p As we have pointed out earlier, a major objective of modern imperialism’s strategy and tactics is to disunite the revolutionary forces. In this connection, imperialist policy and propaganda, directed against the Soviet Union and the other countries of the socialist community, accentuate the use of all available forms of nationalism and support the various ways in which it is revived and manifested. Speaking on the 50th anniversary of the USSR, Leonid Brezhnev noted that the question of nationalities is one of the most decisive areas of the struggle between capitalism and socialism.

p The 50th anniversary of the founding and development of the USSR set off a wave of anti-communist attacks on the experience of socialism. The anti-communists published 126 new editions of old and brought out innumerable new publications on national relations and the nationalities policy of the Communist parties of the USSR, the GDR, Czechoslovakia and other socialist countries and articulated new and old fabrications about the inequality of and discrimination against ethnic minorities.

p Considerable prominence is given in anti-communist literature to the question of the incompatibility between socialism and nationalism. However, in most cases, this complex and contradictory problem is reduced to the dilemma of “either socialism or nationalism”, and is resolved depending on the author’s political attitude and sympathies. Moreover, in recent years a heightened interest has been shown in the question of nationalism’s historical prospects and its influence on the future of socialism and the revolutionary movements. The calculations of the anti-communist strategists on an “explosive wave” of nationalism are presented in various packings: the national question is said to be fatal and unsolvable, modern history is defined as the “age of nationalism”, and so on. Moreover, attempts are being made to present nationalism as an everlasting and independent phenomenon that today, allegedly, dominates the “principal ideologies”, above all, the teaching of scientific socialism, the political ideology of the working class.^^17^^ In the Western world there is now a phalanx of prophets, oracles and futurologists foretelling the disintegration, degeneration, evolution or destruction of socialism, particularly in the USSR.

p Many opuses have been published with pretentious titles, for instance, Nationalism, the Last Phase of Communism. Lastly, there are books and articles that claim to give an unbiassed exposition of national problems and their prospects under socialism. Let us examine in greater detail the arguments presented in one of these articles printed in Problems of Communism, an anti-communist journal.^^18^^ The article in question, “Sociology in the Soviet Union”, was penned by Zev Katz who is associated with the Russian 127 Research Centre at Harvard University and the Institute of Soviet and East European Studies at Glasgow University. His being an “expert” on Russian affairs makes his revelations all the more interesting.

p In the section “Ethnical Relations” in which, according to Katz, he deals with “one of the touchiest problem areas facing Soviet policymakers”, he considers what he calls negative national attitudes. Referring to studies by Soviet sociologists and interpreting the data given by them through his own prism he writes that in the USSR there are two types of nationalism. One is the traditional type of national prejudices as a consequence of inadequate education, existing religious bigotry and absence of contacts between nationalities; this type is losing its foundation and tends to disappear. The second—nationalism of a new type—is generated by the conditions of a mixed national environment, in which there is an intensification of competition for prestigious jobs and so on. This is the “new nationalism” that gives Soviet leaders three reasons for anxiety. The first is that the “new nationalism” clashes with one of the basic principles of Soviet ideology, namely, that socialist development automatically removes all national prejudices. The second, Katz writes, is that bitter ingratitude may be what the Russians will get as a reward for their efforts in building socialism, for their investment of labour and capital in the non-Russian areas. Lastly, the third reason, the rapid population growth of the non-Russian minorities and even the accelerated growth of their intelligentsia, may make the Soviet leaders apprehensive that their policy is helping to strengthen precisely these nationalistic elements.

p That is how Katz pictures the state and prospects of the national relations in the Soviet Union. These and other “ findings”, with references to studies by Soviet sociologists, give the article the semblance of objectivity. Actually, on the theoretical level we have before us a case of typical objectivism that juggles facts in order to draw sensational conclusions conforming to the anti-communist political 128 orientation of the author, who clearly does not wish to reckon with the natural link between facts and events and show their movement and the historical prospects for national relations. The Soviet Union’s experience of the past half century does indeed attract the scientific and practical interest of any unbiassed researcher, for this experience gives striking, concentrated expression of the socialist alternative to all varieties and forms of modern nationalism.

p The Soviet Government’s very first decree—Lenin’s Decree on Peace—gave legislative force to the principle of the self-determination of nations up to and including secession, of the sovereign right of each nation to decide the question of the democratic principles and forms of its state system. Many judicial acts have been passed to reaffirm the equality of big and small nations, abolishing all the claims of Russian imperialism to supremacy over non-Russian nations and nationalities, and annulling national and estate privileges. These acts include the Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia, the Message of the Council of People’s Commissars to All the Working Moslems of Russia and the East, the Declaration of the Rights of the Toiling and Exploited People, the decrees on the self-determination of the Ukraine, Finland, Poland and Armenia, and the decree of the Council of People’s Commissars on nipping the antiSemitic movement in the bud. In an acute ideological and political struggle the Soviet Government rejected misconceived national-nihilistic views and substantiated and implemented the policy of setting up sovereign national Soviet republics. At the same time, Lenin linked the prospects of the Soviet state directly to the military, political and economic alliance of the Soviet republics. This alliance took the shape of a federation of equal socialist states founded on the principles of voluntary unity, fraternal co-operation and mutual assistance.

p The historical social experiment of resurrecting and rejuvenating nations, of their socialist transformation and of determining the development trend of national relations 129 is, needless to say, long and difficult. For that reason, at the dawn of Soviet power Lenin noted that it was necessary to “study the specific features of the extremely difficult and new path to socialism without concealing our mistakes and weaknesses”.^^19^^ However, despite the difficulties, errors and distortions in the implementation of the Leninist nationalities policy, its principal achievement is the viability and flourishing of the alliance of equal Soviet republics that has passed the test of development and, especially, of the struggle against the foreign intervention and the nazi invasion. This experience of the voluntary union and development of the socialist nations and nationalities, the realisation of the Leninist nationalities policy and its international significance are the main objects of anti-Soviet falsifications by the Sovietologists.

p And now a few words about the present state and development trends of nationalities and nations in the Soviet Union and the content of national relations under socialism. The changes in the national relations and their trends and prospects cannot be considered in isolation from the general development of the social structure. The social content of the relations within and between nations is determined chiefly by the given society’s economic and class structure. It is unquestionable, for example, that the development of capitalism had not only consolidated nations but also, to a certain degree, facilitated the integration of the population within the framework of national-state communities. However, in antagonistic societies the integration of the population, included in one or several socio-ethnical communities, is accompanied by a class division into exploiters and the exploited. Social practice demonstrates that capitalism deepens the incompatibility of the economic and cultural interests of the opposing classes in individual nations, generates and accentuates the class contrasts of culture and ideology in each nation and inescapably pursues a policy of social and national discrimination.

p An entirely different situation is to be observed in a 130 developed socialist society. In it the leading tendency of change in the social structure is toward growing social homogeneity expressed in the drawing together of classes and social groups and the erasure of the essential distinctions between town and countryside, between workers by brain and by hand in each of the socialist nations.

p For instance, the growth of the productive forces in agriculture, the gradual conversion of farm labour into a variety of industrial labour, the rising cultural standards in the countryside and the restructuring of rural life are changing the social make-up and mentality of the peasant. He acquires more and more traits of the industrial worker as the number of collective farmers whose labour is directly linked with machines and mechanisms grows and their educational level rises. On the other hand, the percentage of rural workers increases in the composition of the working class as a whole.

p The qualitative changes in the occupation of people and their place in the system of social production, the character of their labour and their role in the social organisation of labour, and the growing identification of the labour of workers with that of engineers and technicians are typical of the increasing homogeneity of Soviet society’s social structure. It goes without saying that this tendency towards social homogeneity predominates also in each socialist nation.

p This was preceded by a long and persevering struggle against all survivals of national oppression and colonial slavery, by the abolition of the bitter legacy of the old system in the shape of the economic, political and cultural inequality of nations.

p The situation was compounded by the fact that the numerous peoples of old Russia were at various stages of socioeconomic development, ranging from the patriarchal-clan to the capitalist system, with a large portion of the population —over 25 million—running their farms in backward, precapitalist ways. In these conditions the Russian proletariat had to give effective and sustained assistance to the 131 backward peoples in their economic and cultural construction. The unification of formerly backward peoples with the more developed nations in a single socialist state made it possible, in each Union republic, to build up a modern industry and a mechanised agriculture, train large numbers of national personnel and surmount the actual inequality by levelling up the economic and cultural development of all nations. Socialist co-operation and the new specialisation of the economy of the republics and autonomous regions have put an end to social inequality, although historical distinctions still remain in the economy and in culture.

p But these distinctions give no grounds for the assertions of some anti-communists that the question of nationalities or national antagonisms have not been resolved and that national discrimination persists in the Soviet Union. The facts are utterly ignored by the British sociologist Geoffrey Wheeler, who alleges that the economy of the Central Asian Soviet republics is of a colonial nature (in the book The Modern History of Soviet Central Asia), and by Hugh Seton-Watson, Professor of Russian History at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at London University, who claims that in the backward non-Russian areas the economic upsurge was promoted in the interests of the Soviet “empire” (in the book The New Imperialism).

p Suffice it to recall some indicators of the industrial and cultural advance of the Central Asian republics over which the anti-communists shed crocodile tears. Under Soviet power the volume of industrial output rose 600-fold in Kazakhstan, over 500-fold in Tajikistan, more than 400-fold in Kirghizia, nearly 240-fold in Uzbekistan and more than 130- fold in Turkmenia. In Kazakhstan and the Central Asian republics there is practically 100 per cent literacy, and almost half of the population have either a higher or a secondary education. There are similar indices in all the non-Russian areas without exception, which today comprise the voluntary union of socialist nations.

p The creation of a single material and technical basis of 132 socialism in the non-Russian republics does not, of course, mean that unification of their development has been achieved by decree. Some of the socialist nations—Russian, Ukrainian, Byelorussian, Georgian, Estonian etc.—were remoulded on the basis of nations that had taken shape long ago; others—Udmurt, Kazakh, Mari, Tajik—were formed as a result of the consolidation of nationalities and tribes that by-passed capitalism or the phase of developed capitalism. A number of socialist nationalities were consolidated on the basis of numerically small tribes and nationalities that had preserved patriarchal-clan relations (for instance, the Chukchi, the Evenki and other Northern peoples). Naturally, compared with the developed socialist nations, certain distinctions still remain in the development level of the economy, culture and art of these peoples.

p One of the most significant results of the transformation of socio-ethnic communities under socialism is not only the abolition of antagonistic classes but also the removal of the socio-economic and class roots of hostility for other nations.

p The national salvation or resurrection of a socio-ethnic community and its socialist transformation and swift economic and cultural advancement form the content of one of the progressive tendencies in the development of national relations, the tendency towards the flowering of nations. This tendency characterises chiefly the orientation and result of internal national self-development under socialism. Similarly progressive is the tendency that shows the relations of a given socio-ethnic community to other communities within the framework of a multinational socialist state and in regard to other socialist nations. This tendency stems from the basic nature of socialism, which, to use the words of Lenin, facilitates and gigantically accelerates the drawing together of nations.^^20^^ Moreover, Lenin pointed out that “the aim of socialism is ... not only to bring the nations closer together but to integrate them”.^^21^^

p Incidentally, it will be noted that the development of those two tendencies is deliberately misrepresented by the 133 anti-communists, who sometimes portray them as mutually excluding opposites and, on that basis, try to find insoluble contradictions in the Marxist-Leninist theory of national relations under socialism. Yet history amply shows that periods of the rapid development of individual peoples were not ushered in by isolation from or by opposition to other civilisations. On the contrary, they came largely as a result of the adoption, spread and assimilation of the finest achievements of the material and spiritual culture of other peoples.

p Such, in general outline, was the natural process of the mutual enrichment of earlier civilisations and cultures that was disrupted mainly by the class-egoistical aims of the ruling social groups. It is, therefore, not surprising that the internationalist character of material production and the consolidation of the economic and political community of the multinational Soviet people actively facilitate the internationalisation of their cultural life and intensify the drawing together of the Soviet nations.

p The new historical community known as the Soviet people embodies Lenin’s theory of the drawing together of nations in the course of socialist and communist construction.

p The multinational Soviet people are characterised by social unity springing from their community and the unity of basic economic, political, national and ideological interests. Citizens of the Soviet Union are people with equal rights and free of exploitation, who are the bearers of socialist material and spiritual relations. In the national respect the Soviet people are a state association of nations and nationalities resting on a socialist foundation, the unity and the optimum combination of internationalist and national interests, the political consolidation of nations and the socialist integration of their economic life. They have a common language of intercourse that furthers the mutual enrichment of their developing socialist cultures.

p From the theoretical standpoint the Soviet people represent a transitional historical form of social community. The 134 internationalisation of mankind’s material and spiritual life is evidently realised through the drawing together and fusion of nations and, in the future communist society, it will give rise to new forms of human association. The transition to this association presupposes a radical transformation on an international scale of each of the elements of socialist society’s structure. This concerns, consequently, not only the reshaping of the class structure and the building of a classless society but also a fundamental restructuring of state and national communities which will ultimately lead to the communist structure characterised by the absence of classes, the state and the nationality.

p As regards modern socialism, despite the political speculations of its enemies on existing national distinctions and nonantagonistic contradictions between the nations of socialist countries, its analysis allows drawing some important conclusions.

p First, unlike capitalism, developed socialism has already proved the fundamental possibility of solving the question of nationalities as a political problem of the abolition of national oppression and national discrimination and attaining actual equality among the socialist nations, nationalities and national minorities.

p Second, the experience that has been accumulated of building socialism and communism bears out the theory that the tendency toward the flowering and drawing together of nations is linked with socio-economic, class-political and cultural changes on a socialist foundation.

Third, the new social community—the Soviet people— brought into being by the practice of the world’s first socialist state gives in general outline the possible models and phases of the historical process of the drawing together of nations through which, with various modifications, the whole of mankind is destined to pass.