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Stalin's Answer to the National Question: A Case Study on the Editing of the 1938 Short Course

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

David Brandenberger  and
Mikhail V. Zelenov
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Abstract

As a cornerstone of early Bolshevik propaganda, nationality policy allowed the revolutionary regime to cast the Soviet “experiment” as emancipatory in both ethnic and class terms. Paradoxically, much of the attention paid to the national question vanished from the party canon in 1938, for reasons that have never been fully explained. In this article we investigate this dramatic turnabout by examining how party historians and Iosif Stalin himself drafted what was to be the official narrative on nationality policy in the infamous Short Course on the History of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks). In so doing, we not only supply a new answer to the national question but also highlight a key new source for other investigations of the Stalin period.

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Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 73 , Issue 4 , Winter 2014 , pp. 859 - 880
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2014

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References

1. Fundamental work on Soviet nationality policy during the 1930s includes Simon, Gerhard, “Stalins ‘Lösung’ der nationalen Frage,” chap. 6 in Nationälismus und Nationalitatenpolitik in der Sowjetunion: Von der totalitären Diktaturzur nachstalinschen Gesellschaft (Baden-Baden, 1986), 153–94;Google Scholar Martin, Terry, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923-1929 (Ithaca, 1999);Google Scholar and Hirsch, Francine, Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union (Ithaca, 2005).Google Scholar This article focuses on official representation of the national question rather than behind-thescenes policy formation.

2. Istoriia Vsesoiuznoi kommunisticheskoi partii (bol'shevikov): Kratkii kurs (Moscow, 1938).

3. Inkeles, Alex, Public Opinion in Soviet Russia: A Study in Mass Persuasion (Cambridge, Mass., 1950);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Kenez, Peter, The Birth of the Soviet Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of Mass Mobilization, 1917-1929 (Cambridge, Eng., 1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4. Stalin, I. V., “O nekotorykh voprosakh istorii bol'shevizma,” Proletarskaia revoliutsiia 6 (1931): 3–21 Google Scholar.

5. Commager, Henry Steele, The Search for a Usable Past, and Other Essays in Historiography (New York, 1967), 3–27.Google Scholar

6. Ingulov, S., Politgramota—uchebnik dlia kandidatskikh partiinykh shkol, 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1933), 316–334;Google Scholar Iaroslavskii, E., Istoriia VKP(b), 2 vols. (Moscow, 1933), 1:162–64, 1:260-64, 2:28-29, 2:148-50, 2:167-70, 2:194-99, 2:326-28; V. G. Knorin, ed., Kratkaia istoriia VKP(b) (Moscow, 1934), 127-29,188-91, 202-5, 256-57, 278;Google Scholar Volin, B., Politgramota: Uchebnik dlia kandidatskikh partiinykh shkol, 3rd ed. (Moscow, 1934), 229–45;Google Scholar Ingulov, S., Politbesedy, 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1935), 93–99 Google Scholar; Ingulov, S. and Volin, B., Politgramota (Moscow, 1935), 229–46Google Scholar; and Ingulov, S., Politbesedy, 3rd ed. (Moscow, 1937), 89–94.Google Scholar On national communism and the Ukrainian and Belorussian scandals that ended this experiment between 1930 and 1933, see Martin, “The Politics of National Communism, 1923-1930,” “The National Interpretation of the 1933 Famine,” and “The Revised Soviet Nationalities Policy, 1933-1939,” chaps. 6, 7, and 9 in The Affirmative Action Empire. On the quiet persistence of korenizatsiia programs thereafter, see Blitstein, Peter A., “Stalin's Nations: Soviet Nationality Policy between Planning and Primordialism, 1936-1953” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1999), 189–252.Google Scholar

7. “Zakrytoe pis'mo TsK VKP(b): Uroki sobytii, sviazannykh so zlodeiskim ubiistvom tov. Kirova” (18 January 1935), Izvestiia TsKKPSS, no. 8 (1989): 96,100.

8. Brandenberger, David, Propaganda State in Crisis: Soviet Ideology, Indoctrination, and Terror under Stalin, 1927-1941 (New Haven, 2011).Google Scholar

9. “'0 nedostatkakh partiinoi raboty i merakh likvidatsii trotskistskikh i inykh dvurushnikov'- Doklad t. Stalina na plenume TsK VKP(b),” Pravda, 29 March 1937,2-4; “Materialy fevral'sko-martovskogo plenuma TsK VKP(b) 1937 g.,” Voprosy istorii, 1994, no. 10: 13; Voprosy istorii, 1995, no. 3:11,14-15.

10. Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial'no-politicheskoi istorii (RGASPI), fond (f.) 17, opis (op.) 114, delo (d.) 800, list (1.) 1 (Orgburo resolution of 25 March 1937, “0 vypolnenii resheniia Plenuma TsK ob organizatsii partiinykh kursov, leninskikh kursov i kursov po istorii i politike partii“); RGASPI, f. 558, op. 1, d. 3212,1. 27 (Politburo resolution of 16 April 1937, “Ob uchebnike po istorii VKP(b)“); RGASPI, f. 17, op. 114, d. 800, 1. 2 (Politburo resolution of 16 April 1937, “Ob organizatsii kursov usovershenstvovaniia dlia partkadrov, soglasno rezoliutsii poslednego plenuma TsK po punktu 4 poriadka dnia plenuma“); and ibid., 11.46-48 (Politburo resolution of 11 May 1937, “Ob organizatsii partiinykh kursov“).

11. Although Stalin later referred to Knorin as a “Polish and German spy,” there is some reason to believe that charges of ideological deviation also contributed to his fall. See the diary entry from 7 November 1937 in Dimitrov, Georgi, Dnevnik (9 Mart 1933—6 Fevuari 1949) (Sofia, 1997), 128;Google Scholar and P. V. Baranov's 18 October 1955 report on Knorin's rehabilitation at Rossiiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv noveishei istorii (RGANI), f. 3, op. 8, d. 335,11.97-100, published in Artizov, A., Sigachev, Iu., Shevchuk, I., and Khlopov, V., eds., Reabilitatsiia: Kak eto bylo—Dokumenty Prezidiuma TsK KPSS i drugie matehaly. Mart 1953-fevral’ 1956,3 vols. (Moscow, 2000), 1:273.Google Scholar

12. For Iaroslavskii's first manuscript and its critique, see RGASPI, f. 558, op. 3, d. 381; and RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1219,11. 21-35. On its revisions, see RGASPI, f. 89, op. 12, d. 2,11. 234-38 (Iaroslavskii to Stalin, 29 August 1937); RGASPI, f. 629, op. 1, d. 64,1. 78 (Pospelov's plan for the revisions, September 1937); RGASPI, f. 629, op. l, d. 101,11. 5-6 (Iaroslavskii to Pospelov, 13 and 19 September 1937); and RGANI, f. 3, op. 22, d. 174, 1. 123 (Pospelov to Stalin, 5 November 1937). For the second variant of the manuscript, see RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1208,11.2-295.

13. RGASPI, f. 89, op. 8, d. 807, 1. 3 (Iaroslavskii's 12 December 1939 speech at the Higher Party School).

14. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1217,11.26-28 (Stalin's handwritten directives).

15. The third variant's galleys are at RGASPI, f. 558, op. 3, dd. 75-77; the fourth variant's galleys are at RGASPI, f. 17, op. 120, d. 383. On the text's maturity, see RGASPI, f. 89, op. 8, d. 831,1.1 (Iaroslavskii's May 1938 speech at Moscow's Krasnogvardeiskii district party conference); and RGASPI, f. 77, op. 1, d. 692,1.175 (Zhdanov's 9 June 1938 speech to a Leningrad region party conference).

16. On Soviet orientalism, see Brandenberger, David, National Bolshevism: Stalinist Mass Culture and the Formation of Modern Russian National Identity, 1931-1956 (Cambridge, Mass., 2002), 93–94, 297n24, 302n83.Google Scholar

17. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 120, d. 383,1.148ob.

18. Ibid, 1. 461ob.

19. Ibid., 1.470ob.

20. Ibid, 1.473ob.

21. Here, laroslavskii and Pospelov appear to have gotten a bit carried away with their conspiratorial narrative, as the most obvious fascist power abroad—Nazi Germanywould only take official shape in 1933.

22. RGASPI, f. 17, op. 120, d. 383,11. 421ob-22.

23. Ibid, 1.514ob.

24. Ibid, 1. 516.

25. Ibid, 1. 519.

26. RGASPI, f. 89, op. 8, d. 807,1. 3. Archival evidence indicates that Stalin worked on Iaroslavskii and Pospelov's manuscript alone, with the assistance of only a small pool of typists. Stalin's office appointment book reveals that he received very few visitors in mid-May, mid-June, and early to mid-July, suggesting that it was during that time that he focused on the textbook. See Chernobaev, A. A., ed., Naprieme u Stalina: Tetradi (zhurnaly) zapisei lits, priniatykh I. V. Stalinym (1924-1953 gg.) (Moscow, 2008), 236–38.Google Scholar

27. According to the court historian 1.1. Mints, Stalin was a demanding editor who was “pedantically interested in formal exactitude” and unimpressed by metaphorical language, hyperbole, and literary devices like foreshadowing. He was highly critical of historical writing that focused on minutia at the expense of the big picture and did not hesitate to make cuts, at times replacing stricken material with his own text. For Mints's comments on Stalin's editing, see the summary of a June 1977 interview in Tucker, Robert C., Stalin in Power: The Revolution from Above, 1929-1941 (New York, 1990), 531–32.Google Scholar

28. The following analysis aggregates at least three rounds of Stalin's editing—in all, several thousand pages of handwritten marginalia, typescript, and publisher's galleys. For Stalin's first, largely abortive round, composed of the galleys to Iaroslavskii and Pospelov's third variant, see RGASPI, f. 558, op. 3, d. 77. For his second round, see the unbound pages from the fourth variant's galleys and Stalin's own typescript and handwritten pages and interpolations at RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1209,11.1-147; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1210,11.148-328; and RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1211,11.329-92. For Stalin's subsequent rounds of editing, see RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1212,11.1-157; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1213,11.160-314; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1214,11. 315-444; RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1215,11.445-567; and RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1216,11.568-670. Some materials, including intermediate copies of several chapters, appear to have been lost.

29. This editing stems from Stalin's dislike for the nineteenth-century tendency to single imperial Russia out as a uniquely reactionary and oppressive power. See Stalin, I. V., “O stat'e Engel'sa ‘Vneshniaia politika russkogo tsarizma,'” Bolshevik 9 (1941): 3–4;Google Scholar for the original 19 July 1934 letter to Stalin's Politburo colleagues, see RGASPI, f. 77, op. 1, d. 906,11.42-43.

30. Beriia, L. P., K voprosu ob istorii bol'shevistskikh organizatsii v Zakavkaz'e (Moscow, 1935).Google Scholar Both laroslavskii and Pospelov protested Stalin's excision of his early career from the text. See RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1219, 1. 38 (laroslavskii to Stalin, 17 August 1938); and ibid., 11.39-40 (Pospelov to Stalin, 17 August 1938).

31. Stalin's tendency to downgrade the threat posed by bourgeois nationalists is clear from his revisions to the account of the Sultan-Galiev scandal, where he added mention of more conspirators—F. G. Khodzhaev and other Uzbek nationalists—but deleted allegations that the group had penetrated the party's ranks at the request of foreign imperialist powers.

32. Compare RGASPI, f. 17, op. 120, d. 383,1. 471ob, to RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1215, 1. 502.

33. Brandenberger, David, “Ideological Zig Zag: Official Explanations for the Great Terror, 1936-1938,” in Harris, James, ed., The Anatomy of Terror: Political Violence under Stalin (Oxford, 2013), 143–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Rittersporn, GÁbor, “The Omnipresent Conspiracy: On Soviet Images of Politics and Social Relations in the 1930s,” in Getty, J. Arch and Manning, Roberta T., eds., Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives (Cambridge, Eng., 1993), 99–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

34. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1216,1. 665.

35. See, for instance, “Odna za drugoi, respubliki Sovetskogo Soiuza vstupaiut v izbiratel'nuiu kampaniiu,” Izvestiia, 24 April 1938,1; and M. Grigor'ian, “Torzhestvo Leninsko- Stalinskoi natsional'noi politiki,” Izvestiia, 24 June 1938,3.

36. Central Committee resolution of 14 November 1938, “O postanovke partiinoi propagandy v sviazi s vypuskom ‘Kratkogo kursa istorii VKP(b),'” Pravda, 15 November 1938, 1-2; for an example of the auxiliary texts that were published at this time without elaborating on nationality policy, see Pomoshch’ izuchaiushchim istoriiu VKP(b): KIVglave Kratkogo kursa istorii VKP(b) (Stalingrad, 1941).

37. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1219,11.36-37 (Stalin to the Politburo and authors of the Short Course, 16 August 1938).

38. It's worth noting that this transformation of the text was only marginally successful. Stalin lacked training in history and ultimately produced a schematic narrative that was as bloodless as those that circulated in the 1920s. See Brandenberger, Propaganda State in Crisis, 205-6.

39. Hirsch, Empire of Nations, 12-14, 272-309, 310-17; Francine Hirsch, “The Soviet Union as a Work-in-Progress: Ethnographers and the Category Nationality in the 1926, 1937, and 1939 Censuses,” Slavic Review 56, no. 2 (Summer 1997): 272-78.

40. Simon, Nationalismus und Nationalitatenpolitik in der Sowjetunion, 168-71; Blitstein, “Stalin's Nations,” 11-12,189-191. Both Simon and Blitstein view long-term changes in nationality policy as culminating in the passage of the constitution rather than being precipitated by it.

41. Hoffmann, David, Stalinist Values: The Cultural Norms of Soviet Modernity, 1917- 1941 (Ithaca, 2003), 146–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Although Hoffmann argues that class consciousness was depreciated in the name of social and cultural unity, he does not make the same claim in regard to ethnic diversity.

42. See Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire, 403-14; and Brandenberger, National Bolshevism. On the connection of the waning of the national question with the rise of Russocentrism, see, for instance, Iefimenko, Gennadii, Natsional'no-kul'turna polityka VKP(b) shchodo radians'koï Ukraïny (19321938) (Kiev, 2001);Google Scholar and Hosking, Geoffrey, review of Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the Soviet Union, by Hirsch, Francine, Journal of Modern History 79, no. 2 (Summer 2007): 492.Google Scholar

43. See, for instance, “Pervaia sredi ravnykh,” Izvestiia, 22 April 1938,1; and I. Trainin, “Verkhovnyi Sovet RSFSR,” Izvestiia, 26 April 1938,3.

44. It is striking how little attention is paid in the Short Course to Russian history, the Russian people, or more abstract Russocentric themes, whether in Iaroslavskii and Pospelov's original text or any of Stalin's thousands of editorial interpolations. Stalin, it seems, viewed official Russocentrism as a populist mobilizational slogan most appropriate for social use on the mass level. He declined to include it in party history textbooks because these materials were aimed at better-educated audiences that could be expected to master more orthodox Marxist-Leninist propaganda. This ideological bifurcation was abandoned in 1941 in favor of a more integrated, hybridized approach. See Brandenberger, Propaganda State in Crisis, 210.

45. Stalin and his Politburo comrades spent much of the spring and summer of 1938 replacing party secretaries and other officials in the republics. See the Central Committee, Politburo, and Orgburo decisions at RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1193,11. 2-5, 24, 55, 70, 72,104,109-10,113,140,156; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1194,11. 91,105,107; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1195,11. 62-63, 71, 79,125-26,128-29,156; RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1196,11. 53, 67, 70-72,119,123,166; and RGASPI, f. 17, op. 163, d. 1197,11. 82,108. More generally, see Simon, Nationalismus und Nationälitatenpolitik in der Sowjetunion, 180-94.

46. See, for instance, “Velikii istoricheskii urok,” Izvestiia, 17 November 1938,1; “20 let Belorusskoi SSR,” Izvestiia, 1 Januaruy 1939,1; and “15 let Nakhichevanskoi ASSR,“ Izvestiia, 8 February 1939,4.

47. Similar circumstances appear to explain the fate of the Komsomol and Comintern, which were stricken from the party's historical record at the same time.

48. RGASPI, f. 558, op. 11, d. 1122,11.37-40, 41,30,41 (Stenographic report of a 27 September 1938 meeting of leading Moscow and Leningrad party propagandists).