Was it Russianization or Ukrainization?
Borisenok Elena Yurievna
(not a Marxist Leninist, definitely not a Stalinist - a Historian)
The Ukrainian emigration and the
Polish secret services closely followed the situation in Soviet Ukraine. The
Bolsheviks took this circumstance into account and, in turn, sought to
demonstrate an exemplary solution to the national question in the Ukrainian
SSR.
Many resolutions and decrees
were issued on the equality of the Ukrainian and Russian languages. On
February 21, 1920, the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee decided:
“On the entire territory of the Ukrainian SSR,
in all civil and military institutions, the Ukrainian language should be used
on an equal basis with Great Russian.”
No advantage to the Great Russian language is allowed. All institutions, both civilian and military, are required to accept applications and other cases both in Great Russian and Ukrainian, and those responsible for refusing or evading admission will be involved to the fullest extent of the revolutionary military laws.
After the defeat of the Red Army
near Warsaw in August 1920 and the collapse of attempts to revolutionize
Poland, the Bolshevik leadership moved to practical measures to implement
plans for Ukrainization. On September 9, 1920, at a meeting of the
Politburo of the Central Committee of the CP(b)U, the draft law "On
Ukrainization" was considered. Comments were made and the draft was sent
for revision.
A few days later, on September
15, 1920, the head of the State Publishing House of the Ukrainian SSR,
editor-in-chief of the newspaper "Visti VUTsVK", Ukrainian writer,
former Borotbist V. Ellan-Blakytny addressed the Central Committee of the
Communist Party (b)U with a memorandum "Where to start the
"Ukrainization" of Ukraine ". Firstly, he pointed out that
party and Soviet workers who knew the Ukrainian language and the
conditions of Ukraine were scattered "throughout the entire territory of
the Soviet federation", and proposed "to announce an appropriate
mobilization, replacing those who do
not know the Ukrainian language with equivalent Ukrainian workers ".
In addition, he proposed teaching the Ukrainian language to Soviet and party
workers (publishing self-instruction books, textbooks, dictionaries, and
organizing short-term courses). To “reverse the disdainful attitude towards the
Ukrainian language of the philistine mass of Soviet employees”, Blakytny
proposed “to issue an order, at least with a preliminary designation of the
period in which they should study the Ukrainian language”.
Blakytny also drew attention to
the organization of the press in Ukrainian: “Our press in Ukrainian, which
receives all the material in Russian, processes it in an artisanal way, cannot
keep up with the speed and delivery of information behind the press in Russian
...” He considered it necessary "put an end to this abnormal
situation." The same situation developed in literature, Blakitny believed,
and proposed putting an end to “the persistent tendencies of stubborn general
Russianism, carried out under any guise, regardless of interests of the
revolution.
On May 4, 1920, the
People's Commissariat of Education of Ukraine adopted a resolution "On
the training of educational workers with compulsory education Ukrainian
language, and on September 21, 1920, the Council of People's Commissars of the
Ukrainian SSR adopted a resolution on the introduction of the Ukrainian
language in schools and Soviet institutions. It provided for the obligatory
study of the Ukrainian language in all "educational institutions with the
Ukrainian language of instruction", paying special attention to "the
study of the Ukrainian language in all ... institutions for the training of
educational workers." The state publishing house was charged with the
obligation to “take care of publishing ... a sufficient number of teaching aids
in the Ukrainian language, as well as fiction and all other publications”,
popular and propaganda literature. The executive committees were required to
publish in each provincial city "at least one Ukrainian newspaper."
Finally, on October 21 of the same year, the Council of People's Commissars of
the Ukrainian SSR signed a resolution on the introduction of the Ukrainian
language in all "educational institutions with a non-Ukrainian language of
instruction".
The following year, the Central Committee
of the CP(b)U considered the issue of the Ukrainian language and culture
several times. On January 1, 1921, the Politburo of the Central
Committee instructed Zatonsky, together with the People's Commissariat of
Education, "to develop measures for the development Ukrainian culture, and
submit the project to the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. On February
15, after hearing the issue of publishing a Ukrainian newspaper, the Politburo
decided to “confirm to the provincial committees the need to publish a peasant
newspaper in Ukrainian in each province” and during the Congress of Soviets “to
ask comrades from the places in which counties it is desirable to publish a
peasant newspaper in Ukrainian.” On the same day, V.Ya. Chubar and A.Ya. Shumsky
was instructed "to write a circular to the members of the organization
about the use of the Ukrainian language as a means of disseminating communist
ideas among the working masses of Ukraine. On May 30, 1921, on the basis of the
Spelling and Terminological Commission at the Historical and Philological
Department of the VUAN and the Terminological Commission of the Ukrainian
Scientific Association, the Institute of Ukrainian Scientific Language was
founded in Kyiv (in 1930 it was reorganized into the Institute of
Linguistics at the Academy of Sciences). On June 4, the Politburo
instructed Zatonsky "to gather, at his own discretion, several of the most
prominent Ukrainian public figures and invite them to appeal to the Ukrainian
intelligentsia to honestly serve the Soviet government and take an active part
in the split of the Ukrainian intelligentsia".
Thus, in the decrees and
resolutions of the highest Ukrainian authorities, the main directions of the Ukrainian
“Bolshevik” policy regarding the Ukrainian language and culture were outlined:
the introduction of education in the Ukrainian language, the publication of
printed publications, the training of civil servants in the Ukrainian language,
etc. In practice, this led to the gradual emergence of Ukrainian Soviet
cultural organizations and publications in the Ukrainian language.
In 1920, the
"All-Ukrainian Proletcult" finally took shape in Ukraine. This proletarian
cultural, educational, literary, and artistic organization, formally
subordinate to the People's Commissariat for Education, published the
Russian-language literary magazine Dawns of the Future.
(…)
H. Leontovych The Bolshevik
Ukrainian-language press began to be published. Since March 1919, the daily
newspaper "Bilshovik" was published in Kyiv, in Kharkov - the organ
of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) U "Komunist" (the
latter printed materials mainly in Russian). Since 1921, "Visti
VUTsVK" was published in Russian and Ukrainian (from 131 issues - in
Ukrainian). However, the vast majority of newspapers were still published in
Russian. According to the Book Chamber of the Ukrainian SSR in Ukraine in 1920,
87 Ukrainian newspapers and 266 Russian ones were published, and in 1921 - 45
Ukrainian and 95 Russians, in 1922 - 30 Ukrainians and 102 Russians.
Successes in the development of
education in the Ukrainian language were more modest. Despite the appearance of
decrees on the development of the Ukrainian language and culture, in the
Ukrainian SSR in 1922 there were only 50% of the total number of Ukrainian
schools; the vast majority of higher and secondary specialized educational
institutions were Russian-speaking (in 1923, only 17.1% of institutes, 16.3% of
technical schools and I, 9% of vocational schools).
An explanation of the current situation
is contained in one of the working documents of the Ukrainian Council of
People's Commissars - a certificate prepared in 1924.
Y. Ryappo, deputy head of the
Ukrainian People's Commissariat for Education, for Chubar, who at that time
headed the Council of People's Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR. This document
summed up the party's efforts in the field of Ukrainization. The main
difficulties with Ukrainization arose in cities where the majority of the
population spoke Russian.
Without a doubt, the difficulties
of Ukrainization in the early 1920s were also associated with the subjective
moods of many Bolsheviks in Ukraine, for whom the Ukrainian language was often
associated with M.S. Grushevsky, P.P. Skoropadsky and other "bourgeois
figures". It is not surprising that Ryappo made the following conclusion:
“Along with the introduction of the Ukrainian language, it is necessary to
preserve the Russian language, which has state and all-Union significance in
familiarizing with the culture of the Union, as a compulsory subject of
teaching in all educational and cultural institutions.
Speaking at the Fifth Conference
of the CP(b)U in November 1920, Secretary of the Central Committee of the
CP(b)U S.V. Kosior noted that "many comrades coming from Russia" were
not happy with the Ukrainian policy of the central leadership. “I must note a
certain percentage that could not withstand the Ukrainian pressure and asked to
be released from the Ukrainian situation,” Kosior admitted. Speaker at the
conference G.E. Zinoviev also expressed concern about the current situation:
“Comrade. Lenin said that one of the most
prominent Borotbists who visited him, now a member of our party in Ukraine,
told him: in five years in Ukraine, it will not be possible to appear to
a person who speaks Russian language".
According to Zinoviev, the
social aspects of politics should have precedence over the national ones, and
many Ukrainian Bolsheviks shared his opinion.
“We will not cry
if the Ukrainian language becomes the language of communism in five years and
we will educate the village in this language,” exclaimed Zinoviev. - We don't
care what language the village will be brought up in. This is one of the
secondary issues for us. ... It doesn't matter to us what language the working
people will speak, but we need to say how much we will skin the fist, one or
five, in favor of the poor, the peasant and the worker. That's what we had what is needed is a correct formulation of
the national question.
Zinoviev believed that “language should
develop freely”:
“In the end, in a number of years, the
language that has more roots, more vitality, more culture will win, therefore,
our policy is to sincerely, not in words, but in deeds and honestly show the
Ukrainian village that the Soviet government is not a hindrance to speaking and
instructing their children in any language.
This statement later served to
accuse Zinoviev of neglecting Ukrainian culture, Zinoviev was constantly
recalled in connection with criticism of the “struggle of two cultures” (see
Chapter 1 § 6), and Stalin called the long-term chairman of the
executive committee of the Comintern "a supporter of colonialism."
On November 27, 1920, A.V.
Lunacharsky signed a special resolution of the People's Commissariat for
Education of the RSFSR, which was sent to the Central Committee of the
Communist Party (b) of Ukraine:
“On the question
of the general policy of the Ukrainian People's Commissariat of Education, the
Collegium, approving the caring attitude to the cultural needs of the
Ukrainian village and the majority, the population of the republic,
speaking the Ukrainian language, expresses confidence, that the People's
Commissariat of Education of Ukraine will take care of the preservation of
Russian culture, to which a significant part of the population of cities
and some localities of the Ukrainian Republic adjoins, and also that the
People's Commissariat of Education of Ukraine will take measures to carefully
protect cultural values of national minorities” .
Obviously, the demands of the
central party leadership often did not coincide with the moods of ordinary
party members, especially since the number of Ukrainians in the CP (b) U
was small and by 1922 was only 23%, Russians were 54%, and 21% - others;
while 99% of the members of the CP(b)U spoke Russian, and only 11%
spoke Ukrainian.
Despite the difficulties in
implementing their plans, the Bolsheviks did not intend to retreat. Moreover,
at the beginning of the 1920s, in the articles and speeches of the highest
party leaders, those main directions of national policy began to clearly
appear, which in 1923 would form the basis of indigenization.
In October 1920, in the article
“The Policy of the Soviet Power on the National Question in Russia,” Stalin
noted the need for
“mutual support
of central Russia and its outskirts,” because without this “the victory of
the revolution is impossible, the liberation of Russia from the claws of
imperialism is impossible.”
The economic interdependence of the RSFSR and
the national republics was especially acute:
“Central Russia,
this hotbed of the world revolution, cannot last long without the help of the
outskirts, abundant in raw materials, fuel, food products. The outskirts of
Russia, in turn, are doomed to inevitable imperialist bondage without
political, military, organizational assistance from the more developed
central Russia. Meanwhile, “in order to strengthen this alliance, it is
necessary first of all to eliminate that alienation and isolation of the border
regions, that patriarchy and lack of culture, that distrust of the center, in order for Soviet power to become native to the "popular masses of the
outskirts of Russia",
Stalin proposed "setting
up a school, a court, an administration, authorities in their native
language".
Thus, already in 1920, words were
heard about the elimination of distrust in the center, which three years later
Stalin would develop into the thesis of complete mutual trust between the
Russian proletariat and the peasantry of other nationalities. In Stalin's
speech at the Twelfth Party Congress in April 1923, the thesis of a twofold
danger - from great-power chauvinism and local nationalism - was not new
either. The requirement to develop "a rich network of courses and schools
on the outskirts in all branches of government to create instructors cadres
from local people" will also be an integral part of the Stalin’s
indigenization plan.
The directions of national policy
outlined in 1920 were not a temporary slogan or a short-term political
calculation. The idea of the need to develop the national language,
culture, schools, the introduction of office work in the native language, etc.
was taken into service and was to be directly implemented by the apparatus of
the People's Commissariat of Nationalities. So, L.B. Kamenev, welcoming on
behalf of the party the participants in the first All-Russian Conference of
Representatives of the Autonomous Republics and Regions and Provincial
Departments for Nationalities, which took place in Moscow on December 18-21,
1920, also emphasized the need to preserve the unity of the center and the
outskirts in the interests of the world revolution:
". ...
During this war, we ourselves learned, understood this as a strategic lesson:
the necessary unity of the center and the outskirts, both to save the center
and to save the outskirts.
This thesis became the
cornerstone of national policy, it was from this circumstance that the
Bolsheviks proceeded, calling for a cautious approach to the national feelings
of non-Russian peoples.
“We here in
Moscow have realized that we cannot live and build a communist society without
having a precise and definite relationship with those peoples who live and are
located around the Donets Basin or around Baku oil or around Siberian bread or around
the steppe spaces on which cattle graze.”
Noting the fact that the peoples
inhabiting the territory of the former Russian Empire are at different stages
of social development, Kamenev traditionally referred to the exploitative
policy of the tsarist government as the main reason for this phenomenon.
“... We must not
forget that these oppressed nations tend to distrust those who were until
recently part of the machine that oppressed them, and that we, as communists, as
Soviet power, must win this trust, ”
These words of Kamenev, uttered
in 1920, reflected the intention of the Bolsheviks to win the trust representatives
of various nationalities due to the destruction of the notorious privileges
of the Russian people of tsarist times. The same idea will be voiced at the
Twelfth Party Congress in 1923, when the danger of "Great Russian
chauvinism" will be widely propagated. Like Stalin, Kamenev understood the
need to create local support through the education of national party cadres:
“Without a
school and administration in their native language, without managing people who
know the local situation and the local population, without this, to awaken the
broad masses, who sometimes for thousands of years kept in slavery, we will
never succeed, and you and I have just decided that we will not be able to
stand the fight against imperialism without reserves in the millions of farms
located on the outskirts.
We need these
reserves. We know that these reserves cannot be mobilized by order. They must
grow from below, i.e. grow on the basis of one's own cultural development,
using one's own language, one's own court, using those communists who came out
of one's own environment".
Similar arguments were heard at the Congress of the Party, during the
discussion of the Party's policy in the field of the national question.
As early as 1920, the world
significance of the solution of the national question by revolutionary Russia
was being promoted. Kamenev emphasized:
“Our solution of
the national question has become the center of attraction for the vast masses
of Indians, Chinese and other peoples, with whom no one had reckoned before,
they were too poor and too backward, they had no leader. This leader is now in
the person of Soviet Russia and, of course, the degree of confidence in us on
the part of these multimillion-strong masses ...will depend on how we resolve
the national question in our country.”
The next stage in the development
of the party's national policy was its Tenth Congress in March 1921, where Stalin
made a report on the national question. In his theses for the congress, as
one of the tasks of the RCP(b), he pointed out the need:
“a) to develop
and strengthen Soviet statehood in the forms corresponding to the national
image of these peoples; b) set up a court, administration, economic bodies, and
authorities, operating in their native language, made up of local people
who know the life and psychology of the local population; c) to develop the
press, school, theater, club business and, in general, cultural, and
educational institutions in their native language.
This provision, as well as an
indication of the danger of "distortions in the party's policy on the
national question" both in the direction of "great power,
colonialism, Great Russian chauvinism", and in the direction of
"bourgeois-democratic nationalism” was one of the main principles of the
course of the RCP(b) in the national question and later formed the basis of the
policy of indigenization of the party and Soviet apparatus in the national
republics.
At the Tenth Congress of the
RCP(b), Stalin delivered a report in which he explained "the
essence of the national question." In his opinion, it is necessary “to
destroy the backwardness (economic, political, cultural) of the
nationalities that they inherited from the past in order to enable the
backward peoples to catch up with central Russia and in state, and in cultural,
and in economic relations. At the same time, two points in the speech of the
People's Commissar for Nationalities seem to be especially important. First of
all, he considered it necessary to emphasize that now it was not about
national self-determination, but about the right of peoples to secession.
If he considered the first slogan "totally vague", then the second -
revolutionary, extremely necessary at the "moment of the flaring
liberation movement in the colonies."
“Insofar as the Soviet states are united in a
federation on a voluntary basis, insofar as the right to secession remains unused
by the will of the peoples that make up the RSFSR".
Stalin emphasized that
“under the Soviet federal state there are no more oppressed or dominant nationalities,
national oppression has been abolished, but, in view of the actual inequality
(cultural, economic, political) inherited from the old bourgeois order, between
more cultured and less cultured nationalities, the national question takes
on a form requiring the development of measures leading to the fact that
the laboring masses of backward nationalities will facilitate economic,
political and cultural prosperity, enable them to catch up with the advanced
central - proletarian - Russia".
In addition, Stalin drew
attention to the sentiments prevalent among the communists.
"A few groups of Russian communists"
ignored "the peculiarities of life and culture on the outskirts",
sometimes deviating towards Russian great-power chauvinism.
At the same time, “native
communists,” in his opinion, were not always able to
“distinguish the class interests of the
working masses of their people from the so-called “general” interests,”
which led to a bias “in the direction of local native nationalism” .
In his closing remarks, Stalin
again drew attention to the sentiments prevalent among Russian communists
and tried to dispel the doubts that arose about the existence of such nations
as the Ukrainian and Belarusian.
Stalin said
“Here I have a note
stating that we, the communists, allegedly plant the Belarusian nationality
artificially. This is not true, because there is a Belarusian nationality,
which has its own language, different from Russian, which is why it is possible
to raise the culture of the Belarusian people only in their native language.”
The same speeches were heard five
years ago about Ukraine, about Ukrainian nationality.
And recently it
was also said that the Ukrainian republic and Ukrainian nationality are an
invention of the Germans. Meanwhile, it is clear that the Ukrainian
nationality exists, and the development of its culture is the duty of the
Communists. You can't go against history.
It is clear
that if Russian elements still predominate in the cities of Ukraine, then
in the course of time these cities will inevitably be Ukrainized.
About 40 years
ago Riga was a German city. But since the cities grow at the expense of the
villages, and the village is the guardian of the nationality, now Riga is a
purely Latvian city.
About 50 years
ago, all the cities of Hungary had a German character, now they are Magyarized.
The same can be
said about those cities of Ukraine that are of a Russian character and that
will be Ukrainianized because the cities are growing at the expense of the
countryside. The village is the guardian of the Ukrainian language, and it will
enter all Ukrainian cities as a dominant element. The same will happen with
Belarus ... "
The great attention paid at the
congress to the national question was not accidental. The Bolsheviks sought to
ensure that their word in his decision became decisive. Thus, the Ukrainian
national-communist parties could seriously compete with the CP(b)U in this
area. The Ukrainian Bolsheviks understood this and cooperated with them with
the greatest caution. In July 1918, the 1st Congress of the CP(b)U allowed the
party to cooperate only with the "lower classes" of the Ukrainian
Left Social Revolutionaries, declaring a merciless war on all other parties.
The II Congress in October of the same year also spoke out against cooperation
with the Left SRs, and the III Congress in March 1919 refused to share power
with the Borotbists. Ukrainian researcher O.B. Brandak thinks out of 16 and gets several places of deputy people's commissars.
However, among the Ukrainian
Bolsheviks there were also supporters of closer cooperation with the Ukrainian
Socialist-Revolutionaries and Social Democrats. At a meeting of
representatives of the party organizations of the Right-Bank Ukraine in Gomel
on November 25, 1919, a group of so-called federalists came out in favor of
uniting with the left factions of the Ukrainian Social Democrats and Socialist
Revolutionaries and creating a separate RCP(b) of the Ukrainian
Communist Party.
The Bolsheviks tried to
constantly keep their enemy friends under control. Brindak details how such
control was exercised. On the one hand, the ranks of the Borotbists, Ukapists
and Borbists devastated the party mobilizations for the front. At the same
time, a restrictive election system was established in Ukraine (25,000
city dwellers were equal to 125,000 peasants) and control of the press through
censorship. In addition, financial subsidies to the national communist parties
were always small compared to the Bolsheviks. The peaceful cooperation of the
Ukrainian Bolsheviks with the Ukapists and Borotbists was by no means facilitated
by the special circulars of the Central Committee of the RCP(b) on the fight
against anti-Soviet parties, which were sent to provincial party organizations.
In the end, threatening to break
up the bloc, the Central Committee of the CP(b)U achieved the self-dissolution
of the national communist parties and the inclusion of their members in the
CP(b)U on an individual basis. The Borotbists announced their self-dissolution
in March 1920, the Borbists - in May 1920. The longest the ukapists held on -
until 1925. As of January 1, 1926, 5100 people from other parties consisted of
CP (b) U, which accounted for 3.4% of its total numbers. However, in the
future, the former Borotbists and Ukapists turned out to be the first
candidates for expulsion from the party ranks during the “purges”, and by 1938
not a single one of them remained in the CP(b)U.
Thus, the Bolsheviks ensured for
themselves the freedom of political maneuver, including in the field of
national politics. The new government sought to preserve the unity of the
country through the formation of national Soviet republics. The
strengthening of national self-awareness in Ukraine, the activities of national
governments, based on the interest in the existence of an independent Ukraine
on the part of Germany and other European countries, required the
implementation of the slogans proclaimed before the revolution on self-determination
and the free development of national culture. To this end, the party leadership
in every possible way emphasized both the unity of interests of the Soviet
republics and the need to fight "Great Russian chauvinism."
Meanwhile, many pressing problems
- both economic and domestic - pushed the question of the national language
and culture into the background until the moment when it became relevant in
connection with the complex process of formation of the USSR.
(...)
It is obvious that many Ukrainian
leaders and the central Bolshevik leadership interpreted the issue of an
alliance between the RSFSR and the Ukrainian SSR in different ways. Indeed,
the aforementioned "Union Workers' and Peasants' Treaty between the RSFSR
and the Ukrainian SSR" allowed for the possibility of claims both from
Ukraine (since it was about the sovereignty of each of the contracting parties)
and from the RSFSR (since the united commissariats were part of the Russian
Council of People's Commissars).
The claims of the Ukrainian
leaders were not accidental: they were based on the opportunity provided by the
Ukrainian SSR to be active in foreign policy during the important Soviet-Polish
negotiations in Riga to end the war and conclude a peace treaty. The Foreign
Ministry of Soviet Ukraine was established on March 16, 1920. Kviring was the
representative of the government of the Ukrainian SSR in the negotiations with
Poland. He believed that the Ukrainian SSR should in the future have
independent embassies in England, France, the USA, Germany, and Italy, he
proposed to create an embassy in Warsaw with consulates in Lvov, Tarnopol,
Stanislav. In addition to Poland, Quiring suggested establishing representative
offices in other countries where ethnic groups lived.
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