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The Interface between Neighbors at a Time of State Transition: The Thick Border of the Bolsheviks (1917–1924)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 April 2017

Sabine Dullin
Sabine Dullin*
Affiliation:
(Université Charles de Gaulle Lille 3, IRHIS) Sciences Po Paris, CHSP
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Abstract

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Focusing on the European margins of the former Russian Empire as it was reinvented by the Soviets and drawing on the central and local archives of the former Soviet Union, this article uncovers a particular construction of territorial sovereignty that emerged from interactions between countries that were both new and ideologically hostile to one another. It shows that although Soviet authorities adapted to the rules of negotiation necessary for the “co-construction” of a frontier, they gradually managed to affirm an exclusive sovereignty over the territory. The thick border that evolved between mutually suspicious neighbors, especially through the creation of buffer zones, was subsequently institutionalized and appropriated by the Soviets in order to control interactions and border crossings. This analysis of everyday life in these border zones offers new perspectives for a transnational history of the state.

Type
Sovereignty and Territory in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
Information
Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales - English Edition , Volume 69 , Issue 2 , June 2014 , pp. 255 - 286
Copyright
Copyright © Les Éditions de l’EHESS 2014

References

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50. The total size of the armed forces (police and border guards) allowed in the two zones was limited to five hundred men overall, that is, a maximum of forty men per verst of border during the first six months and thirty thereafter (1 verst = 1,066.8 meters).

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79. The administrative subdivisions were modified and their boundaries changed in 1923, at the time of the USSR’s formation. At the intermediate level in a republic such as Belorussia, the uezd was replaced by the raion and the okrug. For the sake of convenience, I use the term “district” to refer to this intermediate administrative level. See NARB, 6/1/334.

80. NARB, 6/1/546, p. 121, decree of the Mozyr okrug executive committee, October 29, 1925.

81. NARB, 6/1/175, p. 8, protocol no. 4 of the meeting of the Presidium of the TsIK of the Belorussian SSR, February 2, 1923.

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83. Only authorities and judicial officials at the local, regional, and republic levels were exempted from the visa requirement.

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