Re: Soviet balance sheet

[Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol@xxxxxxx>]

Barkley:

Thanks for your reply.  You are certainly correct saying that Stalinist
policies did not institute racial harmony.  However, I also think that your
analysis underestimates the  class dimension of those policies.  True, the
purveyors of ethnic identities, or the ethnic intelligentsia if you will,
were often persecuted.  But at the same time, the Soviet state instituted a
national policy of supporting what they called the "people's culture."
There was clear-cut class dimension in the Soviet "ethnic policies" that
were also replicated in the satellite countries.

Given the enormous diversity and centrifugal tendencies in Russia,
exacerbated by the fedual rule -- the suppression of localism, ethinic
identities etc. can arguably be seen as a necessary condition
nation-building with clear counterparts of the turf battles between the
crown and gentry in other European states.  That, in turn suggests, that
the greater the diversity and localism, the greater the friction in the
nation-building process.  In other words, ethnic conflicts in Russia were
inevitable, the question is whether the "socialist" rule dampen those
conflicts more as compared, say, to a "capitalist" regime.  And my
tentative hunch is "yes" although I surely recognise the danger of
comparing the real to the hypothetical.

My "yes" answer is based on the belief that the support of folk culture was
intended to tie the ethnic population's loyalties to the central
authorities rather than to the local cultural elites.  To be sure, such
"populism" was not invented by the Soviets, the tsars used it, for example,
to suppress the Polish insurrection in 1883 by abolishing serfdom in that
country (a move very similar to abolishing slavery in 1985 in the US),
which severely undercut the peasant support for the nationalistic elite
leading the insurgency.  However, the socialist ideology of the Soviet
state gave those policies a new dimension and a new legitimacy.

Since it is my firm belief that most ethnic conflicts in Eastern Europe
(and probably in the rest of the world) were instigated from above, by
local elites, rather than coming from below, from the sentiments of the
peasants or working class, thus any national policy aimed to alienate the
local/national elite from its support base is bound to reduce ethnic
conflicts.  But it is also true that such policies will be loudly decried
by the scribbling classes, both domestic and foreign, hence the generally
negative public perception.

Finally, it reamins an empirical question to what degree the class based
ethnic policies (i.e. supporting the "folk" cultures while suppressing
nationalistic sentiments of the ethnic intelligentsia often wrapped in the
shroud of national culture) were actually implemented.  Undoubtedly, under
the Stalin rule, folk cultures in countries like Czechoslovakia and Poland
experienced their heyday, but that process was reversed with
de-stalinization in the aftermath of 1956 (for a literary account of the
vicisssitudes of folk culture in Czechoslovakia see Milan Kundera, _The
Joke_ ).  The data presented in the Polish statistical abstracts suggest
that after 1956, most if not all government grants earmarked for the "folk"
culture were actually awarded to middle class urban artists.  I do not have
any data for the x-USSR byt there is ample anecdotal evidence that the folk
national cultures received generous support in the Soviet state.

To summarize: granted, Soviet ethnic policies were far from being perfect
and in addition to that, had their own political agenda.  However, we have
to recognise the class dimension of those policies.  I can clearly see why
the ethnic intelligentsia was the most vocal critic of those policies, but
we must also considered the usually unheard opinions of the working class
members of ethnic minorities.  Moreover, the question we need to addres is
not whether Soviet policies ended ethnic conflicts once and and for all
(that would require truly supernatural powers), but whether they were
relatively more effective in reducing those conflicts that alternative
political regimes (like bourgeois democracy for example), to which my
tentative answer is yes.  I recognise, however, that more data are needed
to answer these questions.

Regards,
Wojtek Sokolowski



At 12:54 PM 3/31/98 -0500, you wrote:
>Wojtek,
>     Arguably there has been an exacerbation of ethnic
>nationalism in the FSU since 1991.  But your remarks about
>ethnic relations in the USSR are a bit off.  It may be that
>the early Bolsheviks truly transcended ethnicity, with the
>multi-ethnic Lenin himself exemplifying the multi-ethnic
>"Homo Sovieticus."
>      But under Stalin this was hardly the case.  The
>republics were based on ethnic identities.  Some were more
>favored than others.  Those that were severely suppressed
>(Chechens, Crimean Tatars, Uniate Ukrainians, Volga
>Germans, Jews late in his regime, among others) did not
>have such experiences out of a social desire to "break up
>ghettos" but to suppress groups who were identified as
>anti-USSR or anti-Stalin, as a group.  In some cases the
>groups were removed en masse from their homelands to other
>areas, usually in Central Asia. This is called racism.
>     Also, especially as time went on, and in spite of
>Stalin himself being from an ethnic minority (a
>Georgianized Ossete), the upper reaches of the nomenklatura
>ruling elite increasingly became dominated by ethnic Great
>Russians.  Would we consider a WASP-dominated and
>assmiliting US a paragon of ethnic relations, even if this
>were being done in the name of socialism?
>Barkley Rosser
>On Tue, 31 Mar 1998 09:48:53 -0500 Wojtek Sokolowski
><sokol@xxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> At 06:55 PM 3/30/98 -0800, Anders Schneiderman wrote:
>> >At 08:35 AM 3/28/98 -0800, Michael wrote:
>> >>Also in the Balance Sheet, we might include Stalin's brutal, but
>> >>relatively effective policy of suppressing/repressing ethnic hostilities.
>> >
>> >I don't see how you'd put that in anything other than the minus column.
>> >First off, it's hard to see how slaughtering or interning people is a
plus.
>> > Second, this strategy was ultimately a failure:  once the repression
>> >stopped, the old ethnic tensions flared right back up again.
>> >
>>
>>
>> That is true only if you assume that ethnic hostilities ultimately reside
>> in human psyche, as bourgeois ideology wants us to believe.  If you assume
>> that ethnic conflicts are the sole product of social relations (or which
>> relations of production are a major part) - then the only logical
>> conclusion is that the social relations under the Soviet system did NOT
>> generate serious ethnic conflicts, but the re-introduction of
>> market-schmarket style bourgeois relations immediately re-ignited those
>> conflicts.
>>
>> The biggest lie about conflicts in the x-Soviet empire, disseminated by the
>> Anglo-American propaganda machine, is that those conflicts have ancient
>> ethnic roots.  In fact, they have been re-introduced to the region, after
>> being nearly extinct under the "communist" rule, by the ruling elites
>> struggling for power.
>>
>>
>> As far as Stalin's social integration policies are concerned, I see nothing
>> wrong with attempts to eliminate ethnic enclaves and ghettos.  I wish the
>> Yanks did the same thing instead of cherishing "cultural diversity"
>> (translation: Black ghettos, White suburbs).
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Wojtek Sokolowski
>> Institute for Policy Studies
>> Johns Hopkins University
>> Baltimore, MD 21218
>> sokol@xxxxxxx
>> voice: (410) 516-4056
>> fax:   (410) 516-8233
>>
>> Opinions expressed above are those of this writer only.  They do not
>> represent the views or policies of the Institute for Policy Studies, the
>> Johns Hopkins University, or anyone else affiliated with these
institutions.
>>
>>
>>
>
>--
>Rosser Jr, John Barkley
>rosserjb@xxxxxxx
>
>
>