Article contents
Ethnicity and Institutional Reform: The Dynamics of “Indigenization” in the Moldovan ASSR*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 November 2018
Extract
Since the early 1980s, the study of political institutions has made a remarkable come-back within political science. After a long period of concentrating on the “outputs” of the political process, many political scientists have begun to give greater attention to the formal and informal structures that circumscribe political behavior: governmental departments, ministries, standard operating procedures, social norms, duties, obligations. Especially in its more inductive, interpretive forms, contemporary institutional analysis has focused less on political outcomes and more on the political process itself—the “how” questions of politics rather than the “why” questions addressed both by highly quantitative methods and by deductive, rational choice approaches. One legacy of the behavioral revolution has been a propensity for researchers to see the elucidation of why some groups win out over others in the political process as the chief end of political science. But by examining the strategic boundaries within which action takes place, modern institutional analysis—labelled the “new institutionalism” as early as 1984—seeks to remind political scientists that, quite simply, institutions matter.
- Type
- Articles
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © 1998 Association for the Study of Nationalities
References
Notes
* Many thanks to Don Dyer, Michael Hamm, Stuart Kaufmann, Pal Kolsto and Wim van Meurs for their suggestions on this article. The assistance of the staff at the Archive of Social–Political Organizations of the Republic of Moldova is gratefully acknowledged.Google Scholar
1. Marsh, John G. and Olsen, Johan P., “The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 78, No. 3, 1984, pp. 734–749.Google Scholar
2. For a recent survey, see Steinmo, Sven, Thelen, Kathleen and Longstreth, Frank, eds, Structuring Politics: Historical Institutionalism in Comparative Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3. The application of “new institutionalist” scholarship to the post-Soviet case is explored in Bruckner, Scott A., “Beyond Soviet Studies: The New Institutional Alternative,” in Orlovsky, Daniel, ed., Beyond Soviet Studies (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1995). See also Roeder, Philip G., Red Sunset: The Failure of Soviet Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993).Google Scholar
4. Because of problems with archival access, detailed Western treatments of indigenization have been rare, but see: Simon, Gerhard, Nationalism and Policy toward the Nationalities in the Soviet Union, Trans. Karen Forster and Oswald Forster (Boulder: Westview, 1991), especially ch. 2; d'Encausse, Hélène Carrère, The Great Challenge: Nationalities and the Bolshevik State, 1917–1930 (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1992); Liber, George, “Korenizatsiia: Restructuring Soviet Nationality Policy in the 1920s,” Ethnic and Racial Studies, Vol. 14, No. 1, 1991, pp. 15–23; Slezkine, Yuri, “The USSR as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism,” Slavic Review, Vol. 53, No. 2, 1994, pp. 414–452.Google Scholar
5. Simon, , Nationalism, p. 24.Google Scholar
6. Lenin, V. I., “O natsional'noi gordosti velikorossov,” in Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 5th edn (Moscow: Gosizdat Politicheskoi Literatury, 1961), Vol. 26, p. 108.Google Scholar
7. Stalin, I. V., “Natsional'nye momenty v partiinom i gosudarstvennom stroitel'stve,” in Sochineniia (Moscow: Gosizdat Politicheskoi Literatury, 1947), Vol. 5, p. 191.Google Scholar
8. Liber, , “Korenizatsiia,” p. 16.Google Scholar
9. For the sake of brevity, I use the terms “MASSR” and “Moldova” interchangeably, even though the medieval Principality of Moldova, the Moldovan autonomous republic, and the current Republic of Moldova are very different entities.Google Scholar
10. Bochacher, M. N., Moldaviia (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1926), pp. 5–7.Google Scholar
11. Moldova: materialile statistiche (Moldova: Statistical Materials) (Balta: Moldavskoe Statisticheskoe Upravlenie, 1928), p. 304.Google Scholar
12. Vsesoiuznaia perepis’ naseleniia 1926 goda (Moscow: Izdanie TsSU Soiuza SSR, 1929), p. 13.39.Google Scholar
13. Moldova: materialile statistiche (1928), p. 304.Google Scholar
14. Bochacher, , Moldaviia, 1926, p. 46.Google Scholar
15. Hall, D. J., Romanian Furrow (London: George G. Harrap and Co., 1939), p. 208.Google Scholar
16. For an exhaustive exposition of my views on this issue in the Soviet and immediate post-Soviet periods, see my doctoral thesis, The Politics of Language in Moldova, 1924–1994 (Oxford University, 1995); and my “Who Are the Moldovans?” SSEES Occasional Papers in Romanian Studies, Vol. 1, 1995, pp. 61–69.Google Scholar
17. The most widely cited early work on this subject is Weigand, Gustav, Die Dialekte der Bukowina und Bessarabiens (mit einem Titelbilde und Musikbeilagen) (Leipzig: Johan Ambrosius Barth, 1904).Google Scholar
18. On the language question and the work of the Moldovan Scientific Committee, see my “Indigenization and ‘Indigification': Language Construction in Early Soviet Moldova,” unpublished manuscript.Google Scholar
19. Archive of Social–Political Organizations of the Republic of Moldova, Chişinău (hereafter AOSPRM), fond 49, opis' 1, delo 1166, list 259. The complete titles of documents used in this article are available from the author.Google Scholar
20. Stalin, I. V., “Doklad o natsional'nykh momentakh v partiinom i gosudarstvennom stroitel'stve,” in Sochineniia, Vol. 5, 1947, pp. 257–258.Google Scholar
21. AOSPRM, f. 49, op. 1, d. 1890, l. 60.Google Scholar
22. AOSPRM, f. 49, op. 1, d. 2401, l. 6.Google Scholar
23. AOSPRM, f. 49, op. 1, d. 2401, l. 67.Google Scholar
24. AOSPRM, f. 49, op. 1, d. 516, l. 64.Google Scholar
25. “Postanovlenie Tsentral'nogo Ispolnitel'nogo Komiteta i Sovnarkom AMSSR ‘O moldovanizatsii i ukrainizatsii sovetskogo apparata',” Plugarul Rosh (The Red Ploughman), 30 June 1926, p. 6.Google Scholar
26. AOSPRM, f. 49, op. 1, d. 775, l. 4; d. 3364, l. 19 verso.Google Scholar
27. See AOSPRM f. 49, op. 1, d. 734, ll. 1–4; d. 935, ll. 17–18; d. 939, ll. 53–54; d. 1162, ll. 4–6; d. 2017, ll. 32–37, 48; d. 2181, ll. 18–20; d. 2401, ll. 5–7, 8–10, 55–58, 64–66; d. 3988, ll. 27–28; f. 32, op. 1, d. 522, l. 165.Google Scholar
28. AOSPRM, f. 49, op. 1, d. 2401, ll. 55–58.Google Scholar
29. AOSPRM, f. 49, op. 1, d. 2401, l. 6.Google Scholar
30. AOSPRM, f. 49, op. 1, d. 2401, l. 8; d. 3364, l. 7.Google Scholar
31. AOSPRM, f. 49, op. 1, d. 1022, l. 4; d. 1890, l. 78.Google Scholar
32. AOSPRM, f. 49, op. 1, d. 2401, l. 5; d. 2181, ll. 18–20.Google Scholar
33. Fierman, William, “The Shifting Russian and Uzbek Language Balance in Pre-World War II Uzbekistan,” International Journal of the Sociology of Language, No. 38, 1982, p. 136.Google Scholar
34. AOSPRM, f. 49, op. 1, d. 2401, l. 64.Google Scholar
35. AOSPRM, f. 49, op. 1, d. 2017, l. 33; d. 2401, l. 8.Google Scholar
36. AOSPRM, f. 49, op. 1, d. 1162, l. 4.Google Scholar
37. AOSPRM, f. 49, op. 1, d. 2017, l. 33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
38. AOSPRM, f. 49, op. 1, d. 2017, l. 48.Google Scholar
39. AOSPRM, f. 49, op. 1, d. 2017, ll. 27–28.Google Scholar
40. AOSPRM, f. 49, op. 1, d. 2017, l. 32.Google Scholar
41. AOSPRM, f. 49, op. 1, d. 2017, ll. 35–36, 44, 48.Google Scholar
42. AOSPRM, f. 49, op. 1, d. 1022, l. 1.Google Scholar
43. AOSPRM, f. 49, op. 1, d. 1556, l. 18.Google Scholar
44. AOSPRM, f. 49, op. 1, d. 1022, l. 1; d. 1890, l. 95; d. 2401, l. 14.Google Scholar
45. AOSPRM, f. 49, op. 1, d. 3997, l. 100.Google Scholar
46. AOSPRM, f. 49, op. 1, d. 3997, ll. 93–94, 122–125.Google Scholar
47. Moldovans formed the largest ethnic group in only four of the MASSR's 14 raions (Grigoriopol'skii, Dubossarskii, Slobodzeiskii, Chernianskii), and the second-largest group (after Ukrainians) in seven others (Anan'evskii, Valegotsulovskii, Kamenskii, Kodymskii, Kotovskii, Oknianskii, Rybnitskii).Google Scholar
48. AOSPRM, f. 49, op. 1, d. 1022, l. 1.Google Scholar
49. These ankety are located in AOSPRM, f. 49, op. 1, d. 9, ll. 1–261; d. 85, ll. 1–263; d. 1896, ll. 1–164; d. 1897, ll. 1–70; d. 3623, ll. 1–280. Information has been analyzed for nearly all the delegates to each conference, with the exception of the 7th, where only 233 of a possible 362 ankety seem to have survived.Google Scholar
50. A small number of delegates gave ambiguous answers which were impossible to code. Although the form of the ankety changed from year to year, most merely asked “Do you know Moldovan?” No distinction has been made here between those delegates who indicated their level of proficiency (e.g., “plokho,” “slabo,” etc.).Google Scholar
51. The last three years of the period 1925–1932, in fact, saw the largest in-take of Moldovans, when they accounted for one-quarter or more of all new party members. Lazo, E. S., Moldavskaia partiinaia organizatsiia v gody stroitel'stva sotsializma (1924–1940) (Chişinău: Stiinta, 1981), p. 26.Google Scholar
52. Liber, , “Korenizatsiia,” pp. 20–21.Google Scholar
- 8
- Cited by