Encyclopedia of Russian History

by James Millar

  JULIA ULYANNIKOVA

  EMPIRE, USSR AS

  The understanding of the concept of empire depends on time and space. During the nineteenth century the terms empire and imperialism were associated with the spread of progress by countries claiming to represent civilized forms of existence. By the end of World War II the emergent superpowers, the United States and the USSR, adhered to an anti-imperialist, anti-empire ideology and thereby ended the colonial empires of countries such as Britain and France.

  According to Leninist thought, empire and imperialism represented the highest and last stages of capitalist development after which socialism would emerge. Therefore the Soviet leadership never considered the multinational USSR, the leader of socialist revolution, to be an empire. This Leninist ideological definition of empire, while providing a framework for comprehending the Soviet leadership’s approach to governing, fails to describe the dynamics of the USSR as an empire. As shown by Dominic Lieven (2000), a country must fulfill several criteria to be considered an empire. It must be continental in scale, governing a range of different peoples, represent a great culture or ideology with more than local hegemony, exercise great economic and military might on more than a regional level, and arguably govern without the consent of the people. According to these criteria the USSR was indeed an empire, however not without certain characteristics distinguishing it from other empires, such as the British, Ottoman, or Hapsburg.

  The USSR was the world’s largest country, extending from Europe in the west to China and the Pacific in the east, its southern borders touching the boundaries of the Middle East. Given this geographic position, Moscow was a player in three of the world’s most important regions. The Soviet Union’s population consisted of hundreds of different peoples speaking a myriad of languages and practicing different religions, including Judaism, Orthodoxy, Catholicism, Protestantism, and Sunni and Shia Islam. Such diversity was reminiscent of the great British and French maritime empires.

  Josef Stalin’s brutal industrialization policies and victory in World War II paved the way for the Soviet Union’s emergence as a superpower with global reach and influence. The Soviet economy was the second largest in the world despite its many deficiencies and supported a huge military industrial complex, which by the 1960s had enabled the

  EMPIRE, USSR AS

  USSR to attain nuclear parity with the United States while maintaining the largest armed forces in the world.

  Ideological power accompanied this military and economic might. The Cold War between the USSR and the United States was rooted in alternative visions of modernity. Whereas the United States held that liberal democracy and capitalism ultimately represented the end of history, the Soviet Union believed that an additional stage, that of communism, represented the true end of history. Many across the globe found Soviet communism’s claims of representing a truly egalitarian and therefore more humane society attractive. In other words, the ideological and cultural power of the USSR exercised global influence.

  In the midst of war and revolution many areas of the former tsarist empire became independent. With the exception of Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and parts of Poland, the Bolsheviks, through the effective and brutal use of force and coercion and under the banner of progressive Soviet communism, resurrected the empire they once called “Prison of the Peoples.” In 1940 Stalin invaded and occupied the Baltic States, which subsequently, according to Soviet propaganda, voluntarily became part of the USSR. Until the late 1980s during the reform process of Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet leadership governed without the direct consent of the people.

  LAND-BASED EMPIRE

  The Soviet Union was a land-based empire encompassing all the territories of its tsarist predecessor- except Poland and Finland-while adding other areas such as western Ukraine and Bessarabia. The dynamics of a land-based empire differ greatly from those of maritime empires, such as the British and French. Before embarking on maritime empire building, countries such as Britain, France, and Spain already had a relatively solidified national identity. In tsarist Russia, empire and nation building commenced at roughly the same time, thereby blurring empire and nation. To determine where Russia the nation ended and where the empire began was difficult. This theme would continue in the Soviet era.

  Given the geographical distance between the metropole and its maritime empire, a clear division remained between colonized, most of whom were of different races and cultures, and colonizer, and therefore the question of assimilation of different peoples under a single supranational ideology or symbol never arose. The metropolitan British identity was neither created nor adjusted to include the peoples of the vast empire ruled by London. In tsarist Russia the emperor and the crown represented the supranational entity to which the various peoples of the empire were to pledge their loyalty. Here, terminology is important. Two words for the English equivalent of “Russian” exist. When discussing anything related to Russian ethnicity, such as a person or the language, the word russky is used. However the empire, its institutions and the dynasty, were called rossysky, which carried a civil meaning designed to include everyone from Baltic German to Tatar. The emperor himself was known not as the “russky” tsar, but vserossysky (All-Russian).

  The Soviet leadership faced the same problems of governing and assimilation associated with a multiethnic land empire. While Soviet nationality policy, in other words how Soviet leaders approached governing this large and diverse empire, varied over time, its goals never did. They were (a) to maintain the country’s territorial integrity and domestic security; (b) to support the monopolistic hold on power of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU); and (c) create a supranational Soviet identity, reminiscent of the civil rossysky. On one hand the Soviet leadership in line with Marxist-Leninist thought believed that nationalism, the death knell for any multinational empire, was a phenomenon inherent to capitalism and the bourgeois classes. Therefore, with the advent of socialism, broadly defined working class interests would triumph over national loyalties. In short, socialism makes nationalism redundant. On the other hand, the reality of governing a multiethnic empire required the Soviet leadership to pursue several policies reminiscent of a traditional imperial polity, such as deportations of whole peoples, playing one ethnic group against another, and drawing boundaries designed to maintain the supremacy of the central power.

  Unlike previous empires, the USSR was a federation that had fifteen republics at the time of its dissolution in 1991. Confident in the relatively speedy victory of socialism and communism over capitalism, in the 1920s the Soviet leadership followed a very accommodating policy in regard to nationalities. Along with the creation of a federation that institutionalized national identities, the new Soviet authorities supported the spread and strengthening of non-Russian cultures, languages,

  EMPIRE, USSR AS

  1. Armenian S.S.R. 6. Latvian S.S.R. 2. Azerbaijan S.S.R. 7. Lithuanian S.S.R. 3. Belorussian S.S.R. 8. Moldavian S.S.R. 4. Estonian S.S.R. 9. Tajik S.S.R. 5. Georgian S.S.R.

  4J^

  ^ V ^* Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1985. XNR PRODUCTIONS. THE GALE GROUP and identities. In areas where a national identity already existed, such as Ukraine, Georgia, and Armenia, great ethnic cultural autonomy was allowed. In areas where no national identity yet existed, as in Central Asia, Soviet ethnographers worked to create peoples and national borders, based on cultural and economic considerations. The Soviet drawing of borders is comparable to the creation of states by European imperial powers in Africa and the Middle East. Each created republic had identical state, bureaucratic, and educational structures, an Academy of Sciences, and other institutions whose responsibility was the maintenance and strengthening of the national identity as well as propagation of Marxist-Leninist teachings. Therefore the Soviet Union supported and gave birth to national identities, whereas other land-based empires, such as the Ottoman and Habsburg, fought against them. At the same time the central Soviet authorities recruited indigenous
people in the non-Russian republics to serve in local, republican, and even all-union institutions. Alongside nation building went social and economic modernization, and a requirement for the emergence of socialism, which would bring an end to strong national feelings. Unlike French and British colonial rule, the Soviets made dramatic changes of the societies and peoples of the USSR- one of the main thrusts of their nationality policy. While Central Asia and the Caucasus were the most economically and socially “backward,” through rapid industrialization and collectivization of peasant land all societies of the USSR endured dramatic change, surpassing the extent to which France and Britain had affected their colonial possessions. Importantly, the Soviets strove to modernize Russia, which many regarded to be the imperial power. There is no such analogy in regard to the maritime European empires, whose metropole was considered to be at the forefront of modernization and civilization.

  The rule of Josef Stalin brought changes to this policy. Regarding cultural autonomy a threat to the

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  integrity of the Soviet state, Stalin imposed very strong central control over the constituent republics and appointed Russians to many of the high posts in the non-Russian republics. The biggest change, however, was in regard to the position of the Russian people within Soviet ideology. The Russians were now portrayed as the elder brother of the Soviet peoples whose culture and language provided the means for achieving communist modernity. Appreciation and love of Russian culture and language was no longer regarded as a threat to Soviet identity, but rather a reflection of loyalty to it.

  From Stalin’s death to the collapse of the USSR, Soviet nationality policy was an amalgamation of the policies followed during the first thirty-five years of Soviet power. The peoples of the non-Russian republics again filled positions in republican institutions. Through access to higher education, privilege, and the opportunity to exercise power within their republican or local domain, the central leadership created a sizeable and reliable body of non-Russian cadres who, with their knowledge of the local languages and cultures, ruled the non-Russian parts of the empire under the umbrella of the CPSU. However, Great Russians, meaning Russians, Ukrainians, or Belarusians, usually occupied military and intelligence service positions.

  The Soviet command economy centered in Moscow limited the power of the local and republican authorities. Through allocation of economic resources, goods, and infrastructure, the central Soviet authorities wielded a great degree of real power throughout the USSR. Moreover, in traditional imperial style, Moscow exploited the natural resources of all republics, such as Russian oil and natural gas and Uzbek cotton, to fulfill all-union policies even to the detriment of the individual republic.

  The problem of assimilation of varied peoples and the creation of a supranational identity remained. After the death of Stalin, the Soviet leadership realized that ethnic national feelings in the USSR were not dissipating and in some cases were strengthening. The Soviet leadership’s response was essentially the promotion of a two-tiered identity. On one level it spoke of the flourishing of national identities and cultures. The leadership stressed, however, that this flourishing took place within a Soviet framework in which the people’s primary loyalty was to the Soviet identity and homeland. In other words, enjoyment of one’s national culture and language was not a barrier to having supreme loyalty to the progressive supranational Soviet identity. Nevertheless the existence of national feelings continued to worry the Soviet leadership. During the late 1950s it adopted a new language policy, at the heart of which was expansion of Russian language teaching. The hope was that acquisition of Russian language and therefore culture would bring with it the spread and strengthening of a Soviet identity. The issue of language is always sensitive in the imperial framework. Attempts by a land-based empire to impose a single language frequently results in enflaming national feelings among the people whose native tongue is not the imperial one. Yet every land-based empire, especially one the size of the USSR, needs a lingua franca in order to govern and ease the challenges of administration.

  RUSSIA AND THE SOVIET EMPIRE

  One of the more contentious issues concerns the extent to which the Soviet Union was a Russian empire. The USSR did exist in the space of the former tsarist empire. The Russian language was the lingua franca. From Stalin onwards the Russians and their high culture were portrayed as progressive and therefore the starting point on the path toward the modern Soviet identity. Great Russians held the vast majority of powerful positions in the center, as well as sensitive posts in the non-Russian republics. Many people in the non-Russian republics regarded the USSR and Soviet identity to be only a different form of Russian imperialism dating from the tsarist period.

  On the other hand the Soviets destroyed two symbols of Russian identity-the tsar and the peasantry-while emasculating the other, the Russian Orthodox Church. During the 1920s Lenin and other Bolsheviks, seeing Russian nationalism as the biggest internal threat to the Soviet state, worked to contain it. The Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, by far the largest of the republics of the USSR whose population equaled all of the others combined, had no separate Communist Party and appropriate institutions in contrast to all of the other republics. The Soviet regime used Russian high culture and symbols, but in a sanitized form designed to construct and strengthen a Soviet identity. The Russian people suffered just as much as the other peoples from the crimes of the Soviet regime, especially under Stalin. Already by the 1950s Russian nationalism was on the rise. The Soviet regime was blamed for destroying Russian culture and Russia itself through its reckless exploitation of land and natural resources in pursuit

  ENGELS, FRIEDRICH

  of Soviet goals. In the closing years of the USSR the symbols of Russian identity, the tsarist tricolor flag and the double-headed eagle, were commonly seen, while cities and streets regained their prerev-olutionary Russian names. For many Russians, a distinction existed between Russian and Soviet identity.

  COLLAPSE OF THE SOVIET EMPIRE

  Debate continues over the causes of the collapse of the USSR and specifically the extent to which Soviet handling of its multiethnic empire was responsible for it. The Soviet federal structure, although leaving real power in Moscow, nevertheless institutionalized and therefore strengthened national identities, which are lethal to any multinational empire. Yet the goal of nationality policy was the creation of a supranational Soviet identity. Despite this contradiction, Soviet nationality policy when compared to that of other imperial polities enjoyed a relative degree of success. By encouraging dependence on the state and protecting the educational and occupational interests of the local political elite and educated middle class, the central Soviet leadership blunted aspirations to independent nationhood and integrated groups within the Soviet infrastructure. While the use of local elites to govern the periphery is a traditional imperial practice, providing a degree of legitimacy to the imperial power, Soviet non-Russian elites achieved powerful positions within their respective republics, wielding power unattainable by the colonized local populations in the French and British empires.

  Ideological power is as strong as its ability to deliver what it promises. Disillusionment with the unfulfilled economic promises of the Soviet ideology weakened loyalty to the Soviet identity. Gorbachev’s economic policies only worsened the economic situation. At the same time, Gorbachev ended the CPSU’s monopoly on power. Faced with growing popular dissatisfaction with the economic situation and loss of guarantee of power through the CPSU, regional and local political figures became nationalists when the national platform seemed to be the only way for them to retain power as the imperial center, the CPSU, weakened.

  Russia itself led the charge against the Soviet center, thereby creating a unique situation. The country that many people inside and outside the USSR considered to be the imperial power, revolted against what it regarded to be the imperial power, the CPSU and central Soviet control over Russia, leading to th
e collapse of one of the world’s great land-based empires. See also: COLONIAL EXPANSION; COLONIALISM; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, SOVIET; NATIONALITIES POLICIES, TSARIST; UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  Barkey, Karen, and Von Hagen, Mark, eds. (1997). After Empire. London: Westview Press. Dawisha, Karen, and Parrott, Bruce, eds. (1997). The End of Empire? The Transformation of the USSR in Comparative Perspective. London: M. E. Sharpe. Lieven, Dominic. (2000). Empire. London: John Murray. Nahaylo, Bohdan, and Swoboda, Victor. (1990). Soviet Disunion. London: Penguin. Pipes, Richard. (1964). The Formation of the Soviet Union. London: Harvard University Press. Rezun, Miron, ed. (1992). Nationalism and the Breakup of an Empire: Russia and Its Periphery. Westport, CT: Praeger. Rudolph, Richard, and Good, David, eds. (1992). Nationalism and Empire: The Habsburg Empire and the Soviet Union. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Suny, Ronald. (1993). The Revenge of the Past: Nationalism, Revolution, and the Collapse of the Soviet Union. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Szporluk, Roman. (2000). Russia, Ukraine, and the Breakup of the Soviet Union. Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press.

  ZHAND P. SHAKIBI

  ENGELS, FRIEDRICH

  (1820-1895), German socialist theoretician; close collaborator of Karl Marx.

  Friedrich Engels is remembered primarily as the close friend and intellectual collaborator of Karl Marx, who was the most important socialist thinker and arguably the most important social theorist of the nineteenth century. Engels must be regarded as a significant intellectual figure in his own right. Engels’s writings exerted a strong influence on Soviet Marxist-Leninist ideology. Engels was born in Barmen in 1820, two and a half years after Marx. Ironically, Friedrich Engels worked for decades as the manager of enterprises in his family’s firm of Ermen and Engels; this necessitated his move to Manchester in 1850. Engels contributed substantially to the financial support of Marx and