotsky also approached Lenin’s ‘Incomplete Socialism’ thesis in 1920, but in 1926, he began to approach Lenin’s earlier ideas which highlighted capitalist restoration due to the isolation of socialism in one country. In 1929, Trotsky began to completely defend this thesis against Bukharin and Stalin’s political support for socialism in one country thesis (Van Ree, 1998: 113). After Lenin’s death, the debate between permanent revolution and socialism in one country became even more polarized. The thesis of capitalist restoration due to isolation supported by Zinoev and Trotsky also emphasized the urgent necessity of abolition of the peasant economic autarky through collectivization. However, for Trotsky, if it was not supported by a world revolution, socialism in one country would apparently become a type of etatism, total control of the state over individual citizens, that was not truly socialist (Van Ree, 1998: 110). As for Stalin, despite being problematic, the economic autarky of a non-socialist economy would not damage the functioning of the economy of the socialist state. Furthermore, Stalin also reduced Lenin’s incomplete revolution to an imperialist intervention, so Stalin removed the problem of the socialism thesis in one country from the context of the development of the productive forces. As a result of the acceptance of the thesis of socialism in one country, the notion of international solidarity of socialism suffered a great blow. With the withdrawal of the principle of spreading socialism, the Piedmont principle mentioned by Martin could not be properly implemented. This also brought into question the thesis that the structural framework in national politics in the Soviet Union was based on the continuity of the policies of the Lenin and Stalin periods.

By the end of the 1930s, the Latin alphabets used in non-Russian territories were replaced by the Cyrillic alphabet. Initially, Latin alphabets had been chosen to demonstrate that the Soviet state was not a colonial power similar to the Russian Empire. In line with the revisions of the affirmative action policies, bilingualism and reengineering of non-Russian languages were officially supported. Therefore, the new policies represented an attempt to bring non-Russian languages to Russian language. These new developments heralded the dominance of cultural Russification (d’Encausse, 1995: 22). Moreover, most of the tiny autonomous units were dissolved and bound to the higher titular autonomous units of the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics (ASSRs) and Soviet Socialist Republics (SSRs). Territorial gerrymandering worked in favor of populous titular nations. Although the scope of affirmative action policies was reduced to a large extent to favor the more populous ASSRs and SSRs, they continued to be enforced silently. The new official nationalist discourse transformed into the ‘Friendship of the People’. However, the Friendship of the People policy would soon be damaged as a result of the deportations of Stalin.

During the Stalin era and particularly in the 1930s, the Soviet State began to resemble a mincing machine that suppressed anyone who disagreed with official Stalinist orthodoxy. As soon as Stalin’s Great Purges ended, the deportations of nations began. From 1937 to 1951, 13 nations of the USSR were systematically uprooted from their homelands and deported to the remote lands of the Soviet State (Sakwa, 1998: 43–45). The total population of these exiled nations was around 2 million. Chronologically, Koreans, Finns, Germans, Karachays, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Crimean Tatars, Meskhetian Turks, Georgian Kurds, Khemshils (Muslim Armenians), and Pontic Greeks suffered from the systematic exile policies (Kreindler, 1986: 387–405; Pohl, 2000: 267–293). This represented the end of the Korenizatsiya conception of Soviet nationality policies. However, the institutionalized ethno-codified federal structure of the Soviet Union continued. The speed of the pro-minority oriented nation-building process slowed down. Thousands of non-Russian territories had already been abolished at the end of the affirmative action policies. In this new phase of the nationality policies, the great danger principle of Russian nationalism was completely abolished. Moreover, the former oppressor nation perception of Russian culture was rehabilitated. The Russian culture and even Russian nationalism began to be seen as a glue that held the various nations of the Soviet State together. Due to the collectivization policies, the Bolshevik cadres began to consider that the issue of ‘backward nations’ was finished. Thus, the demands for preferential treatment of the non-Russian nationalities began to be regarded with high suspicion and from a security perspective. At the same time, Russians became a support base for the Soviet regime. Returning to the analogy of Slezkine (1994b), it is possible to say that the common spaces or corridors of the Soviet apartment building were enlarging, and the doorman service provided for non-Russian flats was being removed. The common perspective in Soviet history generally claims that after the period of Stalin had ended, to a large extent, nothing changed with regard to nationality issues in Soviet history until the nationalist mobilizations of the Perestroika period. In other words, the structure of the nation-building process continued until the collapse of the Soviet State. However, a factor that has commonly been neglected in the Soviet nationality policies literature is the lack of contingent policy-oriented analysis. Many events occurred that contradicted each other and this forces the cohesive understanding of Soviet nationality policies and even leads us to consider the question ‘Was there a Soviet nationality policy?’ (Smith, 2019: 155–157). Hence, there is an urgent need to add the contingency dimension to the analysis regarding the Soviet nationality policies, albeit within a structural perspective, which this section of the study attempted to explore from the formation of the ethno-federal state to the deportation of nations.

From structure to contingency: The contingent cases in Central Asia and Caucasus

The territorial autonomy and codifying ethnicity through passports marked two structural foundational aspects of the early Soviet nationality policies. However, the implementation of the Soviet nationality policies resulted in contingency and unpredictability in many cases due to the limits of the structure, and even in some cases forcing the limits of the structure. The instrumentalist understanding of nationalism in classical Marxist thought, which I discussed in the initial part of the study, and the nomenklatura structure of the Soviet State together with the role of the titular elite leaderships shaped the contingent characteristics of the early Soviet nationality policies. There are numerous examples that reveal the contingency factor in Soviet nationality policies. Indeed, all the cases of non-Russian autonomous establishment involve contingent dimensions. In this study, I will focus on the two most important cases among hundreds of examples. The cases of Georgia and the border delimitation issue in Central Asia, particularly focusing on Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, illustrate how the structural logics of the early Soviet nationality policies were stretching case by case. ¹³

In Georgia, the Mingrelian question and Abkhazia cases demonstrate the resilient and flexible nature of the nationality policies under the guidance and interests of the ethnic elites. Blauvelt used the Abkhazia case to show how the patron–client relationships of the Titular Abkhaz elites directly impacted the nationality policies and autonomous status of Abkhazia (Blauvelt, 2014a). In the case of Abkhazia, the result of the Mensheviks’ pro-Georgian rule alienated the Abkhaz people and forced the local elites to accept the autonomous republic status under the Georgian SSR (Jones, 1988: 617)). The Abkhaz national elite leaders, Eshba, Lakoba and Arkitava, lobbied Moscow in order to achieve Soviet Socialist Republic status. Abkhaz national elites demanded widespread linguistic and institutional nation-building through deepening and enlarging of the implementation of Korenizatsiya. However, the Georgian Bolsheviks were reluctant to accept an independent Abkhazia and they accused the Abkhazian elites of high-level clientelism in the Abkhaz republic. Blauvelt showed the inspection reports of the Transcaucasian District Committee (Zakkraikom) and their deeply critical content against the Abkhaz titular leadership. The report simply claimed that Abkhaz ethnic leader Lakoba placed his relatives and supporters in all institutions of Abkhazia regardless of their qualifications, and recruitment for governmental jobs consolidated his base through cliental networks. The report also accused Eshba for his lawless stance against the implantation of court verdicts, the covering up of abuses and embezzlement and the use of official positions for personal gain (Blauvelt, 2014a: 30). Blauvelt’s study also showed how the elite contestation between Eshba and Lakoba ultimately disrupted the unity of the Abkhaz elite and resulted in the retreat from SSR demands due to Lakoba’s reluctance not to risk his client networks and his acceptance of autonomy under the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic (Blauvelt, 2014a: 46). ¹⁴

The Mingrelian autonomy issue in Georgia also reveals the indeterminacy, conditionality and uncertainty of the Soviet nationality policy. Although many smaller nations were privileged through the nation-building policies of Korenizatsiya, under the ethnic leader Zhvania, the Mingrelians struggled even for cultural autonomy over their native linguistic rights. The Georgian central leadership were significantly disturbed by the demands of the Mingrelians since the nation-building process of Georgia directly contradicted with the nation-building attempts of the Mingrelians. Connor’s famous saying, ‘All nation-building projects were at the same time nation killings’ corresponded exactly to the political dispute between the Georgians and Mingrelians. (Connor, 1972). Referring to the Georgian archives, Blauvelt (2014b) identified that the Georgian central leadership initially omitted the native language demands of the Mingrelians and later how the Georgians were under pressure when these demands spread to Moscow and were even expressed to Stalin. From that moment, the Georgian leadership offered concessions under the framework of native language publications. The Georgian elites implemented district-based gerrymandering policies to divide and co-opt Mingrelian elites. In fact, the Georgian leadership managed to undermine the territorial demands of Mingrelian nationalists through co-opting Mingrelians into Georgian bureaucracy (Blauvelt, 2014b: 993–1013). The Mingrelian elites were seduced by the SSR level opportunities of Georgia and began to oppose the Mingrelian autonomy demands expressed by Zhvania. The last revision of the affirmative action policies at the beginning of the1930s provided the Georgian elites the self-confidence to liquidate Zhvania and gradually end the remaining cultural nationalism demands of the Mingrelians (Blauvelt, 2014b: 993–1013).

Another case that reveals the unpredictability and conditionality aspects of the contingent policies is the issue of the Central Asian borders. The border delimitation of Central Asia has been the subject of extensive debate in the Eurasian Studies literature and is one of the leading examples of the contingent nature of the Soviet nationality policies. Former pre-Soviet state entities Turkestan, Bukhara and Khiva were replaced by five new Soviet Central Asian States, the ‘Stans’, after the establishment of the Soviet power. Before the Bolshevik revolution, the sense of national belonging was very weak in pre-Modern Central Asian Muslim states. Naturally, in the early Soviet period, nation-building and demarcation of borders became a challenge for the Soviet central established order. During the Cold war era, some Western scholars focused on the arbitrary content of the newly conceived Central Asian states and the demarcation of the borders of these states. Most of these scholars, such as Pipes (1954), d’Encausse (1995), Benningsen and Quelquejay (1961) and Roy (2000), asserted that the Soviet central authorities drew the boundaries of Central Asia superficially to divide certain nationalities in order to rule them more comfortably. The simplification of border drawing reached the point where Stalin single-handedly drew the borders of the Central Asian countries (Haugen, 2003: 179–183).

The Cold War-oriented Soviet studies literature is indeed quite distant from the social and archival realities of the region. The Bolsheviks did not have a certain and decisive political agenda concerning the demarcation of boundaries. First of all, the Bolsheviks did not have the power to suppress a wide-ranging rebellion that could have emerged due to border drawing issues in Central Asia after the Civil War. In connection with this situation, the border drawing issue among Central Asian countries was a combination of structural and contingent elements. The Bolsheviks relied on tribal affiliations and they sought the support of local cadres. They created a negotiation committee and attempted to find common ground among different nations. By doing so, the early Soviet leadership attempted to reduce and not to increase the pre-existing hostilities among Uzbeks, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Turkmens and Tajiks. In summary, the delimitation of borders was a multidimensional issue that was progressed by the negotiations of the Bolsheviks with local powers in Central Asia. ¹⁵ By creating national republics in Central Asia, Moscow institutionalized and deepened the divisions that already existed. During the 1920s, national territories were springing up in all parts of the Soviet Union, and the interest in a unified Turkestan was only supported by Uzbek oriented intellectuals. For the Kazakh, Turkmen and Kyrgyz elites, pan-Turkistani unity would mean Uzbek domination (Edgar, 2004: 23).

Francine Hirsch (2000) claimed that three principles guided the border drawing in the Soviet State by late 1924 (p. 211). National (ethnographic), economic and administrative were the three foundational principles of the demarcation of borders. The national and economic principles seemed to be structural principles based on the understanding of Hirsch, although not mentioned directly. The Bolshevik’s aim was to ascribe ethnicity to the territoriality taking into account the national-ethnographic principle. The economic dimension evolved in line with the progressive, modernist understandings of the Bolsheviks. With regard to the underdevelopment of Central Asia, the backward and oppressed nations phenomenon was the product of the tsarist oppression according to the Bolshevik discourse. Hence, the Bolsheviks took the positive discriminatory policies into account in favor of the economically backward parts of the Soviet Union. These first two principles can be conceptualized through the structurally well-defined policy of the Bolsheviks regarding the nationality question. However, the third principle, the ‘administrative principle’, reflects the relative and contingent character of the Soviet nationality policies. The Bolsheviks were always sympathetic to the oppressed nations phenomenon in line with their anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist ideological positions. Hence, when the national and economic principles challenged each other, the Bolsheviks chose the national principle over the economic one considering that there was not equal input from administrative lobbying activities, which I have chosen to define as the contingent principle.

The cases involving the drawing of the Turkmen-Uzbek, Uzbek-Kazakh and Uzbek-Kyrgyz borders show the contingent characteristics of the early Soviet Nationality policy and falsifies the ‘divide and rule’ arguments. The Soviet officials described Turkmenistan as the most ethnically homogeneous republic in Central Asia. However, even in Turkmenistan, the nation-building and border drawing issues revealed the competition between the structural and contingent dynamics of the Soviet nationality policies. The boundaries of the pre-Modern tribal identities in Turkmenistan were fluid and shifted frequently in line with the historical power relations. The tribal Turkmens conceptualized community boundaries taking genealogy into account rather than boundaries. Fixing the identity on territory would have been a challenging endeavor for the local and central Soviet leadership. For example, the codification of the ethnicity of the tribe Khidir-Ali revealed the competitive dynamics of delineating the boundaries. While the tribal members inhabiting the regions between the prospective Turkmen and Uzbek borders claimed that they were Turkmen, the Soviet ethnographers and Uzbek regional communist elites claimed that they were Uzbek in terms of language dialect, dress and way of life. In fact, the tribe members desired to be close to the Turkmen market and Turkmen communists were willing to increase the territory of Turkmenistan. As this conflict shows, the economic and ethnic dimensions, which Hirsch theorized as the two structural elements of Soviet nationality policies, clashed with each other together with the lobbying activities of the local communists to increase the territory of their prospective Soviet republics. The lobbying activities of the local communists formed the contingent dimension of the border delimitation since it depended on the elite leadership, patron-client relationship and negotiations of Moscow with local elites to determine the boundaries of the prospective Soviet republics and their nation-building structures.

Although the issues of Turkmen-Uzbek and Uzbek-Kazakh border drawing shared similar challenges, the Bolsheviks implemented different policies in both cases. In the Turkmen-Uzbek case, the border drawing problem focused on the ethnically Uzbek dominated city of Dashhowuz. Likewise, with regard to the Uzbek-Kazakh border a problem emerged in terms of whether Tashkent would be included in the Uzbek or Kazakh (Kyrgyz) republic. The Central Asian Bureau and Territorial Committee of the Bolsheviks ultimately decided that Dashhowuz would be incorporated into the Turkmen republic, whereas Tashkent would be in the Uzbek republic. Both cities were urbanized centers of Central Asia and both were also exclusively Uzbek. Interestingly, the incorporation of Dashhowuz into the Turkmenistan border revealed the subnational identity divisions among Uzbeks. The Khorezm Uzbeks protested the decision, but the Bukharan Uzbeks voiced no protest since the center of gravity among the Uzbek communists was Bukhara and Turkestan (Haugen, 2003: 179–183). In the Turkmenistan case, Atabaev and the other members of the Turkmen national bureau noticed that Turkmenistan had no cities of its own. For this reason, they successfully lobbied and insisted on the annexation of Dashhowuz to Turkmenistan (Edgar, 2004: 62–63).

Splitting the Fergana Valley also caused the unexpected territorial division of the valley between the Kyrgyz (Kara-Kyrgyz) and Uzbek republics. The disputed claims mostly concerned towns in this valley, such as Kokand, Ferghana, Andijan, Osh and Namangan. The cotton resources of the region increased the complexity of border drawing while the ethnically diverse characteristics of areas surrounding the cities made the delimitation issue more formidable. Although, the Kyrgyz focused on incorporating Andijan and the Uzbeks focused on Osh, the cities remained vice versa. In terms of the Tajik-Uzbek border, the Tajiks claimed that the borders were generally drawn in favor of the Uzbeks. The good relations between Uzbek leader Fayzullah Khojaev, who was a member of the Central Asian Bureau, and the Central Soviet leadership is one of the reasons for the relatively advantageous positions of the Uzbeks in the delimitation of Central Asia (Haugen, 2003: 237). Even the Kyrgyz, Turkmen and Kazakh officials expressed their resentment, accusing the Soviet leadership in Moscow of considering Uzbekistan as the main Central Asian Republic and viewing the others as secondary (Edgar, 2004: 63).

Another example of the contingency in Central Asia is the establishment of the SSR and ASSR republics. Initially, in 1924, the Turkmen and Uzbeks received SSR status while the Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Tajiks received ASSR status and had to wait until 1936 and 1929, respectively to be considered as SSR, Soviet Socialist Republic. The Turkmens, with their small, nomadic and scattered population, were put at the top tier of the nationality hierarchy, which reveals the contingent aspect of the Soviet nationality policies. Why did the Kazakhs and Kyrgyz need to remain at the secondary status until 1936? If the answer is that Turkmenistan had external borders, why were the Tajiks forced to wait until 1929 considering that it bordered both China and Afghanistan (Edgar, 2004: 50).

The Tajikistan case is still another example of the contingent characteristics of Soviet nationality policies. Internal resettlement of the Tajiks to the border regions was intentionally implemented in order to increase the Soviet influence and attract Persian speakers to the Soviet system in Afghanistan and Iran. The nation-building promotion of titular nations with the hope of attracting co-ethnics of the titular nations was explained under the ‘Piedmont Principle’ by Martin (2001: 14). Interestingly and beyond exception, the Piedmont Principle was not implemented on the borders with Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan through other Soviet states (Polian, 2004: 64). Bolshevik officials only selected Tajikistan as the focus region to attract Persian speaking co-ethnics of the Tajiks and implemented resettlement projects in the scarcely inhabited border regions of Tajikistan (Kassymbekova, 2016: 66).

As shown in the examples, the border drawing and nation-building issues in Central Asia combined various factors, which ultimately made the Soviet nationality policy uncertain and context bounded. Even the affirmative action was not a solid set of principles but rather a situationally used strategy which oscillated according to the political contexts, which I prefer to name in this study the contingent context (Kassymbekova, 2016: 67). The Soviet central authorities took into account national-ethnographical, economic, geographical and administrative/contingent factors, which were concretized through the expressions of the local lobbying efforts made by prominent titular leaders, such as Uzbek Khojayev, Turkmen Atabaev. Needless to say, Moscow did not have a monopoly on knowledge; on the contrary, the information of ethnographers and local cadres highly influenced the Soviet central leadership in shaping the routes of Soviet nationality policies in all the different cases (Hirsch, 2005: 11). Furthermore, in many cases, Moscow took into account the socioeconomic development or modernization-urbanization factors in favor of backward ‘nations’ at the expense of the more developed ones. The inclusion of Dashhowuz and division of the Ferghana valley was shaped through the impact of modernization and nationalism linkage, which was an influence of classical progressive Marxist thought on the Bolshevik leadership.

Conclusion

This study aimed to highlight the foundational characteristics of early Soviet nationality policies taking into account the Marxist heritage on the Bolshevik policy-makers. This article argued that the early Soviet leadership implemented a sine qua non nation-building model, in which non-Russian ethnic groups of the Soviet State found the opportunity to develop their cultural nationalism, albeit with many restrictions that prevented the politization of ethnicity and nationality. In fact, the Soviet nation-building argument was supported by many Russian/Eurasian studies scholars after the Cold War. Nevertheless, in almost all of these studies, the contingent nature of the Soviet nationality policies was either neglected or implicitly mentioned. In this article, I attempted to fill the neglected antifoundational dimension of the Soviet nationality policy literature by focusing on the contingent dynamics and its historical roots, which date back to classical Marxist thought. Most Cold War era studies shared the common argument that the main framework of the early Soviet nationality policies in general and Korenizatsiya in particular continued to function until the collapse of the Soviet state (Martin, 2001: 14; Slezkine, 1994b: 430). This article to a large extent supports the ‘continuity of the early Soviet nationality policies’ argument within a contingency-oriented focus. In this article, I attempted to reveal that there is a neglected space in the Soviet nationality studies that should be studied within a structural context. A bridge between structure and contingency can be a comprehensive framework for understanding nationality policies. The early nationality policies in the Soviet State created a strong path dependency, which was significantly difficult to change. Even the post-Soviet Russia continues to operate an ethnicity regime that is similar to that of the Soviet State (Aktürk, 2012: 32–37). For this reason, it would be too assertive to claim that there is no Soviet nationality policy. Instead, there is a missing argument of contingency in the literature. In this study, the neglected contingency dimension of the Soviet nationality policies has been analyzed through cases from Caucasus to Central Asia. The Georgian cases and Central Asian border delimitation examples proved how the early nationality policies were context bounded, and were implemented differently under the influence of local leaderships and their lobbying activities. In this study, I found the influence of flexible and contingent nationality policies of the Bolsheviks in early classical Marxist works. While the Bolshevik’s ideological guide, Marx, influenced them through an instrumentalist and contingent view of nationality question, his famous quote also points to the contribution of contingency to reevaluate the Soviet nationality policies under the limits of structure. As Marx pointed out: ‘Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please, they do not. . . The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living’ (Marx, 1937: 5). The temptation of contingency or post-foundationalism should not drag Soviet nationality policy studies into the abolishment of structural analyses. However, structural analysis must be complemented by the critical engagement of poststructuralism and contingency.