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1203020000~ [2] Contents Page From the Author................. 5 Chapter I. Nations and National Relations: Problems of Theory............... 7 Chapter II. Development of Marxists-Leninists' Views on Federation.............. 36 Chapter III. Self-Determination of Nations: Autonomy and Federation............... 55 Chapter IV Independent Soviet Republics: Unity Is Strength . 75 Chapter V. Formation of the USSR as a Natural, Logical Result of the Peoples' Movement for Unification . 95 Chapter VI. Politico-Legal Status of the USSR and Union Republics ............... HI Chapter VII. Economic Co-operation of Nations in the USSR . 132 Chapter VIII. Cultural Growth of Soviet Nations..... 160 Chapter IX. Social Development of Soviet Nations .... 183 Notes and References................ 202 [3] ~ [4] __ALPHA_LVL1__ FROM THE AUTHORNineteen eighty-two is the year of the 60th anniversary of the foundation of the USSR, an integral, federal, multinational Soviet state.
``The 60th anniversary of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is a red-letter day in the life of the Soviet people, and evidence of the triumph of the Leninist nationalities policy of the CPSU, of the historic achievements of socialism,'' says the CPSU Central Committee resolution, The 60th Anniversary of the Formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. ``On this glorious anniversary, the Soviet Union stands for all the world to see as a close-knit friendly family of equal republics that are jointly building communism.''
Socialist federation, which has found its supreme embodiment in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, developed under the guidance of V. I. Lenin. The Party and Lenin discovered the fundamentally new federative pattern of a voluntary and equal union of nations in accordance with their right of self-- determination. The process of formation of the Soviet federal state was neither simple nor easy. Grave difficulties stemming from the economic and cultural lag of many of Russia's ethnic outskirts had to be overcome; one had to fight the attempts of the enemies of the new social system to use the old legacy of national strife for their own ends, to fight bourgeois nationalism and great-power chauvinism. There was much that was found in the course of a patient search which had to be carried on in the most intricate situation of revolutionary struggle, civil war, and foreign armed intervention. ``Such a union,'' Lenin warned, ``cannot be effected at one stroke; we have to work towards it with the greatest patience and = __NOTE__ Just one footnote in entire book; was "1" in original! Why? circumspection."^^*^^
_-_-_~^^*^^ V. I. Lenin, ``Letter to the Workers and Peasants of the Ukraine Apropos of the Victories over Denikin'', Collected Works, Vol. 30, Progress Publishers, Moscow. 1977, p. 293.
5Implemented in the multinational Soviet Union was the great Marxist-Leninist truth about the unshakable fraternal solidarity of working people, about their cohesion surmounting the barriers of national differences. Having won their social and national freedom, the peoples of former tsarist Russia did not become estranged from one another but rallied together in a strong multinational state. The Soviet state was the first to give real proof of the truth of Marx and Engels' proposition that in proportion as the antagonisms between classes vanish, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an = __NOTE__ Superscript is "1" in original. end.^^*^^
The foundation and development of the Soviet Union has shown that it is possible for peoples to achieve mutual confidence and peace, national freedom and equality, and maintain friendly co-operation. The oppressed peoples of the world saw in the community of the Soviet peoples the future of their own national development.
Great international significance attaches to the forms and methods, evolved in Soviet practice, of surmounting inter-- national contradictions, enmity and suspicion, of establishing and strengthening essentially new, friendly and fraternal relations among nationalities, opening the way to an ever closer drawing together of nations and their eventual fusion.
Soviet experience in national state development is quite special in that it takes account of the immense variety of living conditions of a multitude of national groups, their ethnic distinctiveness, and their specific relations with one another.
In the present work, it has been the author's intention to set forth the Marxist-Leninist conception of the integral, federal, multinational state and show the concrete ways and forms whereby Lenin and the GPSU creatively developed the doctrine of Soviet socialist federation, as well as to describe the achievements of the Soviet people. This makes it necessary of course to discuss the relevant problems in the context of concrete historical conditions.
_-_-_~^^*^^ K. Marx and F. Engels, ``Manifesto of the Communist Party'', Collected Works, Vol. 6, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1976, p. 503.
[6] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter I __ALPHA_LVL1__ NATIONS AND NATIONAL RELATIONS:The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is an integral, federal, multinational state that has emerged and is developing, above all, in accordance with its underlying purpose to be a means of resolving the national question, promoting the formation of a new type of nations, and serving as a mechanism for regulating and improving the whole system of relations among nations. It stands to reason, therefore, that the nature of a nation and national relations should be considered from the angle of their Marxist-Leninist conception. A nation may be defined as a stable historical community of people which has arisen on the basis of a common economic life, combined with the same language and territory, and a distinctive culture, consciousness and psychology.
This being so, one must, first, note that a nation is a historical category; second, that the common economic life is the determining factor in the formation and development of a nation; and, third, that all the other attributes of a nation---the same language and territory, and the distinctiveness of culture, consciousness and psychology---do not stamp a definite social community by themselves (although each of these features is obligatory to a nation), but merely when combined with the community of economic life.
A product of socio-historical development, a nation emerges as a new social community on the basis of capitalist economic relations. Economic consolidation of ethnic communities presupposes political unification of feudally fragmented areas into one national territory and the formation of a national state, as well as development in the emergent social community of a common literary language. The struggle for the nation's consolidation is accompanied by the formation of national self-- awareness. Apart from economic development, the processes involved in the formation of a nation are, of course, influenced by other 7 social factors as well, though far from all of them become definitive qualities of a nation.
Only those social events which are necessarily and immediately related with the material basis and objective features of this process become the constitutive qualities of a nation. These are, in the first place, the economic relationships of capitalist commodity production as the economic basis; a closely self-contained territory determined by these relationships; a sufficiently large population, capable of independent historical existence and activity; and the same language (in the form of national literary language) as the major medium of social communication.
The historical aspects of economic, social, and cultural and spiritual development, such as the social structure and the level and originality of culture, taken together, form the social aspect of a nation, inseparable from a definite socio-economic formation. Describing the relations between the racialist white majority and ethnic groups in the United States as immoral, Harry Kitano, an American writer on racial problems, says, for example, that ``unless there is real change in the economic, legal, political, and social structures that maintain racism, the promise of justice, liberty, and equality for all will remain unfulfilled".^^1^^
The bourgeois-nationalist approach to the concept of national community usually tends to ignore or, at any rate, to minimise, the determining influence of historical and socio-economic factors on the shaping of national distinctiveness. This results in definitions of nations and ethnic groups which are so abstract and vague as to be of no practical use.
Of course, many Western political and social scientists accept nations and everything national as an objective reality, up to the point of seeing their connection with the social aspects of life, without, however, being inclined to notice the legitimate and intrinsic dependence of what is national on the economic and social factors. So, Professor Mario Albertini, of Pavia University (Italy), defines the nation as a historico-social community but reduces its genesis to men's historically determined behaviour which is motivated both by the external circumstances and---supposedly to an ever greater extent---by an ``intimate feeling of the personality and fundamental affinity of the group'', i.e., the modern state.
8Earlier, Albertini writes, more inter-personal relations were in evidence in each established group on a much smaller territory, relations that were maintained even in the absence of political authority. No other relations had practically any pre-eminence over inter-personal relations. A native of an ancient city state had merely a feeling of his own personality and his own bond with the group. Albertini calls it spontaneous nationality (nationalite spontanee).^^2^^ In recent times, however, the size of territory prevents inter-personal relations from playing the pre-eminent role. For this reason, the sense of national self-awareness and of nationality shapes already in a ``wholly artificial manner".^^3^^
``As a matter of fact,'' Albertini writes, ``in Europe the contemporary great nations are the result of the forced extension by the State of the language of one spontaneous nationality which pre-existed on its territory to all citizens ... and of the forced propagation of the idea, even if it does not correspond to the reality in the least, of the existence of unique customs."^^4^^
Professor R. Polin, of Sorbonne, believes that the idea of the nation shapes on the basis of a collective idea combining highly heterogeneous opinions, judgements, standards, feelings, convictions and motivations. This collective notion reflects the unity of ethnic origins and history, traditions, customs, culture, habits and so on. Appearing as a product of civilisation at a definite stage of its historical development, a nation is both a historical reality and a historical collective notion.^^5^^
In his article ``Nationality: `End of the Road?'" Harold R. Isaacs, professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, writes that the ``national'' is inherent in one from birth. In their struggle for existence, men look to this or that national community for protection of their interests. What, then, is a nation? Scrutinising bourgeois historiography on the theory of the nation, Isaacs draws the following general conclusion: ``Everyone has his own list of parts that go into the making of a nation. Give or take an item or two, they all include the elements of what I have called the basic group identity, usually mentioning shared culture, history, tradition, language, religion, some adding 'race' as well as the elements of territory, politics, and economics that all go in their varying 9 measures into the making of what is called a 'nation'. On closer examination, it seems, no single part could be shown to be unique or indispensable to nationhood, except perhaps for some version of the idea of a shared past and a shared common will noted earlier by Mill and Renan and included as standard elements in every definition offered since their time."^^6^^
Isaacs states that most Western writers define ``nation'' or ``nationality'', in effect, as a cultural or a political phenomenon. And these two points of view are not developed separately, but are interlinked, forming structurally different notions. The former standpoint, he writes, goes back to the 18th-century German philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder and may be traced further on in the development of ``European nationalism" in the 19th century and at present. The latter one has emerged as a result of the English, American, and French bourgeois revolutions. Ever since these revolutions, Isaacs points out, traditional religion has given way to a secular religion, to the worship and glorification of things national. The nationalist faith, to Isaacs, is vain. He writes: ``The urge to nationhood may be one of the strongest and most persistent urges known to man; but the fact remains nevertheless that for most human beings on earth in these late decades of the twentieth century, the road to nationhood is the road to frustration and impotence. The dream of national self-determination becomes a nightmare from which no one, it seems, is able to awake."^^7^^
Peter Laslett, of Trinity College (Cambridge), believes that the form of collectivity or, as he specifies, the national state, with which a nation is usually associated, is essentially a category derived from the individual person as a member of a given national entity. The nation, for Laslett, ``is a metaphor and nothing more'', an ideal ``projection of the subjectivity outwards towards a reified abstraction'', a ``phenomenon of identification of self with collectivity".^^8^^ Laslett argues that the ``psychological trick" of the idea of the nation is that it exaggerates and simplifies the emerging and developing features shared by a given national ethnic group. In this way there arise stereotypes, the inventions, the myths which make sense of the political world and reconcile men with their past. Although, for Laslett, when seen in the light of psychologistic political analysis, its 10 functional importance turns out to be enormous, the idea of the nation has nevertheless no literal or necessary existence. Hence, ``we must resist every temptation to reify it ... or to allow it to be a Real Presence".^^9^^
This shows clearly enough that if some bourgeois scholars see the nation as an objective reality, it does not mean at all that they equally recognise all the real sources of the nation's formation and development. Albertini, for example, recognises to some extent the importance of such sources. Even so, in his view, the interpersonal relations come before the political factors, and foremost in the latter too is not the ``representative content'', which changes depending on a specific situation, but the ideological character which invariably and always refers to the centralised bureaucratic state. So, ``the nation can be said to be, in the specific sense, the ideology of the centralised bureaucratic. State".^^10^^
As concerns the economic factors and their role and place in the formation and development of a nation, they are to a certain extent recognised by many Western students of this problem. They write, for example, that in shaping and developing under the impact of production and exchange, contemporary ``industrial society" causes the emergence of stable communication systems. Simultaneously, the conflicting interests of the peoples living within the borders of a country inexorably lead to their mutual estrangement and isolation which are ideologically rooted in nationalism. Thus, they recognise the role of the economic factors, even though they put them on a par with the social-psychological factors. But it is these that give rise to nationalism which determines both the face and the aspirations of a nation.
The sociological aspect in interpreting the essence of the nation is often merely declarative, while the definitions of ethnic groups are reduced to feelings, the sense of historical identity and predestination, and so on.
Professor Talcott Parsons, of Harvard University, writes the following: ``In spite of the difficulty of being specific about critcrial features and components, what social scientists have called ethnic groups do belong to a relatively distinctive sociological type. This is a group the members of which have, both with 11 respect to their own sentiments and those of non-members, a distinctive identity which is rooted in some kind of a distinctive sense of its history."^^11^^
The idea of the nation as a kind of psychological phenomenon is fairly current in Western political and social science. Walker Connor, professor of political science at New York University, believes, for instance, that the main determinant of a nation is its ethnic awareness.
To him, the traditional concept of the ethnic group does not at all necessarily imply its being a subordinate part of a broader polity. It may be the predominant element in a State (e.g., the French or the Japanese), or it may spill over the limits of some states, like the Arabs. The ethnic group, in its traditional meaning, need not necessarily be characterised by a sense of distinctive identity. It is the emergence of a sense of identity with the group that turns an ethnic group into a nation.^^12^^
Some Western ideologists reduce the problem of the nation to the national-specific, interpreted as something beyond rational consciousness, something that springs up spontaneously and, as a rule, independently of the operation of the laws of social development. The national community of people is often represented as some sort of a thing-in-itself, a mystical, unknowable entity which exists outside concrete historical social conditions, political and international relations which, together with the ethnic factors, determine the substance, character, and forms of national development. Such notions have for their ideological and methodological basis subjective-idealist and irrational dogmas and disregard of the general causality of natural, social, and psychological events. Some bourgeois scholars reduce the substance of the nation, manifestations of the national element to purely biological and physiological workings of the human body.
Obvious eclecticism also marks the attitude of present-day Maoism which, in substance, links up with Trotskyism. It is to the Maoists of course that the ``credit'' goes for classifying the nations of the world into the rich, bourgeois nations---to which they refer even socialist nations---and the exploited, poor, proletarian nations, the Chinese amongst them. One can only wonder what criteria, if any, the Maoists apply in defining the nation, if, on the one hand, they say that the concept of the nation is 12 obsolete and a capitalist category, and quite openly declare assimilation of the national minorities in China to be their national policy and, on the other hand, extol the Great Han nation in whom they persistently instil great-power, chauvinist strivings. The idea of implementing the Communist Party of China's policy of the greatest possible aggrandisement of the Han nation belongs to Mao Zedong, who wrote: ``In the future, more consistent changes will occur in the Chinese nation than in any other. The society of the Chinese nation will be more radiant than that of any other. The great unification of the Chinese nation will be crowned with success sooner than in any other region, sooner than the unification of any other nation."^^13^^
Bourgeois ideologists' inclination to make a fetish of the ethnic aspects of a nation, which they represent, in contrast to the social factors, as pivotal in the life of a nation, stems from a similar interpretation of the essence of the nation.
Examining ethnicity from the standpoint of social change, Professor Daniel Bell, of Harvard University, notes that ethnicity has currently come to play a greater role in society, as it is capable of linking interest with emotional attachment. Ethnicity gives one a tangible set of shared peculiarities---of language, diet, music and names---when other social roles become abstract and depersonalised.^^14^^
Mentioning some reasons why, in his view, ethnic affiliation is again prominent in men's life and becomes their distinguishing characteristic, Bell describes ethnic groups as pre-industrial units which, with the emergence and growth of industry, began to intersect with economic and class interests.
He writes: ``In trying to account for the upsurge of ethnicity today, one can see this ethnicity as the emergent expression of primordial feelings, long suppressed but now reawakened, or as a 'strategic site', chosen by disadvantaged persons as a new mode of seeking political redress in the society."^^15^^
Investigating in his turn the theory of relations between racial and ethnic groups, Milton M. Gordon, professor of social science at Massachusetts University, presumes that man by his very nature is selfish, conceited, and aggressive towards others. All this, Gordon finds, comes out in ethnic relations. And, depending on the ``ethnic orientation'', he distinguishes four types 13 of societies, viz., (1) racist, (2) assimilationist, (3) liberal pluralist (i.e., one in which the ethnic groups are accounted equal, without any distinctions), and (4) corporate pluralist (in which the special status of ethnic groups is formalised and their equal opportunities are recognised). Elements of several types can coexist at any given point of time, combining with one another.^^10^^
The ethnic elements (e.g., the kind of clothing, dwellings, customs) have, of course, shaped in the life of this or that people or, often enough, the formations preceding it, over centuries or even millennia, under the impact of the geographical environment and other general conditions of its development such as the distinctive conditions of life and work, the specific features of its history (e.g., whether it spent much time at war or at peaceful labours, whether it engaged mostly in agriculture or in livestock-breeding, in crafts, industry or trade), the influence of the neighbour peoples, and so on. With the emergence of nations, as capitalist economy and the national market formed, and on the basis of historically older nationalities, the ethnic elements were among the most significant, though neither the sole nor the main factors in the shaping of nations, in the development of national life.
It is in the course of the emergence of a nation that the definite peculiarities of culture, social consciousness, and social psychology take shape as the reflection of the natural and concrete historical conditions of its formation. Wholly specific peculiarities of a nation, such as its language, distinctive culture, the way of life, habits and customs, traditions and the peculiar features of social mentality, refer to its ethnic aspect and are that part of the national which is connected most of all with the nations' distinctive origin, distinctive relations and behaviour, and the resultant cultural and intellectual character. This group of national characteristics is interlinked primarily, not with the universal legitimacy of a given socio-economic formation, but with the ethnic foundations of the nation, which form, for the most part, even before the emergence of the nation, at the tribal stage of the ancient people, and so on. Simultaneously, Marxism-Leninism is against mixing the nation with the race and tribe and trying to represent the nation merely as a natural event, a further continuation and complication of tribal 14 relationships. Of course, people's intensive economic and other relations based on one language and within the framework of a compact community inevitably cause the emergence of some cultural and psychological features shared by the given national community and distinguishing it from similar other communities. At the same time, essential characteristics of the nation must not be established subjectively, with no regard to the criterion of social practice.
The role of some social factors in the development of a nation---the language, manners, customs, traditions---depends on the historical past, while the role of other factors---the emergence of classes and social groups which are exponents of national relationships---is immediate.^^17^^
Some of the more notable distinguishing features of the ethnic elements are, first, that they have never determined---nor could they determine---the essence of a nation, playing a far less significant part compared with the socio-economk^ factors, and, second, that the ethnic features in the life of a nation themselves, although relatively stable, did not remain unchanged, something in them always dying out or springing up anew.
Bourgeois writers today often interpret the nature and social role of ethnic factors in the life of nations in an entirely different way. From this too stem their attempts to regard the nation as a monoethnic community whose development is naturally stamped by ethnocentrism. For this reason, too, they reduce all that is ``national'' to ethnicity, to what is specifically national. Nationalism is exactly this sort of universalisation of ``one's own" national specific features, whereby all that is national is squeezed into the Procrustean bed of all that is rudimentary, conservative, and stagnantly patriarchal.
The methodological basis of the bourgeois nationalist approach to the understanding of the national consists in emasculating the social content and class significance of this phenomenon, in striving to surround the concept of the nation with a mysterious aura, in trying to represent it as an eternal category and dissolving the social conflicts of the age in talk about the ``supraclass'' character of the national community.
In discussing the correlation of the nation and classes, many bourgeois students concur in the opinion that the nation triumphs 15 over class. But the class dimension constitutes the main social content of the life of a nation. Just as there is no tearing away the national from the class dimension, so would it be wrong to ``dissolve'' the former altogether in the latter. In addition to this, a realistic consideration of the correlation of the class dimension and the national dimension has a direct bearing on the practice of national relations. Immediately related to this is, in particular, the fact that any philosophical or social-political conception based on a denial of the definitive role of the classes and class struggle in social development is either openly nationalistic or it seeks to justify nationalism in one way or another, containing nationalist ideas in embryo.^^18^^
In a number of specialised works that have appeared recently, prominent bourgeois sociologists, philosophers and ethnologists claim that society's social organisation is based on its ethnic, not class, structure, and that the classes are being superseded by the definitive significance of ethnos, of ethnicity. According to Nathan Glazer and Daniel Moynihan, property, which has swayed social-political thought for almost two centuries, is becoming a derivative factor, and ethnos, a more essential source of social stratification. Ethnicity to them is an ever more strategically efficacious ``organising principle" while it is hard to consider ``social class" as such.^^19^^
Daniel Bell stresses that the renascent significance of the ethnic factors is due to the ``strength of a primordial attachment'', while ``the forces of nation and class" are merely latent.^^20^^
As far back as the seventeenth century, Francis Bacon, the English materialist philosopher, described the distorted perception of the world by men and entire peoples---perception from the standpoint of their own, often narrowly limited, range of notions---as ``idols of the tribe''. Setting off from the same idea, Harold R. Isaacs, a contemporary American political scientist, argues that all men have what is known as ``group individuality" determined by their ethnic features and traits, and that the latter are just what conflicts between ethnic groups spring from. His Idols of the Tribe deals with the inborn ``sources'' of such conflicts, viz., tribalism and attachment to one's birthplace, ethnocentrism; race distinctions; name; language, ancestry and origins; history; nationality and determination to assert pride 16 of group; and a ``new pluralism" in perceiving and interpreting reality.^^21^^
Putting to the fore the problem of the ``American community'', Isaacs believes that its solution runs up against purely ethnic, even ethnopsychological, factors having to do with the life of and relations between different ethnic groups. For him, it is not in the development of capitalist society that a crisis has set in, not in the national minorities' social-economic and political status, but in maintaining ``group individuality".
Exaggeration of the role played by ethnic factors in the life of society is evident, if anything, from the fact that in order to give it validity a special discussion was held in the United States, with the participation of Talcott Parsons, Daniel Bell, Daniel Moynihan, Richard Pipes, and others.
H. J. Abramson, an American sociologist, writes that despite--- and perhaps owing to---the system of world communications, ethnos and ethnic consciousness are becoming in all continents a phenomenon which gathers strength in response to the conflicts and tensions of the modern multi-dimensional world. Some aspects of social and political behaviour, he believes, can no longer be explained today without due consideration of the structural affiliation to the ethnos and subcultural ethnic norms as well as of their absence or loss. Ethnicity-based traditionalism in the context of mounting ethnic movements is becoming a factor speeding social progress. Ethnos and ethnic subculture, he maintains, are an essential element in the life of heterogeneous societies. Ethnos does not merely emerge as a source of disunity and conflict but also is the linchpin of identity and a restraining, constructive principle. In the circumstances of the grown significance of ethnic factors, a symbolic meaning is attached even to the revival and cultivation of what is actually being forgotten or little used. Thereby it turns from a matter of reality into a matter of mental attitude, as is the case, for example, with the Jews, who, in the actual absence of a common language, maintain community without it, through emphasising characteristic words, intonations, dialectisms, accents, and so on.^^22^^
Obviously enough, the exaggeration and even absolutisation of the ethnic side of national life can only distort the real __PRINTERS_P_17_COMMENT__ 2---748 17 piclure and lead away from understanding the social-class aspects of the life of society, which are, in fact, all-important to the scientific conception of the nation, its nature and developmental factors. Parsons, however, frankly admits that to him ethnic status is clearly devoid of social content. In Bell's view, ``more often than not, in the advanced countries at least, ethnicity cuts across class lines. . .".^^23^^ Inculcation, in one way or another, of the idea that the conception of ethnos, of race, is of greater significance than the conception of class has a direct bearing on the current imperialist strategy which is spearheaded, on the one hand, against the unity of the class forces in the United States, which are comprised of a medley of races, and is aimed, on the other, at containing the developing countries' struggle against neocolonialism and racism. In connection with the attempts to oppose ethnicity to the social class factor, it is especially worth noting the writings prepared and published by Sovietologists and some bourgeois nationalist emigres.
Suffice it to recall the repeated attempts on the part of Alexandre Bennigsen, Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone, Edward Allworth and other Sovietologists-Turkologists to prove the existence of ``Muslim'' nations in the Soviet Union and the need for bringing together all peoples, formerly professing Islam, on the basis of ethnic factors and religion, for the purpose of `` opposing" the Russians.^^24^^
History has witnessed a multitude of historical forms of human community, but the tribe, nationality and nation are the only of them that have existed and developed in ethnic form. They are stamped by an integral combination of two basic elements, the social and the ethnic, whereby they should be designated as ethnosocial communities. As distinct from other historical communities of people (class, state, and so on), these social formations have ethnic characteristics which constitute a special structure of their content, their special form of existence. The social and the ethnic are not two substances of the nation, autonomous with relation to each other and developing along parallel lines, as it were. A nation has one essence which manifests itself diversely, simultaneously as the social-economic, socialclass, and ethnic forms of the nation's existence. The ethnic 18 form, in particular, is not separated from the social-economic and social-class content of a nation but embraces and is determined by it. Being a product of definite social development, the ethnic dimension appears as a form of existence of the social-class content of a nation and forms a unity with this content.
The unity of content and form does not mean that they cannot be considered apart in elucidating their specific features and demonstrating the different roles they play in the unity. On the contrary, finding out the distinctions present in a given unity is often of fundamental significance, primarily when trying to establish why in the course of building socialism a nation or a nationality, while retaining, in the main, its ethnic distinctions, radically alters its social essence, its social type, and becomes socialist as to its economic basis, class structure, cultural development, and spiritual character. A socialist nation or nationality retains, of course, a relatively stable community of territory and language, as well as other ethnic features. At the same time, it develops essentially new characteristics such as the common nature of economic and socio-political interests, common features of spiritual make-up, as well as a growing international unity with other socialist nations. The difference between the bourgeois and the socialist nations has acquired a purely practical aspect in the light of the ideological struggle currently going on between the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic.
The ethnosocial processes occurring in the GDR and the FRG show beyond any doubt that the social-class factors are inevitably decisive in defining the nature and character of a nation, overshadowing the linguistic and other ethnic factors. There are two German ethnosocial communities, one capitalist, and the other socialist.
In reducing the essence of a nation to its ethnic parameters, the West German reactionary circles base their reunification policy on chauvinistic phrase-mongering about ``common origins'', ``consanguinity'' and ``common soul''. The myths created on this basis (just as religious beliefs) are tenacious and capable of impressing the philistines' imagination and influencing their mentality and behaviour. Yet, objective reality shows ever more 19 convincingly that it is wrong to reduce a nation's self-awareness to a ``purely'' ethnic basis.
As a result of socialist changes, the nation itself in the GDR has become socialist, although it has retained ethnic features shared with the German nation of capitalist West Germany. Failure to appreciate this fact tends to concentrate attention on the apparently continuous ethnic development, while the main, the decisive thing is overlooked or pushed into the background, viz., the fact that the continuous development of the earlier social-class essence of the nation was abruptly broken, and a new social type of nation has emerged in the GDR.
The example of the GDR corroborates the idea that not only the national question but the nation, too, is socially determined. The character of national sentiments and self-awareness largely depends on the social type and policy of the state. The socialist state of the GDR has been a form of the political organisation of the nation and the latter's transformation into a socialist nation. The fundamental restructuring of the entire social-- economic, political, and cultural life in the GDR is producing self-- awareness of a socialist nation. These new realities are, however, hardly acceptable to those who put the ethnic before the socialclass characteristics of a nation, those who ignore the fact that the sweeping revolutionary change in the social-economic, political, and cultural life in the GDR has also resulted in the emergence of a new, socialist self-awareness of the nation.
National self-awareness is a complex and many-sided social phenomenon which reflects not only the ethnic characteristics typical of a nation, but also the social connections and relations that shape on the basis of the common social-economic and political life of that nation. Hence, national self-awareness does not form as a result of men's ``pure'' self-determination. Certainly the Marxists are far from denying the relative independence and important role of national self-awareness. It would nevertheless be wrong to regard the latter as the source and determinant of the essence of the social-class and national community as is done in bourgeois philosophy which separates both national and class self-awareness from reality, from that whereof it is a reflection and product, and which sees national self-awareness as primary with relation to the objective processes occurring in 20 the life of a nation. Therefore the fairly widespread view in Western sociology that the nation is a product of ``national self-awareness'', of the ``national spirit'', and so forth, has no scientific justification whatsoever.
As it is, for the undeniable significance of national self-- awareness, it would be incorrect to take it as the starting point in defining the essence of the nation. On the contrary, the starting points of the inception and growth of national self-awareness are a nation's actual situation in the system of social, including inter-national, relations; the characteristics of national community, and so on. Of great significance, besides, is the correct relation of the class and national factors in a nation's self-awareness.
The main thing expressed by national self-awareness is men's relationship with the given national community. Their attitude to their own and other nations will depend on their social and political orientation.
Another thing immediately related to the concept of the nation is what is known as ``national interests''. The urge to meet them essentially affects the very course of development of national communities. It is quite obvious that the shaping of national interests, their very nature, is objectively dependent---just as all social interests are---on the concrete historical circumstances of a nation's existence. The development of a nation has as its prerequisite a system of needs for freedom of the national life, emancipation from national oppression, for political self-- determination, which implies the right to secession and establishment of an independent national state, and so on. Naturally enough, as a nation develops the changes in the structure and substance of the social sphere of the national life bring about changes in the nation's needs. Nor do these needs change haphazardly. Some general conclusions drawn from ample historical evidence suggest, in any case, the existence of certain regular features of such change, dependent on the objective circumstances of social development.
The entire social environment generates needs and interests which are then transformed in a definite way into concrete motivations and demands. At the same time, the national needs, stemming directly from the actual social-economic circumstances of a nation's existence, have of course an objective, law-governed 21 character. As for national interests, these, being dependent basically in their turn on social needs, are, first, subjective and, second, influenced in the course of their formation by diverse factors, viz., the concrete historical features of national being, position with relation to other peoples, the established notions, traditions, beliefs, and the like.
In their writings, Western sociologists distort time and again not only the Marxist view on the essence of nations but on the length of their existence in history. Robert King, for instance, writes that ``Marx did not see nations continuing to exist after the revolution".^^25^^ In support of this contention, he quotes the well-known place from the Manifesto of the Communist Party that national differences and antagonisms between peoples are daily more and more vanishing even under capitalism, while the supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster.^^28^^A simple comparison of these two statements makes it clear that Marx said nothing of the kind imputed to him by King. Lenin is falsified to the same extent. ``To Lenin,'' King writes, ``nationality was a negative inheritance from the capitalist stage of a development which would be superseded by international proletarian unity once socialism was established."^^27^^ In actual fact, however, both Marx and Lenin saw the national as a historical phenomenon, rightly assuming that in the course of historical evolution, quickened by socialist change, society would be growing more socially uniform. This, in turn, also presupposes a fundamental change in relations between nations: the socialist nations will draw together more and more, on a voluntary and equal basis, and in some distant future will merc^e with one another. Mankind will eventually attain a stage of social development at which, being fully socially homogeneous, it will fall no longer into separate peoples. Hence, the nation as a historical category will, at some point of time, disappear altogether, although some racial and national features will evidently persist for a fairly long time even after that.
In this connection it is quite legitimate to ask: Does this idea of nations' future historical development and existence prompt in any way the conclusion that Marxists-Leninists set themselves to abolish nations right after the victorious socialist revolution? It certainly does not. Lenin, immediately after the victorious 22 proletarian revolution in Russia, in the conditions of a socialist system, emphasised that there are no people without national peculiarities, and that unless this was taken into account, a socialist society could not be built. He said that ``the only correct attitude to the interests of nations is to meet those interests in full...".^^28^^ Marxists have always regarded the development of nations and national relations as a natural historical process which should on no account be artificially sped up or deliberately slowed down. With this, all changes occurring in the national sphere are objectively dependent on the more deep-lying changes that occur in the economic and social-class spheres of the life of society.
To understand the nature of the Soviet federal, multinational state, we must elicit the exact scientific meaning of the notions not only of the nation and national relations, but also of national sovereignty.
National sovereignty implies political freedom of a nation, its territorial, linguistic, and cultural independence, which is manifested in the fullness of its sovereign rights. Only when it is sovereign can a nation deal independently with the matters concerning its national-state organisation, including the question as to whether it should stay a part of a given state or secede from it and form an independent national state of its own. A nation may choose to be an autonomy or a part of a state by treaty or it may enter into one form of state union or another with other nations. A sovereign nation may retain and freely develop its language, customs, way of life and the relevant national institutions. A nation's sovereignty is expressed most clearly in some fundamental socio-political and legal rights which it enjoys and which are guaranteed to it. These rights of a nation are closely bound up with the basic democratic principles of the social and state system. The concept of national sovereignty is inseparable from the principle of national equality. The sovereignty of a nation, which expresses its actual political and legal status, is determined and ensured by the socio-economic, political and state systems of society. We can only form an immediate judgement of a nation's sovereignty, that is, of whether or not it is sovereign, by taking into account what sovereign rights really consist in.
23The sovereign rights of a nation are objectively determined by the whole complex of relations that comprise the content of the national life. A nation may possess sovereignty and thus be a sovereign nation, but it may lack sovereignty. In that case, it cannot be considered to be sovereign. Non-sovereign nations are, for example, those which are colonially dependent and oppressed. But, sovereign or not, a nation does not cease to be a nation, if it has the inherent marks of one.
In explaining the meaning of the concept of national sovereignty one should take into account two fundamental prerequisites on which the meaning of this concept depends. Only by regarding them as an inseparable unity can we get a sufficiently clear and comprehensive idea of the social and political nature of national sovereignty.
National sovereignty characterises above all the measure and form of a nation's own awareness of its vital interests and needs which ensue from the objective conditions of its existence and provide a major stimulus of development and struggle for freedom. One characteristic feature of the current period of social development is the steady growth of the class and national selfawareness of the masses. National interests, as an expression of the objective socio-economic, political, and cultural requirements of development of a nation, are interpreted through class interests. They are retracted through the prism of the interests of definite social groups and acquire a distinct social and political character. National interests are both those expressed by the leading class of the nation and those which are nationwide in the literal sense. As it emerges and develops in the conditions of the formation of capitalism, a nation inevitably passes through a stage of becoming aware of itself as a separate entity with relation to other nations. At that stage, the last in the process of the formation of bourgeois nations (this process continued in Europe, for example, till the very end of the 18th century), a relative unity of nations, and so of national interests, prevails. But as capitalism attains maturity and class antagonisms become sharper, the class differentiation of nations intensifies and the community of class interests recedes into the past.
That does not rule out the possibility that in some historical periods interests and goals may emerge that are common to the 24 nation as a whole as happens, for instance, when it has to fight oppression by a foreign nation.
The interests of a nation are expressed by its ruling class, and in the case of oppressed nations, by the class or group occupying key positions in the concrete socio-economic system.
Thus, the national interests and goals of a nation and the tasks facing it in a concrete historical situation constitute an objective prerequisite of sovereignty.
This, however, does not exhaust the meaning of national sovereignty. It is also a democratic principle implying an unconditional and full recognition of the freedom of nations to master their destinies, as well as the equal rights of nations, irrespective of size, level of development or other circumstances. From the standpoint of this consistently democratic principle every nation has a right to be free and independent, which right must be respected by the other nations. Modern international law recognises of course the right of self-determination of all nations. As represented by its elected national bodies, a nation fighting for its emancipation and self-determination is a subject of international law even before acquiring independent statehood.
The Soviet Union and the other countries of the socialist community conduct an uncompromising class foreign policy which consists in strengthening peace and international security; supporting the peoples engaged in struggle for liberation; and repulsing encroachments on their freedom and independence and their right to decide their future by themselves.
Consequently, there are, as it were, two aspects to the concept of national sovereignty, the internal aspect and the external aspect. Each of them is socially determined and is assessed from a concrete class standpoint. By taking account of these two interrelated aspects in assessing the status of a nation one is able to adhere to the standpoint of unconditional recognition of a nation's freedom to deal with every problem of its life and simultaneously to assess national demands from an independent class standpoint.
The Marxist-Leninist doctrine on the national question orientates the working class towards fighting not for just any kind of peoples' national development but only that which is consistent with the requirements of progress. And these requirements are 25 only met by national development such as does not shut up each people in its national shell but promotes the development of all that is common to mankind and progressive in it within the framework of the nationally distinctive enriching it with elements of other peoples' culture.
The methodological basis of the conception of national sovereignty is the relation of the national and the international which is objectively determined by the universal law of interaction of two trends in the national question. The first of them is the ``awakening of national life and national movements, the struggle against all national oppression, and the creation of national states''. The second is the ``development and growing frequency of international intercourse in every form, the break-down of national barriers...".^^29^^ The urge for national independence, free political self-determination, and formation of national states arises at the very birth of nations at the dawn of capitalism. Simultaneously there inevitably appears a tendency towards internationalisation imposed by the needs of large-scale production which is international by nature. Both tendencies determine the fundamental objective features of the development of a nation and national life as a whole.
Bourgeois sociologists like to contrast the national with the international as if they were irreconcilable opposites. Unlike them, Marxists-Leninists establish a relationship between the national and the international which is expressed in their close organic unity. The international cannot be non-national, and the genuinely national cannot exclude the international. These statements are no mere abstractions but result from in-depth analysis of the objective process of social development. Of course, the national and the international may clash at times. This occurs where the national is snatched out of the natural concatenation of events and contrasted with the international. The national itself cannot avoid being altered in this case. It is inflated, overemphasised and transformed into the nationalistic.
The development of nations and of relations between them is directly dependent on economic, socio-political, and ideological factors. For this reason we cannot accept as scientifically valid the attempts at treating the national question separately from the general social objectives of the current liberation movement 26 or the class struggle of the working people. It is also vitally important to remember that demands for national freedom, equality, and self-determination---for all that is associated with the notion of national sovereignty---may, in antagonistic class society, not always have a progressive, but also a reactionary side to them, namely, nationalism.
To the Marxists-Leninists, neither the national question nor nationalism have ever been a matter of secondary importance and each always received much attention. It is a different matter that they never identified national relations and national problems generally with nationalism, the ideology of the bourgeoisie. The Marxists-Leninists are consistent internationalists and therefore reject nationalist ideology, which is based wholly on the assumption of a special, privileged position of one's own nation. Simultaneously, they are far from thinking that everything about nationalism is entirely unacceptable. On the contrary, the nationalism of an oppressed nation striving for freedom has a progressive side to it meriting every support. Further, far from considering national movements to be the sole driving force of historical progress and realistically taking account of the actual place of such movements in the general stream of revolutionary struggle, the Marxists-Leninists see the national in all its manifestations as a major social phenomenon. Just as there can exist no supraclass democracy, so can there be no uniform class assessment of national demands.
That was why Lenin stressed that, while unconditionally accepting and defending all progressive and democratic in national demands, the Marxists are also bound not to support bourgeois nationalism beyond these limits clearly circumscribed by a definite historical context. He pointed out that not every national demand deserved to be supported: ``That is unquestionable both because any democratic demand is subordinate to the common interests of the proletariat's class struggle, without being at all absolute, and because in the epoch of imperialist rivalries to dominate the nations there may well be open and secret alliances between the bourgeoisie of an oppressed country and an oppressor country."^^30^^ One should approach nationalism of oppressed nations strictly critically, assessing each time the specific socio-economic motives and conditions of the given 27 national liberation movement from the angle of the workers' class struggle.
The lessons of history show that with the differentiation of classes and social strata in the national liberation movement the reactionary implications of bourgeois nationalism become more conspicuous. The exploiter elements do their utmost to use nationalism as an instrument of spiritually subjecting the people to their own selfish ends which they falsely represent as those of the whole nation. In the countries that have rid themselves of colonialism, the right-wing national bourgeoisie, relying on the imperialists' energetic support and taking the advantage, wherever they can, of the backward notions and nationalist prejudices still lingering among the masses, seek to destroy, for their own selfish ends, the solidarity of the national liberation movement and harm the common interests of the peoples' liberation struggles. It is in this light that one can fully appreciate the justice of Lenin's warning against any abstract and dogmatic interpretation of nationalism. He wrote: ``...an abstract presentation of the question of nationalism in general is of no use at all. A distinction must necessarily be made between the nationalism of an oppressor nation and that of an oppressed nation, the nationalism of a big nation and that of a small nation."^^31^^
The Marxists-Leninists do not contrast socialism with the national feelings of formerly oppressed colonial nations whose life and dignity were trampled under foot for centuries by foreign masters, but they try to achieve mutual understanding and union between socialism and anti-imperialist patriotism in the common struggle against imperialism. The Marxists-Leninists fight unswervingly for sustaining and strengthening anti-imperialist unity and rallying the forces that express truly national interests, i.e. the interests of the broad mass of working people. They see such solidarity and unity as the major means not only of attaining the aims of national liberation, but of solving the fundamental social problems.
The main task of the national liberation movement today is to wage a struggle for achieving national independence and consolidating progressive regimes, and to fight against imperialism and neocolonialism allied with internal reaction. As it 28 advances, this struggle develops into a struggle against the relations of exploitation.
The path of building up national independence, of staunch anti-imperialist struggle and social progress alone meets the vital interests of the peoples who gain national sovereignty through a long and stubborn struggle. Nevertheless, progress along this path can only be solid and irresistible, if it is the legitimate result of the peoples' own efforts, and if that path has been consciously chosen by their revolutionary vanguards.
The Marxist theory of the national question attaches great importance to statehood as a factor in the formation, establishment, and development of a nation.
An uncompromising and consistent opponent of national oppression and colonialism in every shape and form, the Soviet state has always tried to obtain recognition in international law of the sovereignty of nations, including those of them that have not yet won state independence. Already in its Appeal to All the Toiling Moslems of Russia and Peoples of the East, published on November 20, 1917, the Soviet Government renounced all colonies of the former Russian empire and the privileges arrogated by the overthrown tsarist government.
The Soviet Government annulled the treaty of 1907 between tsarist Russia and Britain dividing Iran and Afghanistan into spheres of influence. It also annulled the treaty concluded in 1916 by tsarist Russia and Japan under which both countries had enjoyed privileges and capitulatory rights in China, and annulled the capitulations regime in Turkey.
The principle of self-determination of nations was formalised in terms of international law in the treaties concluded by Soviet Russia with Afghanistan, Turkey, China, and Mongolia.
Speaking in the League of Nations in September 1935, the Soviet representative stated: ``The Soviet Government disapproves in principle of the system of colonies, the policy of spheres of influence, mandates, and everything that has to do with imperialist aims."^^32^^ As a member of the League of Nations from 1934 to 1939, the Soviet Union raised its voice in condemnation of Italy's aggression against Abyssinia, German-Italian intervention in Spain, Japan's aggression against China, and the seizure 29 of Austria and Czechoslovakia by nazi Germany. The Soviet Army cleared Mongolia's territory of Japanese troops and forced militarist Japan to recognise the sovereignty of the Mongolian People's Republic.
The Declaration of the USSR announced at the international conference in London on September 24, 1941, in connection with its joining the Atlantic Charter, read in part: ``In its foreign policy, the Soviet Union has been guided, and will be guided, by the principle of self-determination of nations.. .. The Soviet Union insists on the right of every people to the political independence and territorial integrity of their country, the right to establish such a social system and elect such a form of government as they consider desirable and necessary in order to provide for the economic prosperity and cultural advancement of the whole country."^^33^^
As a result of the triumph of the Soviet Union over the fascist states in the Second World War, the sovereignty and jurisdiction of the East European states violated by fascism were restored.
In the course of their activity in international bodies, the United Nations Organisation in particular, the Soviet Union and other progressive countries managed to get the principle of selfdetermination fixed in international law. That resulted from the affirmation of the principle of self-determination of nations in the following major international documents:
(1) Articles 1, 13, 55 and 76 of the UN Charter;
(2) the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, adopted by the 15th Session of the UN General Assembly on December 14, I960;
(3) the Resolution of December 20, 1965, by which the General Assembly recognised the legitimacy of the struggle waged by the colonial peoples;
(4) the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination and Racist Colonial Regimes, approved by the 20th General Assembly Session on December 21, 1965;
(5) the international covenants on human rights, adopted by the 21st General Assembly Session on December 16, 1966; and
(6) the Declaration on Principles of International Law, 30 adopted by the 25th jubilee session of the General Assembly on October 24, 1970.
All of these international documents state that colonialism and neocolonialism are an international crime against humanity. In these documents, too, the principle of self-determination of nations is codified, the lawful nature of the movement for national liberation is recognised, and all UN members are invited to give it material and moral support. These documents also demand punishment for the states violating the principle of self-determination.
The progressive states succeeded---through efforts in the United Nations---in getting the General Assembly to approve the principle of self-determination of nations in a number of resolutions, including that on granting independence to the peoples of trust territories of December 5, 1958. The Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples proclaimed the necessity of putting an end to every form and manifestation of colonialism without delay or any conditions whatsoever. It proclaims that all peoples have the right to self-- determination, and by dint of this right are free to establish their own political status and pursue their economic, social, and cultural development. The Declaration stresses that in trust and non-- selfgoverning territories, and in all other such territories, peoples must be granted full independence and liberty, and that peoples may dispose of their natural wealth and resources in their own interests. The draft Declaration was submitted to the General Assembly by forty-three Asian and African countries and contained fundamental provisions proposed by the Soviet delegation. The Declaration is of great significance to the development of the rules of international law referring to the principle of self-determination. The General Assembly resolved to set up a 24 Nations Committee, or Committee on Decolonisation, which concerns itself with the carrying out of the provisions of the Declaration.
In its resolution adopted by its 22nd Session on December 16, 1967, the General Assembly declared colonial systems and racist regimes to be a crime against humanity, and stated that the existence of such systems and regimes was a threat to international peace and security.
31The Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples contains the following significant statement: ``Inadequacy of political, economic, social or educational preparedness should never serve as a pretext for delaying independence.'' It was a formal rejection of the convention of peoples' ``preparedness'' for independence that had served the colonialists well as an excuse for their policy of oppression. The Declaration, while confirming the temporary and transitional character of the institutes of non-self-governing territories and UN trusteeship system, demanded their immediate abolition. It forbade any repressive measures being taken against peoples fighting for their independence, or attempts at violating the integrity of their national territories. It thus made a big stride towards the future recognition of the legitimate nature of national liberation wars and their support, i.e., towards the recognition of the attitude the Soviet Union adhered to and championed consistently since the early days of its existence.
The Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States, which was adopted in October 1970 by the 25th General Assembly Session, proclaims: ``The territory of a colony or other Non-- SelfGoverning Territory has, under the Charter, a status separate and distinct from the territory of the State administering it; and such separate and distinct status under the Charter shall exist until the people of the colony or Non-Self-Governing Territory have exercised their right of self-determination...".
Thus an important progressive rule, whereby independent status is acquired even by the nations and nationalities which are yet to exercise their right of self-determination, was fixed in international law.
The Soviet Union and other socialist countries pursue a consistent policy of supporting the national liberation struggle and helping the developing countries in their efforts to consolidate their independence.
The very content of the nations' right to self-determination stems from the demands for democracy and elimination of national inequality, privileges and exclusiveness. Like any other democratic principle, the right of self-determination is a political category which does not express any eternal, immutable 32 truths, but a definite and concrete historical result of social development and its appreciation and assessment from definite class positions.
The Marxist-Leninist Party approaches the problem of selfdetermination of a nation in a specific historical context, from the standpoint of the interests of the revolutionary movement and socialism. Lenin's teaching on the right of nations to selfdetermination does not at all suggest the conclusion about the conditional character of this right as a principle of nationality policy (this is not to be confused with the conditional character of specific demands following from the right of nations to selfdetermination). It is a Marxist's absolute duty to champion the greatest and most consistent democratism in every part of the national question. This attitude to self-determination has nothing to do with the metaphysical universalisation of secession, i.e., with the demand for secession at any cost and under any circumstances. It is, in essence, a thoroughly dialectical approach. The criterion to be applied in tackling the problem of secession are, as always, the internationalist obligations of the working class which intrinsically comprise its genuinely national aims and interests.
The internal and external situation, as well as the measure of a nation's maturity and consolidation, may be material to deciding on whether or not it should secede and form an independent state. The right of nations to self-determination is a manifestation of a nationality policy which organically combines progressive and democratic aspirations of peoples, their will and determination to attain national freedom and independence, with the objective social processes which must be taken into account to make this policy realistic. The conditions of applying the principle of self-determination are determined by the requirements of the social and political development of a multinational society and by the concrete historical circumstances in which the class struggle is carried on.
The principle of self-determination spotlights the role of statehood in the formation and development of nations and national relations. This is because political self-determination of a nation presupposes the formation of a national state. Nation and statehood are closely related notions, even though the latter is __PRINTERS_P_33_COMMENT__ 3---748 33 not necessarily an attribute of the former. In other words, there can be fully formed nations---and there were many such nations in history---without a state of their own, which never made anyone doubt their existence. In tsarist Russia, the Ukrainians, just as other peoples of the country, were a nation with all of a nation's attributes. Yet, the Ukrainians as a nation attained national statehood only after a socialist revolution and a successful struggle against nationalists, imperialist puppets. But if the state is not an attribute of a nation, does it give grounds for belittling or ignoring its role in the formation and development of nations? No, it does not. In fact, the state has always played an immensely important part in national life. A nation awakening to an independent existence objectively requires an effective instrument of asserting itself and protecting its interests, such as the state is. One of the underlying democratic principles of contemporary international law and order is the unqualified recognition of the right of every nation or nationality to form a state of its own. All progressive mankind supports in particular the just demand of the Arab people of Palestine for a state of their own.
The close link between the ethnic and state fields of the life of society appears in the fact that, first, national relations are mainly of a political kind and so are necessarily involved in the sphere of state interests and state policy. Secondly, the nature of national relations as relations of a social kind, directly characterises the essence of state authority in a multinational society. Thus, the quality of being a state of the whole people, which is the key social-class characteristic of the developed socialist state, also implies a high measure of maturity of ethnic relations as an essential component. Thirdly, the link between national relations and statehood is manifested in an inverse relationship, i.e., the significance of statehood itself to the consolidation and development of a nation. This interrelation was clearly evident already in the period when bourgeois nations were taking shape within the framework of bourgeois national states. The significance of statehood as a factor actively influencing every area of national life has increased still more under socialism.
It must be fully appreciated that the Marxist-Leninist 34 conception of self-determination inherently implies the right of a people to form a state of its own as the most effective guarantee of its free national existence. Of special significance in this light is Article 70 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution, which states that the USSR is an integral, federal, multinational state formed on the principle of socialist federalism as a result of the free self-- determination of nations and the voluntary association of equal Soviet Socialist Republics. Thus, there are three points following directly from the history itself of the formation of the USSR as an integral, federal, multinational state.
These are, first, the principle of socialist federalism; second, the exercise of free self-determination of nations; and, third, the association of equal Soviet Republics into an integral state.
Let us consider these points in more detail.
[35] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter II __ALPHA_LVL1__ DEVELOPMENT OF MARXISTS-LENINISTS'Western writers on the politico-legal nature of the Soviet Union often raise the question---and grossly misinterpret it---of the alteration of the Marxist-Leninist views on federation and the cause of such alteration. The English sociologist Vernon V. Aspaturian, for example, departing from the fact that the Marxists used to oppose the federal organisation of the state, explains the change in this attitude by nothing more than that the idea of self-determination presumably did not come up to expectation in practice and so had to be dropped and replaced by federalism. In that interpretation, federalism appears as the opposite of self-determination, and, so far as the Soviet Union is concerned, no more than a tactical trick resorted to by the Bolsheviks to save their multinational state from falling into pieces. Incidentally, Aspaturian does not explain how it was possible for various forms of national statehood to appear (viz., Union and Autonomous republics, autonomous regions and autonomous areas), and for several forms of Soviet federation to be established on their basis (viz., the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in 1918, the Transcaucasian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic in March 1922, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in December 1922), if, as he says, the Bolshevik Party had to give up self-determination because it simply did not work.
Indeed, the Marxists-Leninists' attitude to federation did not stand still, evolving from the denial of federation in principle (in principle, but not absolutely) to its acceptance as the most suitable form of organisation for a multinational state. The reasons of this evolution were, however, not the least like those suggested by Aspaturian. These reasons must be seen through the perspective of history in order to yield a correct idea of the 36 theoretical and practical roots from which sprang the integral Soviet union---i.e., federal---state. Discussing in their works the question of which form of organisation of a democratic state was the most suitable, Marx and Engels, the founders of scientific communism, gave preference to the unitary form. Their basically negative view of federation was grounded, first of all, in the fact that the interests of economic development, and social and political development immediately related to it, were met best of all by the democratically centralised state. And federation, as clearly followed from the lessons of history, prevented centralisation, perpetuated the fragmented and isolated condition of the separate regions, conserving archaic habits and backwardness. Engels wrote: ``Whereas feudalism, patriarchalism, and philistinism flourish in separated provinces and individual towns, the bourgeoisie needs for its growth as wide a field as possible...."^^1^^ In capitalist society, centralism furthers the maturing and consolidation of the proletariat and all revolutionary forces, making it much easier to pave the way for revolutionary change.
In his ``The Civil War in Switzerland" Engels wrote: ``Through its industry, its commerce and its political institutions, the bourgeoisie is already working everywhere to drag the small, self-contained localities which only live for themselves out of their isolation, to bring them into contact with one another, to merge their interests, to expand their local horizons, to destroy their local habits, strivings and ways of thinking, and to build up a great nation with common interests, customs and ideas out of the many hitherto mutually independent localities and provinces. The bourgeoisie is already carrying out considerable centralisation."^^2^^ One necessary consequence of it was political centralisation which made independent localities, linked almost solely by federal ties, with their different interests, laws, governments and tariffs, grow together into one nation with a common government, common legislation, a common national class interest, and a common tariff border. The unitary form of national state organisation was objectively imposed by the very conditions and requirements of the capitalist mode of production.
The benefits of centralisation on a democratic basis were to 37 make themselves felt even more in the organisation of proletarian state.
The founders of scientific communism always paid attention to the immense advantage of political centralisation.
Federation as a step towards centralisation was to Engels merely of a temporary and transient significance and had to yield its place, after some years, to the fully centralised republic. Real centralisation, carried out consistently and completely, could not, in the opinion of the founders of scientific communism, be achieved through federation. In his works on Switzerland, Engels clearly expresses the idea that not only does federation do nothing to further the consolidation of the class forces on a national scale but it even prevents such consolidation. He wrote: ``The isolated life which the mass of them (the Swiss) lead, deprives them of all sense of their common interest as a nation. That a village, or a valley, or a canton should stick together is no wonder. But, to stick together as a Nation for a common purpose, be what it may, they never will."^^3^^ Unlike petty-- bourgeois democrats who saw Switzerland as a sort of ideal of political freedom, Marx and Engels stressed that the real situation in that country conserving fragmentation made it trail in the rear of European progress and remain, for its ostentatious republicanism, essentially reactionary. After analysing in depth the economic and political situation in Switzerland, Engels concludes that infinite fragmentation is the inevitable historical product of the federal republic.
The founders of scientific communism closely studied the forms of state structure in Britain, bearing in mind the acuteness of the national question in that country. The Irish nation, the first victim of British colonialism, could only attain liberty by rending the union imposed on them. National liberation, important not only to the Irish but to the British too, required Ireland's secession from Britain, even if the result was a federation. Since federation which Marx and Engels considered to be the exception from the general rule of centralisation, was aimed, in the case of Ireland, at democratising relations between peoples, it is evidently proper to conclude that in this instance the founders of scientific communism formulated for the first time the important proposition that there exists a relationship between the 38 federal form of the organisation of the state and the solution of the national question. This thesis was developed further in Lenin's works.
Antagonism between the Irish and English proletarians was artificially sustained by the ruling bourgeoisie who found national discord among the proletarian masses much to their advantage in preserving their rule. An alliance between the English and Irish proletarians alone could lead to the victory of the working class under the specific conditions prevailing in Britain at that time. In view of close economic and geographical ties between Britain and Ireland, Marx did not rule out the possibility of a British-Irish federation being eventually formed. In a letter to Kugelmann, written in 1869, he spoke of the need for replacing the Union of 1801 ``by a free federal relationship".^^4^^ That did not, however, rule out complete secession should an equal and free union prove impossible.^^5^^ In a circular letter, entitled ``Le Conseil General au Gonseil Federal de la Suisse Romande" (The General Council---to the Federal Council of Romance Switzerland), Marx wrote that ``it is a preliminary condition of the emancipation of the English working class to transform the present forced union (that is to say, the enslavement of Ireland) into an equal and free confederation, if possible, or into complete separation, if necessary".^^6^^
This consistently revolutionary solution of the national question was the only one providing for the consolidation of the working class and instilling in it a truly internationalist spirit.
As for the federal organisation of the United States of America, Marx and Engels believed that in the nineteenth century, on a large territory and within the same political organisation of the constituent states, this federal organisation had a centralising, and so progressive, character. It was also important that as the United States, by dint of the historical circumstances, had skipped the stage of feudalism, it had no vestiges of feudalism typical of European federations. The historical development of the United States of North America, as well as of the old European countries, showed that even in the conditions of the capitalist mode of production, at a definite stage of the development of productive forces, and so of the proletariat, federation no longer performs its progressive centralising role and becomes 39 a hindrance. The objective conditions of social development, the socio-economic conditions in the first place, put on the agenda a higher level of political centralisation, namely, the unitary democratic republic.
The founders of scientific communism regarded the unitary republic as preferable, as it gave the proletariat considerable advantage in achieving the goal of democratic centralisation. Here, the yardstick of one's attitude to this or that form of state structure was, therefore, the attainment of democratic centralisation as one of the main prerequisites of progressive social development.
In 1901, Eduard Bernstein came out with the assertion that Marx's views on federation were identical with those of Proudhon. Bernstein tried to represent Marx's criticism of the military-bureaucratic bourgeois machinery of state as a departure from the principle of centralism in general, as giving preference to the federal organisation of the proletarian state. In truth, however, Marx in his works (especially those on the Commune) clearly opposed the democratic centralism of the proletarian state to the official, military centralism of the bourgeois state.
Touching upon the aforementioned statements, Lenin wrote in his The State and Revolution: ``There is not a trace of federalism in Marx's above-quoted observations on the experience of the Commune. Marx agreed with Proudhon on the very point that the opportunist Bernstein did not see. Marx disagreed with Proudhon on the very point on which Bernstein found a similarity between them. . .
``Marx disagreed both with Proudhon and Bakunin precisely on the question of federalism (not to mention the dictatorship of the proletariat). Federalism as a principle follows logically from the petty-bourgeois views of anarchism. Marx was a centralist. There is no departure whatever from centralism in his observations just quoted."^^7^^
The view held by the founders of Marxism-Leninism that the big, centralised state was to be preferred for carrying out fundamental social reforms and for defending and securing the revoluntionary gains already made has been borne out by the entire practice of historical development.
Thus, it is an axiom of revolutionary theory and practice that centralisation is preferable to fragmentation and self-- 40 containment. As to the question of applying federation as a form of organisation of multinational states, it is most immediately dependent on the attainment of democratic centralisation. As consistent supporters of democratic centralisation and opponents of federation which they saw as essentially synonymous with decentralisation, Marx and Engels nevertheless in some cases recognised the preferability of the federal organisation of the state. As was mentioned above, federation could in certain circumstances be a means towards lessening national contradictions within the boundaries of one, politically integral state formation. Hence, although sometimes weaker than the unitary, centralised form, the federal formation was, from the angle of the interests of proletarian struggle, preferable to centralisation based on oppression and inequality. Recognising self-determination is not tantamount to recognising federation as a principle. One can firmly oppose this principle and support democratic centralism, and yet prefer federation to national inequality, as the only path towards full democratic centralism. From this position it does not follow in the least that federation, as an exceptional measure and essentially a bridge to the democratically centralised organisation of the state, is in itself a more democratic institute than the unitary republic.
The level of democratism associated with this or that form of state structure is predetermined by other, more fundamental causes. The founders of scientific communism considered that democratic centralism should be in the focus of attention in deciding whether the unitary or the federal form of organisation of the state was to be given preference. In this respect, the democratically centralised unitary republic certainly had the decisive advantage over the federal organisation of the state. And only where the need to resolve strained national relations, i.e., precisely the problem of ensuring democracy, prompted the conclusion that federation was advisable, did the latter become, for the time being, preferable to the unitary state---again, from the standpoint of securing the principles of democracy in the best possible way. The chief merit of federation, which made possible its employment in individual, exceptional cases, was that it could be a form of transition to a genuinely democratically-centralised state. This, quite obviously, confirmed that the unitary, democratically-- 41 centralised republic was more democratic than the federal republic.
It is well worth noting that today too some bourgeois ideologists try to relate the measure to which a state is democratic directly to its federal form of organisation, completely ignoring the nature of the social system. Such attempts clearly have little to justify them. The democratism of a state is determined above all by the socio-economic nature of its social system. And the preferability of one form of the state to another is determined--- to approach the question in a strictly scientific way---in concrete historical terms.
Lenin, who fully shared the views of Marx and Engels in giving preference to democratic centralisation in a big state, specified these views with reference to the age of imperialism and proletarian revolutions. Stressing in every way the advantages offered by a big state and its progressive significance to the victory of the working class and the transition to socialism, he also pointed out the obvious advantages of big states in terms of economic progress and the interests of the masses.^^8^^ Nevertheless, if the attainment of democratic centralisation is the first major aspect of the problem of selecting the form of organisation of the state, its second most important aspect is undoubtedly the employment of this form for settling inter-ethnic, inter-national relations. This latter aspect is of course relatively independent of the former. Still, both are not only closely interrelated with each other, but are also mutually interdependent.
As a matter of fact, the democratically centralised form of the state is not an end in itself but a highly important instrument of introducing democracy in every area of social and political life. And, on the other hand, the consistent implementation of the democratic programme on the national question and, above all, the meticulous observance of the principle of selfdetermination of nations result in national peace and concord, mutual trust and the drawing together of peoples, i.e., they result, in the final analysis, in strengthening and advancing the principles of democratic centralism.
While considering that federation was only admissible in individual and exceptional cases, the national question of particular significance among them, the Communist Party and Lenin also proceeded from the concrete historical conditions 42 prevailing at the moment, opposing the federal organisation of the state in principle, but not absolutely. Rejecting, for instance, the plan of federal organisation of Russia, Lenin simultaneously supported in 1912--1914 the formation of a Balkan federation. The new stage in the development of Marxists-Leninists' views on whether federation could be applied in Russia, started in 1917. In the first six months of that year the Communist Party considered the most suitable the unitary state with broad regional autonomy for the localities with distinctive customs, ethnic composition, and so on, whereas in the summer and autumn of 1917 it paid greater attention to the ``transitional'' forms of the organisation of the state, including the federal form. Lastly, the victorious Great October Socialist Revolution established the view on federation as a form of organisation of an integral state, which, though ``transitional'', was nevertheless quite suitable under the prevailing historical conditions.
In the period before the 1917 October Revolution, the Party and Lenin were opposed to the idea of the federal organisation of the proletarian state, just as Marx and Engels had been. Yet, a principled approach, i.e., one consistent with the content and spirit of the Party Programme, did not imply at all that one must obligatorily and indiscriminately either support or reject federation, the attitude to which was determined in each specific case by a painstaking analysis and consideration of concrete historical circumstances and conditions. That kind of approach, i.e., the approach in principle, essentially presupposes that there may be exceptions which prove, rather than disprove, the principle.
It is of indubitable interest to trace the development itself of the views on the compatibility of the federal form of the state with its democratically centralised organisation. Indeed, federation, as understood by the founders of scientific communism, could be considered suitable or unsuitable with relation to one specific historical case or another, while disapproving on the whole, i.e., in principle, of this form of organisation of the state. Clearly enough, such federation, i.e., bourgeois federation, could only play a democratic-centralising part on very few occasions, an instance of which is provided in the mid-nineteenth century by the relations between England and Ireland.
The notions of such compatibility undergo a thorough change 43 with the evolvement of the basic principles of the Marxist-- Leninist theory of socialist federation. The main thing about it is that the changed nature of federation also decisively affects the possibility of applying it. Because of its changed nature, too, federation was no longer undesirable in principle. An obstacle to democratic centralisation of the state as it had usually been, with its nature changed, and in the circumstances of a multinational society, it now was highly consistent with democratic centralisation.
The development of Marxist-Leninist views on the applicability of federation was influenced, above all, by the changed historical conditions prevailing in 1917 in Russia where the scope and pitch reached by the national movement had made it necessary to study in depth the ``transitional'' forms of the organisation of the state.
In those historical conditions, when Russia was a centralised state and no real threat existed to its integrity and unity, federation could substantially weaken the economic, political-- administrative and other ties between the separate areas of the country. Federation would have meant an unwarranted fragmentation of the integral political whole, which, in the long run, would badly affect the prospects of social---and so, revolutionary---- development. Taking account of the circumstances the Communist Party and Lenin advocated the plan of organising a big, democratically centralised state that would enable the working class best of all to organise, rally and tackle its revolutionary tasks.
Meanwhile, already by the middle of 1917, the bureaucratically integral state had begun to disintegrate, the ethnic outlying districts separating from the centre. Clearly enough, in these circumstances, which had arisen objectively, the establishment of a federation in Russia was conducive to a certain measure of centralisation and was, therefore, quite legitimately seen as a stride from the isolation of the working people of different nationalities to their drawing together. In view of these circumstances, the federal form of organisation of multinational Russia was no longer at odds with the Party's main aim of achieving the unity and consolidation of the mass of working people within the framework of a possibly big, democratically centralised state but, on the contrary, promoted it in the best possible way. To this it must be added that under the prevailing circumstances the federal form helped to carry out more successfully the 44 Party's policy principle, thoroughly substantiated in Lenin's works, viz., the right of nations to self-determination.
On the other hand, the federal organisation of Russia was fundamentally at odds with the separatist plans entertained by the nationalist bourgeoisie in the country's outskirts. And the tendency towards the separation of the outskirts from the revolutionary centre had become quite distinct and real just before the October Revolution, and intensified still further after it. Having a common class aim---that of disuniting the working people of different nationalities, and weakening and suppressing the revolutionary movement---the Russian bourgeoisie and the nationalist bourgeoisie of the outlying districts strove, albeit in different ways, to achieve it. The bourgeois nationalist governments that emerged and hung on for some time after the October Revolution with the support of foreign interventionists, had fully revealed in practice their anti-popular, counterrevolutionary nature and were swept away by the revolutionary masses. Bourgeois nationalists' separatism, naturally, clashed fundamentally with the vital interests of the working people of the nationalities which strove for a political, state alliance and unity with the Russian working class. In these specific historical conditions the federal organisation of the state was the most suitable for achieving the unity of the mass of working people.
On the one hand, the national liberation movement of Russia's oppressed peoples sharply expanded and intensified. Their national self-awareness increased rapidly, and the centrifugal tendencies stirred up by the nationalist ethnic bourgeoisie became notably stronger. There was a very real chance that the multinational bourgeois state would soon disintegrate. On the other hand, as the bourgeois-democratic revolution developed into a socialist one, a strong internationalist current became more pronounced in the national movements. As these movements were undergoing class differentiation, the proletarian influence in them grew stronger, there was a growing understanding of the internationalist unity of the revolutionary tasks, and an international alliance of the working people of all nationalities took shape, the movement of the oppressed peoples for their national liberation merging with the socialist working-class movement. Lenin's great merit lay in his seeing even at that time that under the 45 prevailing circumstances the path of international association of the working people of different nations and nationalities into one multinational socialist state would be more complicated and so might require not only autonomous but also federal forms of the state. In those changed conditions federation proved to be the sole means conducive to the political unification of isolated national districts into one large, multinational socialist state, not to the fragmentation of the integral state into small and selfcontained bourgeois nationalist republics as before.
The ideas of federation were put forward by the working people themselves. The congress of Latvian landless peasants recorded this in its resolution in April 1917: ``We are fighting for the introduction of the democratic federal republic.'' The congress of peasants of the Tiraspol District, held in June 1917, noted: ``The common historical destinies of the peoples inhabiting Russia and the awareness of the importance of political unity imperatively point to the need for a federal union.'' Lithuanian soldiers of the Western Front recorded in the resolution of their congress on December 11, 1917 the following: ``This Congress recognises the democratic republic based on federation to be the best form of government for free Lithuania.'' The Congress of Peasants' Deputies of the Cheboksary District bound the delegates it was sending to the First All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Peasants' Deputies to ``stand up for a free, democratic, federal republic".^^9^^
The antecedents of Lenin's plan of establishing federation in Russia refer to the period following the 7th (April 1917) AllRussia Conference of the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party (Bolsheviks) which, in its resolution on the national question, put forward autonomy in the context of a unitary state. As soon, however, as May 1917, in an article entitled ``Mandate to Deputies of the Soviet Elected at Factories and Regiments" Lenin writes on the possibility of establishing in Russia a union state (the word ``federation'' is not mentioned in the article). Expressing the idea of a close alliance of all peoples of the country, he underlines especially that the Great Russians undertake to make it possible for ``all other nations without exception freely to decide whether they wish to live as a separate state, or in union with whomsoever they please".^^10^^ Lenin's appeal 46 to the First All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers' and Soldiers' Deputies---``Let Russia be a union of free republics"^^11^^--- also confirms the approval of federation as a possible form of the organisation of the state in the prevailing concrete historical situation. After the Great October Socialist Revolution, the Communist Party and Lenin already explicitly spoke in support of the federal form of organisation of the multinational proletarian state. The historic Declaration of Rights of the Working and Exploited People was the first legislative act by which the young Soviet state recognised federation.
The acceptance of federation as a suitable form of the organisation of the state merely in response to the concrete historical circumstances, especially to the acuteness of national relations, should not be taken to mean that the Party and Lenin had changed their attitude to federation in principle. After all, as was mentioned above, historical situations did arise previously which made it desirable that the federal pattern of the state be applied. Should this need have arisen in the given instance, too, solely from tense national relations, strife and isolation of the working people of different nationalities, there would have been no serious reasons for proposing the question at all of any revision of the old conceptions. If, therefore, we work solely from the fact that during and after the October Revolution federation was accepted as an exception from the general rule, owing to the specific circumstances in which Russia found itself and which were marked by an intensification of national strife and political fragmentation, we should logically arrive at the conclusion that the federal form of organisation of the socialist state exhausts its capabilities and thereby outlives its usefulness, as the specific historical circumstances which have produced it disappear. If so, then under socialism, and still more under developed socialism, the federal pattern of the Soviet state either is not justified at all and should have been replaced long ago by the unitary pattern, or, being objectively dependent on the presence of problems stemming from the as yet unresolved national question, will continue until these problems have been finally settled.
In point of fact, however, the national question is a qualitative characteristic of ethnic relations, which is linked directly with the actual inequality of nations and their division into 47 privileged and underprivileged ones, and with the resultant national frictions and prejudices.
This state of national relations presupposes inequality in the levels of economic and cultural development of nations, which most often results from unequal relations and an atmosphere of national strife and quarrels, enmity and suspicion.
The triumph of socialism and construction of developed socialist society in the USSR meant the solution of the national question in the sense in which the meaning of this social problem is commonly understood in accordance with the MarxistLeninist doctrine on the national question. Of course, in mature socialist society, too, there are problems arising from the development of national relations. These relations, nevertheless, essentially have nothing in common with the national question. It would be wrong to explain the federal form of the contemporary Soviet multinational state by the existence of an ``unsolved national question" there, which will be demonstrated in the chapters below.
The conclusion that the principled approach itself to the applicability of the federal form of organisation of a multinational state, as reflected in Lenin's works and the relevant Party documents, did not stay unchanged but was creatively developed and enriched by the revolutionary practice of the workers' struggle and the experience of building socialism, has been fully substantiated in the literature.
In speaking about the ``alteration'' or ``revision'' of MarxistsLeninists' views on federation in principle, one must always remember that in this instance the alteration implied no renunciation of the former positions or pronouncing them to have been wrong or anything of the kind. What did take place was that the former conceptions were creatively surmounted by being theoretically elevated, and a shift was effected to new theoretical lines, which certainly never amounted to any renunciation of the previous views. In the light of this dialectical approach it becomes clear that the previous conceptions, already surmounted, are requisite to the very change of attitude. We have here, in fact, a manifestation of the dialectical law of negation of negation which implies continuity or the recurrence, at a higher stage, of the essential properties of the preceding stage of development, and the substantiation of the progressive character of 48 that development itself. It is the kind of ``renunciation'' and `` revision" which gives scope to further development, while retaining the positive content of the past developmental stages.
When analysing the immediate causes responsible for the change in the Marxists-Leninists' view on federation as a form of organisation of a multinational state---the change from its denial in principle to its acceptance as the most suitable form of organising a multinational state---one should always remember that the revision itself was closely bound up with the changing view on the nature of federation. The discovery of Soviets as a form of government---a form thoroughly international by its very nature---paved the way for organising a multinational state on essentially new foundations making it possible to combine the old centralisation with the broadest possible democracy. That was already the Soviet socialist type of federation which they could not possibly have known anything about earlier, when the historical circumstances were different.
What underlay the evolution of Lenin's and the Communist Party's views on federation was that, after the Great October Socialist Revolution and on the strength of the general theoretical conclusions drawn from the experience of building a Soviet state, there was discovered a new, socialist type of federation and it was scientifically proved that it was applicable and even necessary to the organisation of the state of the dictatorship of the proletariat in multinational Russia. Marxism-Leninism does not ``invent'' any new and specific patterns of the organisation of the state. It discovers them, drawing on the creative revolutionary experience of the masses. The historical stages of development of the Marxists-Leninists' views on the applicability of federation in Russia objectively correspond to the development of the specific historical situation (including the correlation of class forces, the relations between peoples, and so on), on the one hand, and to the shaping of a system of ideas about the new type of federation, the accumulation and generalisation of the practical experience of its functioning, and so on, on the other hand.
Thus, the previous conception of federation as being incompatible with the democratically centralised organisation of the state rested on the previous historical experience of bourgeois federations. It must be stated at the same time that subsequent __PRINTERS_P_49_COMMENT__ 4---748 49 historical experience, dialectically generalised and developed in the context of Marxist-Leninist theory, logically implies two successive stages: the first, when the unitary form was recognised as the most consistent with the goal of democratic centralisation and federation was considered undesirable in principle but admissible in individual, exceptional cases, particularly in the case of acute ethnic conflicts; and the second, when the opportunity arose of using, simultaneously with the unitary pattern, the new, socialist type of federation which is preferable for achieving democratic centralisation in multinational states.
As we see, tracing the development of the views on the role and significance of federation in the light of the logic of history, it is possible to speak of the existence of definite stages of such development. In our view, however, it would be a serious omission if each of these stages in each individual case were to be made dependent on the content and distinctive features of specific stages of revolutionary development. This kind of approach of course does not imply at all any denial or belittlement of the underlying, substantive relationships and interdependencies that exist---as they have always existed---between the content of social development at one of its stages or another and the form, including the politico-legal form, which is most consistent with each stage.
The doctrine on the socialist type of federation, i.e., federation based on fundamentally different principles in comparison with other federations earlier known in history, also developed through the creative assimilation of the experience of the world's first Soviet federal state.
The creative development of the views held by the Party and Lenin on the applicability of the federal form of the organisation of the socialist state was immediately related to the development of the views on the very nature of federation and on the advantages offered by it as socialist federation and not inherent in federation of any different kind. Thus, the question of applicability of federation in Russia cannot be reduced merely to the concrete historical conditions that prevailed there before and after the October Revolution (the stronger centrifugal forces, exacerbation of class and, to a certain extent, inter-national conflicts and so on). Hence, it would be absolutely groundless to view the 50 existence of the Soviet federation as an exception from the general rule. The views on the applicability of federation in the specific historical conditions prevailing in Russia before and after the Revolution developed simultaneously, and in an immediate, organic relationship with the conceptions on the nature of the new type of federation. Lenin's conclusion on the need for setting up a Soviet, rather than a parliamentarian, republic in Russia was of decisive significance in this matter.
Concentration of power in the country from top to bottom in the hands of Soviets, which maintained the closest possible contact with the working people, provided for the all-round implementation of the principle of democratic centralism in national state development. In this, let us note, is rooted one of the main reasons of the development of the Party's views on federation. The discovery of Soviets as a form of government determined, therefore, the organisation of a multinational state on a fundamentally different basis, whereby strict centralisation could be combined with the broadest democracy. The emergence of the new, socialist type of federation was historically determined by the very appearance on the territory of the former bourgeois and landowner Russia of states of a new type, namely Soviet republics. This indispensable and fundamental dependence of Soviet federation, as federation of a new type, on the emergence of Soviet republics which, simply by dint of their socialist nature, required a free, voluntary and equitable alliance with one another, was brilliantly shown by Lenin in his speech on the Party Programme of March 19, 1919. He said: ``We hold a strictly class standpoint. What we are writing in the programme is a recognition of what has actually taken place since the time we wrote of the self-determination of nations in general. At that time there were still no proletarian republics. It was when they appeared, and only as they appeared, that we were able to write what is written here: 'A federation of states organised after the Soviet type'."^^12^^
Summing up the results of Soviet federal development, the 10th Congress of the RCP(B) noted in its resolution, Concerning the Party's Immediate Tasks in the National Question, that Russian experience in applying the federal form of the state ``. . .has fully confirmed the suitability and flexibility of __PRINTERS_P_51_COMMENT__ 4* 51 federation as the general form of the political union of Soviet republics".^^13^^ The 12th Congress of the RCP(B) pointed out that the ``results of the October Revolution do not boil down to ending national oppression and providing the ground for the association of the people. As it developed, the October Revolution also evolved the forms of such association, charting the main lines along which the association of peoples into one federal state should develop. Thus, the proletariat has found in the Soviet system the key to solving correctly the national question, discovering in it the path towards organising a stable multinational state on the principles of national equality and voluntariness.... The triumph of Soviets and establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat are the basis, the foundation on which to develop the fraternal co-operation of peoples in an integral political, state union".^^14^^
When speaking of the Soviet socialist federation as a new type of federation, one should be mindful of two highly important circumstances.
First, historically the Soviet federation, since its inception and throughout a fairly long period of time, was the only form of the socialist type of federation. Other forms of socialist federation (the Yugoslav and the Czechoslovak forms) appeared, of course, many decades after the emergence of the Soviet federation. This, in our view, provides the reason---which could evidently be classed among historical reasons---to include the Soviet socialist federation among federations of a new type insofar as no other federation besides it could substantively be contrasted with the bourgeois type of federation.
The other, and no less important, thing is that the very description of the federation which has historically emerged for the first time as the Soviet federation can throw no doubt whatsoever on the fact that its definition as a Soviet federation establishes it as a federation of a new type.
The socialist type of Soviet federation determined the system of its principles. The latter were given theoretical substatiation in Lenin's works and policy documents of the Communist Party even before the federation itself was formed. This is accounted for by the fact that the Marxist theory of the national question included a comprehensive substantiation of the principles of 52 the Party's nationality policy, which provided both a theoretical and a practical basis for the shaping of the scientific principles of the structure and functioning of socialist federation.
These principles are:~
the socialist character of the federation, its being based on Soviets and the Soviet system, with the leading role played by the Communist Party;~
the voluntary character of the association of the Soviet national republics in the federation, guaranteed by their freedom to leave the federation;~
the equal rights of the subjects associated in the federation. On this point, it must be stressed that the socialist conception of equal rights implies the actual exercise of equal rights by the subjects of Soviet federation. Legal national equality, which is a gain of the October Revolution, provides favourable conditions for giving all-round assistance to the formerly backward peoples in order to speed their economic and cultural development and thus achieve their actual equality;~
the national-territorial structure of the Soviet federation. The ethnic and territorial features of the organisation of Soviet federalism are not separate. A nation is unable to implement its right of self-determination, unless it has a definite territory secured to it. Possession of territory determines the establishment of specific forms of the life and activity of a nation^^15^^;~
organisation of the Soviet socialist federation in conformity with the principle of democratic centralism.
Discovery of the new type of federation has made it possible to propose and solve the question of its applicability not as a brief, transitional stage but for a long historical term. This reveals, in particular, the essential fallacy of the interpretation of the CPSU's views on the historical duration of the Soviet federation by the French Sovietologist Carriere d'Encausse. In her L'Empire eclate. La revolte des nations en URSS (The Burst Empire. Revolt of Nations in the USSR), she claims that the idea of federal state has always been regarded by Communists as a compromise, a transitional stage on the path to an integral, unitary state.^^10^^ The above, however, has shown that it is not so.
The appearance of a new type of federation which was far from being some sort of palliative of unitarism also cancelled 53 the problem of the denial in principle of the federal organisation of a multinational socialist state.
Soviet federation proved to be the most viable and perfect form of organisation of a multinational socialist state. This is due to the fact that socialist federation was not only a major means of solving the national question, but also an effective political mechanism providing for a gradual drawing together of different nations and nationalities, the attainment of social and political unity of Soviet society, for the shaping of a new historical community---the Soviet people, and for the development and improvement of national relations in the context of mature socialism.
Assessing the Marxists-Leninists' attitude on the whole to the federal organisation of a multinational state in the light of what was said above, one should, in our view, state the following: Whereas earlier the idea of federation was directly associated with the weakening of the unity of a state, with decentralisation (the very reason why before the October Revolution the MarxistsLeninists only agreed to federation in exceptional cases, especially when national relations were strained), after the October Revolution federation was recognised as the most suitable state pattern, and that, certainly, implied a change in the assessment of federation. In addition to this, the change in the previous estimations of the use of the federal form of state structure did not concern merely the opportunities afforded by the latter for reaching a consistently democratic solution of the national question in a multinational society, but was also induced by the appearance of some new, hitherto insufficiently known, potentialities which were revealed in the practice of applying socialist federation to secure and strengthen the democratically centralised principles of socialist society and the socialist state.
Adhering, as before, to the idea of a possibly big and democratically centralised state, duly appreciating the unquestionable advantages offered by such a state to social development, tackling in each individual case the specific-historical question as to the worth, in one kind of circumstances or another, of the federal or the unitary form of state structure, the Marxists-Leninists, in. view of the obvious advantages and great opportunities offered by socialist federation, changed their assessment, negative in principle, of the federal form of the organisation of the state.
[54] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter III __ALPHA_LVL1__ SELF-DETERMINATION OF NATIONS:As was pointed out, the experience of formation and development of different patterns of Soviet national statehood was of exceptional significance to the shaping of the Marxist-Leninist conception of federation.
Without the appearance of Soviet republics (which were autonomous and independent) and other forms of national statehood, there generally could have been no question in principle of the existence of a socialist federation. Actually, the very conception of socialist federation logically presupposes the existence of different forms of national statehood embodying the self-- determination of nations.
Did Lenin and the Party, opposed as they were to federation in principle before the October Revolution, nevertheless recognise that it was possible for peoples to build their own national statehood? Yes, they did, as the fact that it is possible for every people to form a national state of their own follows immediately from the very meaning of the right of nations to self-- determination. Emphasising that it would be wrong to understand the right to self-determination in any other way than that it was the right of a nation to political independence and separate existence as a state, Lenin wrote: ``. . .if we want to grasp the meaning of self-determination of nations, not by juggling with legal definitions, or 'inventing' abstract definitions, but by examining the historico-economic conditions of the national movements, we must inevitably reach the conclusion that the self-- determination of nations means the political separation of these nations from alien national bodies, and the formation of an independent national state."^^1^^
Lenin repeatedly warned that in each specific case Marxists should deal with self-determination of nations from a concrete historical standpoint. There neither is nor can there be any 55 solution concerning self-determination that would suit every occasion.
Thus, recognising absolutely the right of every oppressed nation of tsarist Russia to secede and form a state of its own, Lenin and the Communist Party, when dealing practically with the advisability of a nation's secession, considered this question exclusively from the standpoint of the concrete historical conditions of the moment, never demanding that these nations should form states of their own, which, in its turn, was the reason for rejecting the plan for the federal organisation of Russia.
Consistently coming out for building in Russia, after establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat, an integral, centralised state, the Communist Party, until the social development in the national areas had put the question on the agenda, did not propose to the peoples of those areas the task of forming their own national statehood. This certainly does not imply the Party's disapproval of such statehood. Restoration of the national statehood of the Poles and the Finns, who had enjoyed it not so long before, seemed quite possible. The same goes for the Ukraine.^^2^^
That it was desirable and necessary for the emancipated peoples to form their national states became clearly evident only after the victorious October Revolution in the country's centre and the sweeping triumph of Soviet government in the outlying national areas. It was then that the Communist Party reached the conclusion that not only was Soviet national statehood of the emancipated peoples compatible with democratic centralism, but that it could be used as a means towards their rebirth and prosperity and the building of a classless society.
Implementation by any nation or nationality of the right of self-determination---and the Communist Party recognised it as every people's right without exception, irrespective of the level of development---made the formation of independent national states a possibility in principle. Of course, such states could, by mutual agreement, and on the basis of absolutely free choice, form a politico-legal union, i.e., a federal association, and they could equally abstain from forming one. Whichever the case, it would depend on the prevailing historical circumstances and conditions.
Hence, it would be wrong to view federation as a direct form
56 of self-determination of nations. A nation implementing its right to self-determination may continue as a part of a state (e.g., on an autonomous basis) or it may form a national state of its own. In either case, the nation exercises political autonomy, and enjoys freedom and independence from the will of other nations or international communities. Having implemented its right to secession, a nation expressing its sovereign will, yet simultaneously with, and with the indispensable agreement of, the other nation or nations, may join a federal association on a voluntary and equal footing. Obviously enough, no nation may form a federation just at its own sovereign discretion, without appropriate concensus formalised by a treaty or other agreement, and in that sense, no nation has the right to federation, since ``federation means the association of equals, an association that demands common agreement".^^3^^In his The Right of Nations to Self-Determination Lenin particularly stressed that from the Social-Democratic standpoint the right to self-determination was not to be understood as federation. He wrote: ``The right to federation is simply meaningless, since federation implies a bilateral contract."^^4^^
Before the October Revolution, in their national programme the Bolsheviks recognised the independent national state as the only form of national statehood resulting directly from implementing the right of nations to self-determination.
Historically, however, the earliest form of Soviet socialist federation, the RSFSR, was based on autonomy. The practice itself of Soviet national-state development thus resulted in a substantial extension of the forms of Soviet national statehood. Here too, one can equally trace the creative development of the conception of national statehood, which is inseparable from the general Marxist-Leninist conception of Soviet socialist federation.
The autonomous national territorial units that could emerge in the course of the revolutionary democratic reorganisation of Russia's state system were viewed by Lenin and the Communist Party in the prerevolutionary period neither as a form of national statehood nor, consequently, as a form of national self-- determination. This position was formulated by Lenin already in his article ``On the Manifesto of the Armenian Social-Democrats''. Praising the Armenian Social-Democrats' endeavour to give a 57 ``correct presentation of the national question'', Lenin simultaneously pointed out that the principles of such policy were not yet quite consistently set forth in their Manifesto. He wrote: ``As a matter of fact, is it possible from the Armenian Social-- Democrats' point of view to speak of the demand for a federative republic? Federation presupposes autonomous national political units, whereas the League [of the Armenian Social-Democrats--- Ed.} rejects the demand for national autonomy. To be fully consistent, the League should delete the demand for a federative republic from its programme, confining itself to the demand for a democratic republic in general. It is not the business of the proletariat to preach federalism and national autonomy; it is not the business of the proletariat to advance such demands, which inevitably amount to a demand for the establishment of an autonomous class state.... As to support of the demand for national autonomy, it is by no means a permanent and binding part of the programme of the proletariat. This support may become necessary for it only in isolated and exceptional cases."^^5^^
What, then, are the conclusions to be drawn from an analysis of the above-quoted propositions voiced by Lenin on the applicability of autonomy in Russian conditions?
Being at that time an opponent of forming a federation in Russia, Lenin came out also against national autonomy, since the latter merely presupposes the federal organisation of the state. Lenin saw the inconsistency and self-contradiction of the authors of the Manifesto precisely in that they, while coming out for a federal republic, rejected the demand for national autonomy. It is clear that in the context of Lenin's article national autonomy was understood as a separated, politically independent---and in that sense autonomous---class state. In other words, an autonomy was not yet understood as a part of a political whole, fairly independent in local and specifically national matters, but as an independent political unit, which alone can be a subject of federation. It is in this light that an autonomous political unit, i.e., a national class state, could rightly be seen both as a politico-legal form of self-determination of a nation and the only possible subject of a federal association of states. That the Party would not support national autonomy in that sense was due entirely to 58 Lenin's and its own disapproval in principle of federation which was considered acceptable only in individual, exceptional cases, the national question of special significance among them.
In the resolution on the national question adopted by the Poronino Conference of the RSDLP Central Committee in 1913, the Communist Party included the establishment of broad regional autonomy in the plan for the political organisation of Russia. In this instance, the concept of broad autonomy of areas marked by essentially distinctive features including their ethnic composition, did not imply any independent political unit that was able to be a subject of federation but an administrativeterritorial or national-territorial unit which was autonomous with respect to a wide range of local matters. Broad regional autonomy, too, was not yet regarded as a possible subject of a federal formation.
Thus, the Party and Lenin in the period of 1903--1913, when they insisted on a democratically centralised organisation of the state system of Russia, put forward a demand for regional selfgovernment and then of broad regional autonomy as well. Why, then, did Lenin object to the use of the word ``regional'' in the discussion of the general political demands of the RSDLP programme and the concept of national autonomy in the Manifesto of the Armenian Social-Democrats? These objections were due to the fact that both the word ``regional'' and the concept of national autonomy could misleadingly suggest that the Party saw them as forms of self-determination of nations leading to disunity, albeit in the garb of federation, rather than to democratically centralised unity and consolidation. It is worth noting in this instance that Lenin and the Communist Party set store by the level of autonomy. Autonomy was acknowledged to be unconditionally acceptable in carrying out the plan of a democratic national-state organisation of the country, inasmuch as it (autonomy) did not in the least conflict with the democratic centralisation of the state but, indeed, helped to secure such centralisation. Simultaneously autonomy, which presupposes a high measure of political independence, necessarily tended to undermine centralisation and substitute a federal association for the stronger integral political whole. The authors of the Manifesto of the Armenian Social-Democrats 59 were inconsistent, as Lenin saw it, in that they rejected the demand for ``national autonomy'', i.e., for politically independent autonomous units within the framework of a single state on the one hand and, on the other, they advanced the slogan of a federative republic whose very existence requires the presence of such politically independent units.
The plan for broad regional autonomy, which was fundamentally different from petty-bourgeois nationalist cultural-national autonomy and its compromise versions, provided for the formation on the territory of each autonomous unit of elected bodies (regional diets) whose terms of reference would extend, in accordance with the laws of the whole country, to all local or specifically national matters. As for the matters concerning the whole country, these came under the jurisdiction of the central parliament of the country as a whole. They were: customs policy; legislation on trade and industry; transport and communications; military matters, and so on. Certainly the policy guidelines set by the Party on the problems of broad regional autonomy could hardly spell out in detail the competence of autonomous regions and, anyway, the full answers to this could be found only from practical experience alone.
In assessing this position from the standpoint of solving the task of the organisation of an integral, centralised, democratic state, the following principal points may be singled out:
(1) Federation in that period was seen as an undesirable form of state structure since, as compared with the measure of centralisation already attained, it offered no advantages, and, moreover, led to a considerable weakening of centralising ties.
(2) The concrete historical situation in Russia at that time, although characterised by national oppression and inequality, did not, nevertheless, call for using the federal form as a means of softening national antagonisms and bringing different peoples together. The actual level of political, state centralisation, should it be secured through a radical democratisation of the entire social system, could already offer decisive advantages over the much weaker federal association.
(3) The plan for broad regional autonomy, allowing the use of the most diverse forms of such autonomy, was an important democratic form of organising the national life of peoples within 60 the framework of an integral, centralised state, guaranteeing their independence and free development.
Implementation of the demand for self-determination of nations did not essentially concern the formation of autonomous national-territorial units within the boundaries of an integral, centralised state. Such units were not regarded at that time as national states or political formations, and the right of nations to self-determination meant simply a right to secede and form an independent national state. From this it follows that a plan of the federal organisation of the state was unacceptable because federation could, in the long run, be brought about by the political self-determination of nations, expressed in the formation of politically independent national states, while the forms of broad national autonomy within the framework of an integral, centralised state did not afford such political independence.
The gist of Lenin's programme of reforming national relations at that stage consisted in:~
---insisting on the unitary form of the integral, democratically centralised republic, implying the use of broad regional autonomy of the localities essentially different in their way of life, ethnic composition, and so on;~
---demanding the maximal guarantees of national equality;~
---advancing and staunchly defending the right of nations and nationalities to self-determination;~
---demanding constitutional guarantees of the rights of national minorities and declaring all privileges of one of the nations null and void;~
---demanding that the obsolete administrative division of the country be replaced by a new one, taking account, as far as possible, of the ethnic composition of the population.
The conception of broad regional autonomy may, with full reason, be regarded as the theoretico-political groundwork of the subsequent forms of Soviet national statehood that emerged in the period following the October Revolution, in the course of national-state development. Moreover, it should be specially pointed out that this conception has played an exceptionally important part in both the formation of the theory of Soviet federation and its practical implementation. This relationship between the conception of broad regional autonomy and the 61 theory of socialist federation can be traced along the following main lines: (1) the subsequent emergence of a federation based on autonomy and (2) the emergence of such a form of Soviet national statehood, rooted theoretically and politically in Lenin's conception of broad regional autonomy, as Union Republics--- members of an integral, federal, multinational state---the USSR.
The federal form of organisation of the Soviet state was first legally proclaimed by the Declaration of Rights of the Working and Exploited People adopted by the 3rd All-Russia Congress of Soviets in January 1918.
Some of the conclusions to be drawn from this constitutional act are as follows:
first, it expresses the conception of regional autonomy, evolved by the Communist Party and Lenin, which presupposes that this broad autonomy should be given to areas with a distinctive way of life and ethnic composition. From the standpoint of this conception autonomy could well be applied to such ethnic parts of Russia as the Ukraine, Byelorussia, Transcaucasia and other `` regional Soviet republics'', should the peoples inhabiting these regions desire, in the course of self-determination, to stay within the framework of an integral state;
second, the Russian Republic, forming as a federation of autonomous regions, was conceived as a state that territorially coincided, in the main, with Russia as it had been, comprising the Ukraine, Byelorussia, Transcaucasia, etc., and not as the RSFSR proper, in its subsequent shape;
third, the Declaration established the Soviet, socialist type of federation, it being assumed that the character of these federal relations would be defined ``upon the formation of the regional Soviet republics'';
and, fourth and last, it established that the ``method of participation of the Soviet Republics of individual regions" in the federal government and the delimitation of the terms of reference of the federal and regional bodies were to be determined at once and jointly by the All-Russia Executive Committee and the central executive committees of the Republics.^^8^^ This fact alone is highly symptomatic for the Soviet federal relations at that time.
The first federation of a socialist type could only be formed 62 if the peoples of Russia put into effect the Party's policy demand for the right of nations to self-determination. The autonomous formations, as concrete forms of national self-determination, were the bedrock of the Soviet Federation.
A great contribution to the development of the forms of Soviet national statehood was made by the People's Commissariat for Nationalities. It set up within its framework national commissariats and departments representing the interests of the working people of different nationalities.
In April 1918 the Commissariat addressed a message On the Immediate Tasks of Soviet Government to the Soviets of Kazan, Ufa, Orenburg and Ekaterinburg, the Council of People's Commissars of the Turkestan Territory, and so on. The message exposed bourgeois autonomy as a tool for the enslavement of the working people and urged the need for building Soviet autonomy. It ran in part: ``The immediate task of Soviet power is to recognise autonomy, not to reject it. Only, this autonomy must be built on the basis of Soviets in the localities and in this way alone can power become the power of the people and be endeared to the masses, i.e., it is necessary only that autonomy should secure power not to the upper crust of a nation, but to the masses. That is the whole point of the matter...."^^7^^
Practically, territorial national autonomies on the territory of Russia began to shape in the period following the 3rd Congress of Soviets. It is worth noting here an Appeal issued by the People's Commissar for Nationalities, On the Tatar-Bashkir Soviet Republic which ran in part: ``Two months have already passed since the 3rd Congress of Soviets which proclaimed the federal structure of the Russian Republic, but the outlying areas, still busy building up Soviet power on a local level, have not yet stated their opinion clearly and definitely on concrete forms of federation. Apart from the Ukraine, now being brutally ravaged by the 'civilised' oppressors, the Crimea and the Don area, which have already expressed themselves in favour of federal ties with Russia, Tatar-Bashkiria seems to be the only region whose revolutionary organisations have definitely charted a plan of joining in a federation with Russia. We mean the accurately mapped-out, general scheme of organisation of the Tatar-- Bashkir State, which is now on everybody's lips and which was 63 prepared by the most influential Soviet organisations of the Tatars and Bashkirs.
''. . .Publishing the Rules below, I consider it necessary to inform you that similar Rules are being worked out by the People's Commissariat for Nationalities also for the Azerbaijan Tatars, Georgians, Armenians, Kirghiz, Sartotekins and other peoples inhabiting Russia, whose revolutionary organisations are hereby requested to communicate their specific plans concerning federation."^^8^^
National-state development in that period was clearly characterised by the fact that autonomies were forming simultaneously with the socialist federation of a definite kind, namely, a federation based on autonomous formations. Naturally, in this instance there was an obvious relationship and succession, viz., the federation could be invested with political flesh and blood to the extent to which its subjects had taken shape. Simultaneously it is worth noting that the 3rd All-Russia Congress of Soviets promulgated the establishment of a federation when the autonomous formations just started shaping in accordance with the peoples' sovereign will. In turn, the autonomies themselves exerted a certain influence on the structure and legal features of the federation.
The very need for defining the exact structure and powers of the federal bodies and formalising in law the correlation between the federal bodies and the bodies of the autonomies made it necessary to set up a commission of the Central Executive Committee for elaborating the federal structure of the RSFSR. The Commission was to define the scope of the powers to be exercised by the separate parts of the federation and work out the principles of relations between its central and local bodies, of the structure of the federal bodies, and so on.
The Central Executive Committee's Resolution on setting up such a commission ran in part: ``Liberation of the vast stretches of the Volga area, the Urals, Siberia, Central Asia and Turkestan, and the forthcoming liberation of the Crimea and the North Caucasus introduces in the RSFSR a number of small peoples each with a distinctive culture, history and grouping of classes. Some of the key tasks before the Central Executive Committee are to establish normal relations between the RSFSR and its 64 constituent Autonomous Soviet Republics and generally non-Russian peoples; to have their needs satisfied in good time; and to work out the patterns of political, state relations between the constituent parts of the RSFSR."^^9^^
At the close of 1920, the RSFSR comprised eight autonomous Soviet republics, 11 autonomous regions and two labour communes, the Karelian and Estonian, which actually enjoyed the status of autonomous regions. National-state development intensified still further after the civil war was over. The years 1920-- 1923 saw the formation of the Daghestan, Mountaineer, Yakut, and Tatar autonomous republics, and the Chuvash, Kalmyk, Mari, Votyak, Karachai-Circassian, Kabardin-Balkar and some other autonomous regions. Autonomies were formed rapidly among the larger peoples of Siberia. The decision to form the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was passed on April 27, 1922. On May 30, 1922, the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee resolved to join the two Buryat autonomous regions (one in the RSFSR and the other in the Far Eastern Republic) into one Buryat-Mongol ASSR. On June 1, 1922, the Oirot (subsequently the Gorno-Altai) Autonomous Region was established. On November 14, 1923, the Khakass District was formed which was reorganised into the Khakass area in 1925 and into the Khakass Autonomous Region on October 20, 1930. At the start of 1923, the RSFSR comprised 10 autonomous republics and 11 autonomous regions. The legal status of the autonomous units and the relations between the higher bodies of government and administration of the RSFSR and those of the autonomous republics were streamlined in the course of nationalstate development. In forming the Soviet national territorial autonomies, account was taken of their economic conditions and the features of everyday life, as well as ethnic composition, all of which were considered in close relation to one another.
It was no accident that these matters were tackled in depth and comprehensively by special, highly authoritative commissions set up by the highest Party and Government bodies of the Soviet Union and Union republics. The ethnographic principle, i.e. the principle of the absolute or, in a very few cases, relative majority of ethnically homogeneous population inhabiting 65 a given territory, was usually of decisive importance in finally defining state boundaries.^^10^^
After the civil war, during the period of economic rehabilitation and socialist reconstruction, the primary objective of the policy pursued by the Communist Party and the Soviet state was to eliminate the onerous legacy of tsarism---the economic and cultural inequality of peoples. The 10th Congress of the RCP(B) advanced this task: ``To help the toiling masses of the non-Russian peoples to catch up with the far more advanced Central Russia, to help them:
``(a) to develop and firmly establish at home Soviet statehood in such forms as shall be consistent with the national conditions of these peoples and their way of life;
``(b) to develop and firmly establish at home the courts, administration and economic and government bodies in the native languages, manned by local people familiar with the life and manners of the local population;
``(c) to develop at home the press, schools, theatres, clubs and all kinds of cultural and educational centres operating in the native languages;
``(d) to launch and develop a broad network of courses and schools in the native languages, providing general education and vocational training ... to speed the training of a local force of skilled workers and Soviet and Party functionaries in every area of administration and, first of all, in the field of education."^^11^^
Early in the rehabilitation period, the bourgeois elements became more active in the centre of the RSFSR and the outlying districts of Russia. They were exponents of both Great Russian chauvinism, the ideology of the Russian bourgeoisie, and nationalism, which was the ideology of the local bourgeoisie of the formerly oppressed peoples. In this complex situation, ``the proletariat has found in the Soviet system the key to the correct solution of the national question, it has discovered in it the path of organising a stable multinational state on the principles of national equality and free choice".^^12^^
The peoples of Russia, of which, according to the 1926 census, there were 194 nations, nationalities and ethnic groups, were at different stages of economic and cultural development. Besides the Russians, industrial capitalism was more or less 66 developed among the Poles, Finns, Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Georgians and Armenians. The peoples of Central Asia, the Volga area, the North Caucasus, Siberia and the Far North, who accounted for roughly 25 million out of a total of 170 million, had not passed the capitalist stage yet and hardly had any industrial proletariat of their own. And even though the Azerbaijanians, Bashkirs, Kazakhs, Tajiks, Tatars, Turkmen, Uzbeks and some other peoples had already begun shaping as bourgeois nations, feudal and even patriarchal relations were still making themselves felt quite notably among them. The Kazakhs, Kirghiz, Turkmen, Buryats and some peoples of the North Caucasus and Siberia retained much of their patriarchaiism and tribalism, and engaged in nomadic or semi-nomadic livestock-breeding.
Lenin's idea that it was possible to set up Soviets in peasant countries with precapitalist relations was first implemented in Turkestan where different national democratic organisations--- mass organisations, national committees and Muslim Soviet Leagues---were reorganised everywhere into Soviets of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies.''
The peoples of the North had at that time a social system halfway between primitive-communal and class systems, strongly marked by tribal relations. Accordingly, Soviets were set up there on the tribal principle.
As soon as 1921, the People's Commissariat for Nationalities drafted General Regulations, a decree on administering the Northern peoples. The draft provided for the establishment of a special body for administering the itinerant and semi-sedentary tribes of Northern trappers, reindeer breeders and fishermen. It was to protect the peoples of the North from all exploitation; take measures against their extinction; regulate the use of hunting grounds, fisheries and pastures; support native crafts; improve the economy and introduce elements in it helping to involve the local peoples in the life of Soviet Russia, taking account of their own distinctive features.
In March 1922, the People's Commissariat for Nationalities set up the Polar Section for the Northern Indigenous Tribes, a special body concerned with the protection of and assistance to the small peoples of the North. Its duties were:~
67``(a) to organise the administration of the primitive tribes in accordance with their cultural and living conditions and their way of life;~
``(b) to protect the native tribes from all exploitation;~
``(c) to keep them supplied through appropriate agencies with the necessary means of production, with clothing and provisions;~
``(d) to regulate the use of hunting grounds and fisheries, as well as reindeer grazing grounds;~
``(e) to study thoroughly the living and economic conditions of the native tribes for the purpose of bringing the new, socialist culture of Soviet Russia easily within their reach in conformity with the peculiar natural conditions of their life and their primitive patriarchal communism and the mental attitudes resulting from them."^^14^^
In July 1922 the People's Commissariat for Nationalities called a special conference of the peoples of the North to discuss the establishment of Soviet bodies and the forms of Soviet development in the North. In 1924 a Committee for Assisting the Peoples of the Northern Outlying Districts was set up under the Central Executive Committee of the RSFSR. The Committee was to promote balanced economic and cultural development of the small Northern peoples, work out and effect measures furthering the economic development of the Northern areas, gather essential information about the life and needs of the Northern peoples, study their history, culture and way of life and protect them from exploitation. The Committee was also to prepare projects of the administrative-judicial organisation of the small Northern peoples with reference to their customs and to carry these projects into practice, and organise health protection, schools and other educational programmes in the Far North. Assistance committees were also set up in the localities.
In the Northern areas of the country, e.g., in the Evenki area, the first bodies of Soviet power were tribal Soviets, which matched the social relations prevailing among the small Northern peoples. That form of Soviets was indispensable in the initial period of state development. It paved the way for the subsequent switch to ordinary territorial Soviets. Tribal Soviets served to arouse the 68 political activity and increase the class awareness of the mass of the Northern working people.
The first tribal Soviets appeared in 1923 in the Yenisei area, spreading from there to other areas of the Soviet North. Regulations on the Administration of Turukhansk Tribes, worked out by the Yenisei Gubernia (Regional) Executive Committee in 1923, stipulated: ``Every native nomad tribe shall be administered by its own nomadic Soviet which is the supreme administrative body of the association of natives which has elected it, and its decisions and orders shall be binding on the association.'' Every nomadic Soviet had the name of the respective tribe.
In 1926, the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR approved the Provisional Rules on Administering the Indigenous Peoples and Tribes of the Far North of the RSFSR which stipulated that ``in order to protect the rights and interests of the working natives of the Far North and also to draw them into administration and ensure that the laws of the Soviet Government are effected fully and correctly among them so as to improve their economic and cultural conditions, local administration bodies shall be organised for the migrant, nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples and tribes of the outlying Northern districts of the RSFSR, which are engaged mainly in hunting, fishing and reindeer-breeding, as well as for the sedentary sea-hunting peoples who do not form separate republics or districts.''
Article 3 of the Rules listed as native administration bodies (a) the meeting of the tribe, (b) the tribal Soviet, (c) the district congress of the natives, and (d) the district Executive Committee of the natives. Wherever the tribal relationships had faded away and been replaced by new, territorial native associations, tribal meetings and Soviets were replaced by territorial meetings and Soviets (tundra meetings, tundra Soviets, and so on). Under the Rules, the regular tribal meeting (suglan) was convened by the tribal Soviet, as required, it being provided that it was to be called at least once a year (Article 7), and was to be attended by ``all members of both sexes of the tribe or other native association of citizens wandering or living together in the area, who have the right to vote and have reached the age of eighteen" (Article~5). Every tribe or other 69 native association corresponding to it elected a tribal Soviet comprised of three members. It was elected for the duration of a year and enjoyed the rights of a legal person. In the interval between meetings, members of the tribal Soviet performed their duties in the nomad areas.
The tribal Soviet was responsible for keeping account of the size of the native association, gathering data on its economic condition and supervising the work of all economic organisations and enterprises on the territory of the tribal association. It was also to look after the maintenance of the peace in the nomad areas.
Under the Rules, tribal Soviets were united into native districts. Tribes or other native associations of the same tribe or kin inhabiting the same district and numbering at least four hundred elected a district native congress. As the ``highest body of Soviet government within its terms of reference'', the district native congress was composed of deputies elected by tribal meetings on the basis of one deputy per fifty members of the tribe but not more than ten deputies altogether (Article 20). The district native congress elected a standing body---the Native District Executive Committee which, in turn, was subordinate to the respective District Executive Committee (Article 29).
Many Northern peoples, including those inhabiting the Turukhansk Territory, united in Soviets on the tribal principle.^^15^^
Practice showed, however, that the tribal principle of organising Soviets did not come up to expectation everywhere. The Chukchis in the Far East, for example, organised Soviets on the territorial rather than tribal principle.
At the turn of the thirties, when the curcumstances became favourable for establishing national statehood, the Northern peoples went over from tribal patriarchal self-government to the socialist state system, bypassing all intermediate stages.^^10^^
In 1929, the Nenets National Area was formed, and 1930 saw the formation of the Koryak, Taimyr (Dolgano-Nenets), Khanty-Mansi, Chukchi, Evenki and Yamal-Nenets national areas, as well as eight independent national districts.
As a result of national territorial division into districts, the small Northern peoples were grouped according to ethnic, cultural and economic community on definite territories, which 70 formed the basis for the further systematic building of socialism and development of the peoples themselves.
After the victorious socialist revolution the pre-capitalist forms of ethnic community developed in the following directions: the remaining clans and tribes consolidated into peoples, this time, however, on a new historical and socio-economic basis (e.g., in the Far North, in Daghestan and some other places); larger peoples consolidated into socialist nations; some small peoples formed into peoples of a new, socialist type.
Development of Soviet nations and nationalities as socialethnic communities made it necessary in some cases for one form of national statehood to be replaced by another, matching the changed conditions.
To quote an example, in 1928 a Mordovian National Area was formed within the Middle Volga Territory. In January 1930 it was reorganised into the Mordovian Autonomous Region which was reorganised into the Mordovian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR) in December 1934.
The Kirghiz people, who formed an autonomous region in 1924, reorganised it into an Autonomous republic in 1926, and into a Union Soviet Socialist Republic in 1936.
In the course of Soviet national-state development many autonomous regions (the Buryat, Kabardin-Balkar, Karelian, Kalmyk, Kirghiz, Komi, Mari, Mordovian, Tuva, Udmurt, and others) were reorganised into autonomous republics. A number of Union republics (the Kazakh, Kirghiz, Moldavian, Tajik, Turkmen and Uzbek) became members of the Soviet Union after the reorganisation of the respective autonomous republics.
As was mentioned above, the development and improvement of the forms of socialist national-territorial autonomy, the theoretical foundations of which were laid by Lenin's conception of broad regional autonomy, should be considered in close connection with the formation of the theory and practice of Soviet federation. On the one hand, the character of the specific forms of autonomy largely determined the politico-legal nature of the RSFSR as a federation based on autonomy. On the other hand, the system of federal relations could not but exert the determining influence on the development of the very forms of socialist autonomy.
71The modern system of the forms of Soviet autonomy, recorded in the 1977 Constitution of the USSR and the Constitutions of Union and autonomous republics, has absorbed the best of what was achieved in theory and practice over the past period, and simultaneously reflected the fundamental features which ensue from the conditions prevailing at the new stage of social and political development.
The politico-legal status of the Autonomous republic is comprehensively described in the Constitution. Article 82 of the Constitution of the USSR states that in spheres not within the jurisdiction of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Union Republic, an Autonomous republic shall deal independently with matters within its jurisdiction. An Autonomous republic has its own Constitution conforming to the Constitutions of the USSR and the Union republic with the specific features of the Autonomous republic being taken into account.
The Constitution of the USSR lists the autonomous republics forming part of respective Union republics. The 1977 Constitution of the USSR, just as the 1936 Constitution earlier in effect, rules that endorsement of the formation of new autonomous republics within Union republics comes within the jurisdiction of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. There is a new article defining the territorial supremacy of the Autonomous republic, viz.: ``The territory of an Autonomous republic may not be altered without its consent" (Article~84). Similar articles were to be found earlier only in the Constitutions of autonomous republics.
The Constitution of an Autonomous republic adopted by its Supreme Soviet does not need to be approved by a session of the Supreme Soviet of the Union republic, as was earlier the case. This provision is a major constitutional guarantee of the autonomy of an Autonomous republic. Under Article 83 of the Constitution of the USSR, an Autonomous republic takes part in decision-making through the highest bodies of state authority and administration of the USSR and of the Union republic respectively, in matters that come within the jurisdiction of the USSR and the Union republic. Each Autonomous republic is represented in the Soviet of Nationalities of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR by eleven Deputies, and in the Supreme Soviet of the Union republic, in proportion to the size of its own 72 population. Autonomous republics are also represented in the Presidium of the Supreme Soviets of the respective Union republics (Article 114 of the Constitution of the RSFSR, Article 111 of the Constitution of the Uzbek SSR, Article 113 of the Constitution of the Azerbaijan SSR, and so on).
An Autonomous republic ensures comprehensive economic and social development on its territory, facilitates exercise of the powers of the USSR and the Union republic on its territory, and implements decisions of the highest bodies of state authority and administration of the USSR and the Union republic.
In matters within its jurisdiction, an Autonomous republic co-ordinates and controls the activity of enterprises, institutions, and organisations subordinate to the USSR or the Union republic.
Constitutions of Union republics secure to autonomous republics the right to initiate legislation through their highest bodies of state authority (Article 108 of the Constitutions of the RSFSR, Azerbaijan SSR and Georgian SSR; Article 105 of the Constitution of the Uzbek SSR, and so on). The 1977 Constitution of the USSR has a special chapter (Chapter 11) on the autonomous region and autonomous area. Just as the old 1936 Constitution, the new Constitution enumerates the autonomous regions incorporated in each Union republic, which provides additional legal guarantees of their existence. Endorsement of the formation of autonomous regions comes within the jurisdiction of the USSR.
The legal status of each autonomous region is defined, in accordance with the Constitution of the USSR, by a law drafted by its Soviet of People's Deputies and approved by the Supreme Soviet of the Union republic. Under the constitutional laws previously in force it was defined by the Statute on the autonomous region.
Constitutions of Union republics establish a set of powers attesting to the actual independence of national-state formations. Thus, Article 83 of the Constitution of the RSFSR (in which autonomous regions are incorporated in territories) stipulates that the bodies of state authority and administration of an autonomous region have the right to maintain relations with the bodies of state authority and administration of the RSFSR both 73 through the territorial bodies of state authority and administration and directly. The laws passed by the Soviet of People's Deputies of an autonomous region may be repealed only by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR, and the acts of the Executive Committee of the Soviet of an autonomous region, only by the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR.
Incorporation of one or several autonomous republics into a Union republic does not in itself make the latter a federation. The fact that the Constitution of such a Union republic makes no mention of its federal character is of no decisive importance in this case. Just as different kinds of Soviet federation are distinguished among themselves, so is the RSFSR, a federation based on autonomy, distinguished from a number of Union republics containing autonomies by a number of features such as: the peculiar forms of the peoples' expressions of will which have led to the formation of either a federation or a unitary republic; the character of the internal organisational structure of the republic which makes it possible to judge whether it is federal or not; and so on. As a politico-legal phenomenon, a federation is a really existing, and therefore constitutionally legalised, system of specific politico-legal relations that have shaped between the republic and the autonomous units incorporated in it, which invests the sovereign republic and its subjects with a new quality. That quality, federalism, does not inhere in every Union republic that has autonomous units in it.
[74] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter IV __ALPHA_LVL1__ INDEPENDENT SOVIET REPUBLICS:The principle of self-determination of nations means the right of every people to secede, according to free expression of its will, from the state of which it used to be a part and form an independent state of its own. But a nation may also choose some other forms of self-determination, e.g., it may remain a part of the state on an autonomous footing. Some nations and nationalities in post-revolutionary Russia, for instance, were constituted as autonomous republics and autonomous political units which provided the basis for the formation of the RSFSR.
Still, national self-determination may, as was mentioned above, assume a political form essentially different from autonomy. We mean here the formation of independent, sovereign Soviet republics.
The victorious socialist revolution alone provided real conditions in which peoples could freely exercise their right of selfdetermination. It is worth noting in this respect that a Finnish political leader and statesman, Reinhold Svento, a Social-- Democrat, said: ``The Bolsheviks, led by Lenin, were the only ones to give unqualified recognition to Finland's state sovereignty. But for the victorious October Revolution performed by Communists, the Russian Constituent Assembly would never have permitted Finland to secede from Russia as a fully independent and free state. Nobody in that case would have come out in our defence against a non-communist Russia."^^1^^
Marxists-Leninists have never tried to predict, once and for all, every future form of political organisation or to tell beforehand which form of political organisation should be necessary for each country, irrespective of how the concrete historical situation might change. Whatever the concrete form of self-- determination accomplished by a nation (whether it forms a sovereign or an autonomous state, etc.), each of them, as a nation, 75 continues to be sovereign, retaining its equal right of self-- determination, just as every other nation. The right of nations to selfdetermination, which has been implemented in the different forms of Soviet national statehood, meant the right to secede and form an independent national state. Certainly, as the masses' revolutionary creativity extended, so did the notions of the specific forms in which self-determination could be implemented. The latter was no longer limited merely to the right to secede and form an independent state, but came to imply also the use of other forms, viz., autonomies. Autonomous republics and other national state formations also came to be legitimately regarded as forms of self-determination of nations. For all that, the question of the possibility of an independent state being established as a result of self-determination of a nation still is, as it has always been, the key point of the Marxist-Leninist conception of national self-determination.
Western ideologists often give a rather arbitrary interpretation of the real meaning of the Bolsheviks' demand for providing every people an opportunity for self-determination, for selecting a form of political existence consistent with its national interests. Moreover, they try to oppose the very conception of national self-determination to the indisputable fact that the Communist Party recognises the advisability of federation. When thus misinterpreted, it is often made to look as if the Bolshevik Party recognised federation for no other reason but that it had become disenchanted with self-determination.
Actually, however, the Marxist-Leninist conception of national self-determination is just that in allowing nations to choose freely the form of their political organisation self-determination provides the necessary, thoroughly democratic prerequisites of the voluntary association and consolidation of nations and of their forming a big, centralised state. Socialist federation as a form and a means of political association and centralisation became possible only as the practice of national self-determination had made it necessary to find and work out such a form.
Replying to the enemies of the socialist revolution who claimed that, if implemented, the Bolshevik programme on the national question would result in the disintegration of Russia as an integral, centralised state, Lenin wrote: ``We are told that Russia 76 will disintegrate and split up into separate republics but we have no reason to fear this. We have nothing to fear, whatever the number of independent republics. The important thing for us is not where the state border runs, but whether or not the working people of all nations remain allied in their struggle against the bourgeoisie, irrespective of nationality."^^2^^
Proclaiming in the Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia the equality and sovereignty of peoples, abolition of all national privileges and restrictions, and free development of national minorities and ethnic groups, the Soviet government laid down the fundamental principles of nationality policy, providing conditions in which peoples themselves could freely decide their future.
It was a full and real embodiment of Lenin's words that there was ``no `contradiction', nor can there be, between our propaganda of freedom of secession and our firm resolve to implement that freedom when we are the government, and our propaganda of association and merging of nations".^^3^^
Decrees legalising the self-determination of a number of peoples implemented through the formation of independent national states were issued early under Soviet power.
On August 29, 1918, the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR recognised the right to self-determination of the Poles in the areas formerly incorporated in Russia.
The Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR addressed, on December 4, 1917, the Ukrainian people with a manifesto emphasising the right of the Ukraine to secede from Russia completely or establish just any kind of politico-legal relations with her.
When preparations were carried on for setting up the Baltic Soviet republics in the autumn of 1918, the local Bolsheviks first intended to establish no more than the autonomy of their national territories. The Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) recommended, however, that independent Soviet republics of the Baltic and the Byelorussian peoples be established. Responding to the request of the Estonian Soviet Government, the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR issued, on December 7, 1918, a decree recognising unconditionally the independence of the Estonian Soviet 77 Republic. Similar acts were adopted on December 22, 1918, with respect to Latvia and Lithuania.
On January 31, 1919, the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee adopted a decision, On Recognising the Independence of the Byelorussian SSR, which expressed firm confidence that ``only now, on the basis of recognition of full freedom of self-determination and of the passing of power into the hands of the working class, is a voluntary and indissoluble union being formed of the working people of all the nations inhabiting the territory of the former Russian empire".
The Bolshevik Party suggested as early as December 1917 that a Byelorussian SSR be formed. It was proposed to convene a Congress of Soviets of the North-West area as soon as February 1918, to decide on the state system of Byelorussia. That, however, was prevented by the German imperialist invasion and occupation of a large part of Byelorussian territory.
On December 18 (31), 1917, the decree on recognition of the independent Republic of Finland was handed to the head of the Finnish government.
On December 31, 1917 (January 13, 1918) the decree on the self-determination of Turkish Armenia, signed by Lenin, was published.
The Soviet Government granted independence to the Emirate of Bukhara and the Khiva Khanate, formerly protectorates of Russia.
In the first half of June 1918, a congress of the Tuvinian population of Uriankhai Territory adopted a decision on the independence of Tuva.
Recognition of the independence of the newly-formed republics follows wholly and immediately from the principled stand taken by the Communist Party and the Soviet state on the right of every nation or nationality to self-determination, up to seceding and forming an independent national state according to its freely expressed, sovereign will. No support can be given in this light to the opinion expressed by some Western writers that the Ukraine, Byelorussia and the Transcaucasian Republics were proclaimed independent states chiefly by reason of the circumstances brought about by the civil war and imperialist intervention in Soviet Russia. The concrete historical conditions 78 including those associated with the circumstances of the peoples' revolutionary struggle against their class enemies and foreign invaders, certainly had a definite effect on the course of national self-determination. Still, the main and decisive thing was the freely expressed will ol those peoples to choose a form of national statehood most consistent with their interests.
There is nothing in common between real self-determination of nations and nationalities and the separatist tendencies current among the nationalist bourgeoisie in the outlying districts of Russia, which became evident before the October Socialist Revolution and greatly intensified after it.
Because of these tendencies the ties between Russia's centre and her borderlands became weaker, which, quite obviously, hindered the progress of the Revolution. Both the Russian bourgeoisie in the country's centre and the nationalist bourgeoisie in its outlying districts had a stake in it, for they had the same class objective. They equally wanted to disunite the proletariat, the popular masses of different nationalities, and so to be able to suppress the revolutionary proletarian and national liberation movements.
The nationalist sections of the bourgeoisie conducted their counterrevolutionary struggle against the mass of the working people---and this shows that they were prompted by nothing but their own class interests---with the active support and immediate aid from the imperialist states, not stopping at an overt betrayal of the national interests. The separatist tendencies of the nationalist sections of the bourgeoisie certainly had nothing in common with real national self-determination.
Relying on the fraternal aid and support of the Russian working class, the working people in the ethnic borderlands were waging a class struggle for social emancipation, tackling in the course of this struggle the problems of their national liberation and self-determination.
The fierce struggle against the Soviet government launched by the nationalist sections of the bourgeoisie in the outlying districts of Russia was accompanied, as was already mentioned, by a striving to break away from the revolutionary centre of the country. To quote an example, the leaders of the counterrevolutionary Bashkir Central Soviet, which was set up in June 1917 79 and was headed by Z. Validov, hastened to dissociate themselves from the Soviet government. On November 11, 1917, they issued a declaration announcing their non-recognition of the Soviet Government, and on November 16 proclaimed east Bashkiria an ``independent republic".
Here is another example. Moldavian bourgeois nationalists, organised around Sfantul Tseria (Territorial Soviet), also declared Moldavia an ``independent republic" and thereupon committed an act of national betrayal, agreeing to the occupation of Moldavia by Romanian interventionists.
The separatist tendencies of the nationalist bourgeoisie found most active aid and support from internal counterrevolutionaries and imperialist interventionists. The German imperialists, long before the talks with the Soviet Government at Brest Litovsk, used the slogan of self-determination for the purpose of dismembering Russia. With this end in mind, the German diplomatic service hastily fabricated decisions of seceding from Russia, which the puppet ``popular'' governments set up by German occupation authorities in the Baltic area made allegedly on the strength of petitions from the population.
It is, however, quite clear from documentary evidence that the leaders of Kaiser Germany had no intention of granting independence to peoples who belonged to Russia and were looking for opportunities and ways to join the Baltic area to Germany, with a view to exploiting its human and natural resources.
Bourgeois nationalist separatism naturally was diametrically opposed to the vital interests of the mass of working people of different nationalities who strove for a political alliance and, with time, to political unity with Russia, with the Russian working class. The mass of the working people of Russia's ethnic outskirts were the sole exponents of the will of those nations and sovereignly decided the question of their national self-determination. The bourgeois nationalist governments that were formed and held on for some time after the Great October Socialist Revolution with the support of foreign interventionists, revealed in practice their anti-popular, counterrevolutionary nature and were swept onto the dust-heap of history by the revolutionary masses.
An overt betrayal of the Ukrainian people was committed by the bourgeois nationalist Ukrainian Rada (Council) which 80 proclaimed the so-called ``independent'' Ukrainian People's Republic and its secession from Russia. The Rada decided to invite German troops to the Ukraine. This decision was officially shaped as a ``peace treaty'', signed on February 9, 1918, by a delegation of the Rada with the German bloc countries.
The so-called Rada of the Byelorussian People's Republic proclaimed Byelorussia's ``independence'' on March 25, 1918. A `` Provisional Byelorussian Government'', headed by the German puppet Skirmunt, a big landowner, was formed in July the same year.
The Byelorussian Rada had a twin in the Lithuanian Tarlba (National Council), set up with the support of German occupation troops in September 1917. The pro-German ``democratic bloc" in Lithuania adopted in July 1917 a resolution to the effect that Lithuania was joining Germany ``on a voluntary basis".
Hoping to occupy the Caucasus under the pretext of `` protecting the rights of the mountaineer government" and to rally the local counterrevolutionaries against Soviet power, the imperialist German Government demanded that the Soviet Government of the RSFSR recognise the ``independence'' of the North Caucasus and Daghestan.
In its Note of May 15, 1918, the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs of the RSFSR replied to this presumptuous importunity in this way: ``...The People's Commissariat considers itself bound to point out that the peoples and tribes of the Black Sea coast, the Kuban and Terek areas, and Daghestan have long made it clear at their democratically organised meetings that they are for establishing indissoluble ties with the Russian Federation. There is no doubt that the efforts of a small clique to violate the will of the bulk of the people shall be exposed by the people themselves. The Russian Soviet Government will oppose most strongly any arrogation of power by that clique."^^4^^
Formation of puppet states in Transcaucasia under the false name of ``independent republics" headed by Mensheviks and bourgeois nationalists (Dashnaks and Mussavatists) corresponded with the imperialist and anti-Soviet plans of the GermanTurkish bloc and the Entente Powers alike.
There is some highly interesting evidence in an article describing the relations that existed between the whiteguard Volunteer Army and the Menshevik government of Georgia in __PRINTERS_P_81_COMMENT__ 6---748 81 1918--1920. Citing documents, the author of the article shows that the German imperialists intended to use Georgian raw materials, railways and even soldiers against the British, while the British, for their part, meant to use Georgia for strengthening their colonial holds in the East.^^5^^ Each side looked at `` independent" Georgia as a means to achieve its own selfish ends.
The naked treachery of the nationalist rulers who dreaded their own peoples is evidenced clearly enough by the so-called ``agreement'' between the United States and the Dashnak Armenian government. It gave unlimited powers to the American side, including the right to annul or alter at its own discretion laws, decisions, ordinances and other acts of the government. Clause 4 of the Agreement, for example, said: ``The American Government shall attach advisers to each Armenian Minister. Advisers shall be authorised (a) to propose bills to Armenian Ministers; (b) to make suggestions to Armenian Ministers and advise them concerning decrees or administrative measures to be taken.'' The provisions of the Agreement were broadly introduced into practice, even though the Agreement itself had never been brought into effect officially, as the US Congress, seeing that the Dashnak regime had no chance to survive, declined in June 1920 to take Armenia under US control.
The utterly anti-popular and counterrevolutionary character of those regimes, their readiness to sell out the national interests, wholesale and retail, to the imperialist plunderers, are glaringly revealed in the Note to the British government which the Georgian Menshevik government in exile sent to it from Paris where they had emigrated after their overthrow. This document, entitled ``Report on the Need for Georgia and Britain to Cooperate in the Caucasus and for Britain to Conclude an Alliance with the Caucasian Federation'', says: ``A federation of all Caucasian peoples is quite possible. Georgia should be the nucleus and soul of this federation.. .. Britain should be another ally and protector of this federation as a country vitally interested in the existence of this federation which will provide the state with a buffer of thirteen million persons sheltering in a military stronghold like the Caucasus mountains abutting on two seas and barring the roads to the south across Turkey and Persia to the Indian Ocean: a buffer that can become in Britain's 82 hands a formidable sledge-hammer against Persia and especially against Turkey, should they venture, as they do at present, to be 'disobedient'.'' After enumerating the many political and economic benefits Britain would get, should the plan be adopted, the report winds up with the words that need no comment: ``That is why Georgia, ruled by its Social-Democratic Party which may rightly be called a fully national party, could be of priceless service to Britain in the Caucasus, having reached an understanding with France, with all the emigre governments of the Caucasian republics, the Kuban, Terek, Mountaineer, Azerbaijan and Armenian republics. The Georgian government, with all the rest, should, however, appear in the Caucasus with the forward echelons of the British occupation authorities."^^6^^
The Soviet federation sprang from the desire of working people of different nationalities for unity, with the great Russian people above all. They were moved by diverse causes, including their historical destinies, economic ties, and cultural affinity.
``The birth of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is the result of the victory of the Great October Socialist Revolution," says the CPSU Central Committee resolution, The 60th Anniversary of the Formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It has radically changed the life of the nations and ethnic groups inhabiting the country, and has laid the social and economic foundations for a heretofore unknown multinational state and national statehood.
The formation of the Soviet federal state was a complex process. Many approaches, methods and forms of uniting independent Soviet republics were found in the course of a long search carried on in the most intricate circumstances of revolutionary struggle, civil war and foreign intervention. A union of republics could not spring up overnight, it had to be worked for with the greatest patience and circumspection.
Relations of a federal character between independent republics were first established between the RSFSR and the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. On December 3, 1917, the Council of People's Commissars adopted a Manifesto to the Ukrainian People, written by Lenin, which presented categorical demands to the Ukrainian Rada. The Manifesto gave formal recognition to ``the independence of the Ukraine and confirmed its right to __PRINTERS_P_83_COMMENT__ 6* 83 secede from Russia completely or contract a treaty with the Russian Republic on federal and suchlike relations between them".
After the Ukraine was proclaimed a sovereign Soviet republic, federal relations were established between it and the Russian Soviet Republic. The fundamental significance of the aforementioned politico-legal relations between two sovereign Soviet republics is that they are typical of the federal character of the Soviet multinational state soon after its formation, which did not, nevertheless, rule out the search for other forms of politicolegal relations between independent Soviet republics, taking account of the emerging internal political and international situation.
Almost all national regions of Russia in 1918--1919 fell for some time under interventionist and whiteguard rule, becoming theatres of hostilities. During the years of foreign intervention and civil war the peoples of the Soviet republics of the Ukraine, Byelorussia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia fought together to preserve the gains of the Great October Socialist Revoludon. One manifestation of this was the establishment of the military alliance of the Soviet republics.
As a form of peoples' co-operation in the period of civil war and foreign intervention (from the latter half of 1918 till the end of 1920), the military alliance of republics played an enormous historical role in the shaping of federal relations among them.
On June 1, 1919, the All-Russia Central Executive Committee held a meeting attended by representatives of the Ukraine, Byelorussia, Lithuania and Latvia. The meeting reaffirmed the desire for military consolidation around Soviet Russia. Expressing the will of millions of workers and peasants in the Soviet republics, the All-Russia Central Executive Committee adopted, on June 1, 1919, a decree On the Unification of the Soviet Socialist Republics of Russia, the Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, and Byelorussia for the Struggle against World Imperialism.^^7^^
The military alliance was concluded in the name of attaining the common goals of all Soviet republics, which were: to maintain and strengthen Soviet power, safeguard the republics' independence, consolidate the social gains of the working people, and advance the peoples' friendship and cohesion.
Adoption of the decree of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee of June 1, 1919, was preceded by free expressions of 84 the will of the republics joining the military alliance. In January 1919, the government of the UkSSR addressed an appeal to the governments of the RSFSR, Byelorussia, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, calling on them to conclude a ``close defensive alliance''. This appeal was reaffirmed in the message of the Central Executive Committee of the UkSSR, and on May 18'the same year it passed a decision On Joining the Military Forces of the Soviet Republics, instructing its Presidium to ask the Central Executive Committees of all Soviet republics to work out concrete forms of the organisation of a united front of the revolutionary struggle. The decision stated: ``Confronted by a common enemy, the Soviet republics must fight in common, under the same leadership. The need to exercise the utmost thrift towards the material resources of the republic demands a joint and systematic supervision over their use."^^8^^ The decision envisaged unification of the armed forces of all Soviet republics and concentration of the material means necessary for conducting the struggle against the enemies in a common centre---the RSFSR.
Similar proposals were made by other Soviet republics as well--- by Latvia in January 1919, and by Byelorussia and Lithuania in February 1919. On May 31, 1919, the Defence Council of Lithuania and Byelorussia sent a telegram to the All-Russia Central Executive Committee and the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks), proposing that all Soviet republics should establish a close military alliance under a united military command, the joint military forces being divided into armies according to operational tasks, rather than on a national state principle.^^9^^
The Soviet republics placed their armed forces under a general command, subjecting them to a single military strategic plan and single control. The functions of general command and control of the troops of all Soviet republics were handed over by the latter to the military bodies of the RSFSR. The republican armies, which had grown out of local insurgent detachments and national units, were finally fused, in May-June 1919, into an integrated army of the Soviet state.
The congresses of Soviets of the Ukraine, Byelorussia, Latvia and Lithuania regarded their decision to form a military alliance as a stage in the development of their federal ties with the RSFSR.
85On June 1, 1919, the All-Russia Central Executive Committee held a meeting attended by representatives of the Soviet republics of the Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania and Byelorussia. The meeting passed a decree on effecting a close association of the military organisation and military command, of National Economic Councils (NEC), and the management of transport, finances and labour in the Soviet republics of Russia, the Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Byelorussia, and the Crimea so as to concentrate it in the hands of integrated responsible bodies. It was stipulated that the unification should be carried out by agreement with the Central Executive Committees and Councils of People's Commissars of the republics. The Decree stressed that notwithstanding a certain measure of centralisation introduced in the associated branches of control, the All-Russia Central Executive Committee fully adhered to the position of recognising the independence, freedom and self-determination of the constituent republics of the union.
In the period following the civil war (from the end of 1920 to mid-1922), the union of sovereign Soviet republics developed further, taking the shape of an economic alliance.
Economic co-operation of the fraternal peoples began to shape long before the establishment of the economic alliance. As early as February 1918, a special body---the Committee on Economic Policy---was set up under the Presidium of the Supreme Economic Council (SEC), to work out key measures in the field of economic policy and economic consolidation of the Soviet republics. At its meeting on February 26, 1919, the All-Russia Central Executive Committee adopted a decision on the work of the Supreme Economic Council, which drew attention to establishing correct economic relations among the Soviet republics on the basis of a single economic plan. In April 1919, the Supreme Economic Council of the RSFSR and the Economic Council of the UkSSR adopted a decision On Conducting a Uniform Economic Policy, whereby the commodity stocks of the RSFSR and the UkSSR were to be pooled and a common production plan and uniform price limits for raw materials fixed.
This stage of the political drawing together of peoples is characterised by the conclusion of treaties of alliance aimed at pooling efforts and resources for rehabilitating the economy and building and developing the material prerequisites of socialism. The 86 Party and Lenin regarded the task of rehabilitating and advancing the economy, which required the reorganisation of the economic foundations of society, as the most important and difficult problem of all. This task could only be implemented through concentrating the efforts of all the peoples who had embarked on building socialism and through conducting a uniform economic policy in the key areas of economic activity. The economic alliance and mutual assistance of Soviet republics met the objective requirements ensuing from the need to shape economic activity on the basis of uniform planning principles, taking account of the objective laws of socialist management.
On September 30, 1920, representatives of the governments of the Azerbaijan SSR and the RSFSR signed in Moscow a treaty of military and economic alliance and six supplementary agreements: on naval matters; on the unification of food policy; on in* tegrating the administration of the postal, telegraph, telephone and wireless services; on financial matters; on foreign trade; and on common economic policy.
The military-economic alliance of independent Soviet republics was given politico-legal embodiment also in treaties and agreements on financial matters concluded by the government of the RSFSR with the UkSSR on December 28, 1920; the Byelorussian SSR, on January 16, 1921; and the Georgian SSR, on May 21, 1921.
On June 8, 1922, the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR, acting on the basis of treaties with the republics, instructed the State Planning Commission (Gosplan) of the RSFSR to draft a plan of economic development for all Soviet republics.^^10^^
The treaties stipulated amalgamation of seven People's Commissariats: the Commissariat for the Army and Navy, the Supreme Economic Council and the Commissariats for foreign trade, finance, transport, labour, the post and telegraph. Under the treaties, the amalgamated commissariats were to be directed as fixed by special agreements between the government of the RSFSR and the governments of the republics.
The amalgamated people's commissariats were members of the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR and were directed by All-Russia congresses of Soviets and the Central Executive 87 Committee. Participation, of independent Soviet republics in running these commissariats was ensured by equal participation of representatives of all independent Soviet republics in the work of All-Russia congresses of Soviets and of the Central Executive Committee. In turn, the amalgamated people's commissariats of the RSFSR had their authorised representatives in the republics which had treaties with the RSFSR. Representatives of amalgamated people's commissariats were appointed by the RSFSR Council of People's Commissars, subject to approval by the government of the independent Soviet republic contracting with the RSFSR, and were placed under the control of the Congress of Soviets and the Central Executive Committee of such republics.
Besides treaties, republics at that time concluded special agreements.
Agreements were signed between the RSFSR and the UkSSR concerning the People's Commissariat of Foreign Trade and the People's Commissariat of Food Supplies. Separate agreements were also concluded between people's commissariats of Union republics other than the amalgamated commissariats. Agreements were concluded between the governments of the RSFSR and Transcaucasian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic on running the Transcaucasian railways; between the RSFSR and the Georgian SSR, the RSFSR and the Byelorussian SSR, and the RSFSR and the Armenian SSR on financial matters; between the RSFSR and the Byelorussian SSR on the latter's participation in the federal Land Committee attached to the All-Russia Central Executive Committee; and others.
Such agreements were not, however, concluded in every area of joint management with every republic. Apart from that, some agreements also concerned non-amalgamated commissariats.
Inter-republican treaties and agreements provided the necessary legal groundwork for defining the powers of the highest bodies of state administration in the nascent federation and paved the way for establishing the future machinery of the federal state.
One major step towards centralising and co-ordinating the Soviet republics' efforts was the approval of the GOELRO plan (the plan for the electrification of Russia) by the 7th All-Russia Congress of Soviets and the establishment, in February 1921, of 88 the State Planning Commission (Gosplan). The State Planning Commission Regulations stated that the purpose of the Commission was to work out an integrated national economic plan based on the electrification plan approved by the 7th Congress of Soviets, and to superintend its implementation. Both the GOELRO plan and Gosplan activities extended to all Soviet republics.
On June 8, 1922, the Central Executive Committee and the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR, with the consent of the contracting Soviet republics, entrusted the Gosplan of the RSFSR with drafting a long-range plan of national economic development.
In March 1921 the RSFSR, the UkSSR, the BSSR and the Azerbaijan SSR agreed on amalgamating their Statistics Boards.11 Financial agreements concluded by the RSFSR with other republics made it possible to introduce at the end of 1921 a common financial system and establish centralised financing of the republican economies from the funds of the RSFSR, a uniform procedure of estimating income, and a uniform taxation system.12 In 1922, major industrial enterprises in the republics were put under the control of the Supreme Economic Council.^^13^^ Also, the foundations were laid of a uniform policy for all republics in the area of land use, farming, and transport and communications.^^14^^
In 1922, the republics' own customs offices were closed and duty-free transportation of goods from one republic to another introduced.^^15^^ Since February 1922, citizens were able to move from republic to republic without restrictions, except those imposed by relevant bodies of republics concerning movement on their own territory. Inter-republican agreements were concluded on the introduction of a uniform passport system which became necessary. The first such agreement was signed in August 1922 between the RSFSR and the Republic of the Far East and was open for accession by other republics.
Measures to establish a uniform legislation system were of paramount importance to the development of federal relations between sovereign Soviet republics. The unity of the key principles of legislation of the Soviet republics had an objective prerequisite in the identical nature of social and political system, of aims and interests, and in the single ideology and political leadership of the Communist Party. Legislative acts of the RSFSR, decrees above 89 all, provided an adequate legal basis for legislation systems of other Soviet republics. Some republics (Latvia, the Ukraine and others) put into effect on their territory the first revolutionary decrees of the RSFSR, viz., on nationalising large-scale industry, the banks and transport; on social security of the working people, and so on.^^10^^ To be extended to other Soviet republics decrees usually had to be ``registered'', i.e., their effectiveness on the territory of a republic had to be confirmed by its Central Executive Committee. Such registration of the decrees of the RSFSR concerning amalgamated people's commissariats was obligatory.
The Constitution of the RSFSR provided the legal model for the Constitutions of Soviets republics adopted in 1919--1922.
The establishment of a single legislative system was made easier at that time by the formation of several federal bodies. As early as January 1918, People's Secretary of the Ukraine V. P. Zatonsky was made a member of the RSFSR Council of People's Commissars with the right to vote on matters concerning the Ukraine and a voice but no vote on all other matters. The 4th Ukrainian Congress of Soviets instructed the Central Executive Committee of the Ukraine to start talks with the All-Russia Central Executive Committee on representation of the Soviet Ukraine in it and proposed that thirty representatives of the Soviet Ukraine elected by the 4th Congress of Soviets should be accepted as members of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee.^^17^^
In June 1920, thirty representatives of the Soviet Ukraine were elected by decision of the 2nd Session of the 7th All-Russia Central Executive Committee. In December 1921, i.e., when the military and economic alliance of the Soviet republics had already been formed, the 9th Congress of Soviets decided to include in the All-Russia CEC representatives of all republics signatories to the treaty, which accentuated still more its character as a federal body of state authority of the developing federation of sovereign Soviet republics.
The Congress decision On Soviet Development said: ``In view of the growing federation of the RSFSR and the desire of individual Soviet republics to have their representatives in the supreme legislative body of the Republic, the 9th Congress of Soviets resolves: to amend the decision of the 8th Congress of Soviets and 90 increase the membership of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee to 386.''
In the period of the military and economic alliance there was established a single diplomatic front of the Soviet republics led by the RSFSR, which notably advanced the development of federal relations towards an integral, federal state. The diplomatic alliance of the Soviet republics was formalised by the protocol of February 22, 1922, signed by nine Soviet republics---the RSFSR, the Ukraine, Byelorussia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Khorezm, Bukhara and the Far Eastern Republic, on representation of their interests at the forthcoming European Economic Conference at Genoa.
As the RSFSR alone was invited to the Conference, the governments of the Soviet republics decided to ask it to represent and support their interests at Genoa, authorising the RSFSR ``to conclude and sign on their behalf the acts that may be worked out at the Conference, and international treaties and agreements of any kind arising directly or indirectly out of the Conference, with countries represented at the said Conference and any other countries, and take all steps ensuing therefrom".^^18^^ Under the protocol, the RSFSR was ``to take all measures to ensure adequate protection at the Conference of the interests of all states linked with it by indissoluble fraternal and federal ties''. Included in the delegation with the right to vote were representatives of the Soviet governments of the Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Georgia and Armenia. The Genoa Conference which terminated in great success for Soviet diplomacy, helped consolidate still more the international standing of the Soviet republics.
Real facts referring to the period of the signing and operation of the treaties of alliance between independent Soviet republics explicitly show that the relations between them had all the marks of federal relations indeed. Certainly these relations were not yet developed to the extent that would warrant the assertion that an integral, federal state did already exist at that historical period, nor was there any fully-formed, smooth-running politico-legal mechanism for implementing these relations. That, nevertheless, is not, in our view, sufficient reason for denying or belittling the already attained, real stage of development of a new, socialist type of federal relations, known as ``federation by treaty".
91Fundamental significance attaches to the fact that Soviet republics legitimately regarded their relations from the very start as an immediate form on the road to a steady and ever closer unification. The federal character of these relations is evident, besides, also from the common federal functions exercised at the time by the highest bodies of state authority of the RSFSR.
The usefulness of the forms of federal relations that had become established among the sovereign Soviet republics by mid-192 2 had, in the main, been exhausted and they threatened to become a brake on the development of co-operation among the Union republics. Practice itself prompted the need for ascending to a higher stage of federal relations, that of forming a federal state, a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
In developing federal relations among sovereign Soviet republics and finding the politico-legal forms of expression of their sovereignty many useful lessons were drawn from the experience of forming the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic.
The Transcaucasian Federation was to strengthen the peoples' friendship, overcoming their distrust of each other instilled for ages by tsarism and the local nationalist bourgeoisie. Its establishment was also dictated by the external political situation which was fraught with a real threat of imperialist aggression.
In his letter of April 11, 1921, ``To the Comrades Communists of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, Daghestan, and the Mountaineer Republic'', Lenin stressed the significance of a close alliance of the Transcaucasian republics to the regularisation and development of Soviet government and establishing of a model of national peace, drawing the attention of Transcaucasian Communists to the need to grasp the peculiarity of their situation and work out their tactics accordingly.^^19^^ Concrete forms of the political union of independent Transcaucasian republics were evolved on the strength of Lenin's ideas. On March 11 and 12, 1922, an authoritative conference of the Central Executive Committees of the Azerbaijan, Armenian and Georgian SSRs was held at Tiflis. It endorsed the treaty of alliance and the Regulations on the Supreme Economic Council of the Transcaucasian Federation. In December 1922, the First Transcaucasian Congress of Soviets adopted a decision on reorganising the federal 92 union into a federal state---the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (TSFSR).
With the establishment of the TSFSR, a new form of Soviet federation appeared.^^20^^
As a member of the USSR, the TSFSR had the status of a Union republic, and many of the rights enjoyed by the Azerbaijan, Armenian and Georgian Soviet republics were exercised by them not directly in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics but through the TSFSR. That was a reflection of one of the main features of the legal nature of the TSFSR as a federation, which distinguished it from the USSR. Another distinctive feature of the TSFSR was that, although a federal state, it was nevertheless the subject of a higher form of the socialist federal state. The distinction also lay in the pattern of organisation of the supreme federal bodies of government, the methods by which they were formed, their competence, and some other matters reflecting the peculiarities of the legal nature of the federations. The Transcaucasian Federation did not, for instance, recognise any right of unilateral secession from it of its constituent republics. The Constitution of the TSFSR referred the right of deciding on a republic's secession from it to the competence of the TSFSR itself.
Close co-operation of the Soviet republics showed not only that their political alliance was advisable, but also that it urgently needed to be strengthened further. This need was dictated by a number of things. It was necessary, first of all, to rehabilitate the war-ruined economy and restore the undermined economic relations. In order to build the material and technical basis of socialism it was necessary to develop and extend the social division of labour between the centre and the former national outskirts, pooling all the available manpower and material resources. There was also the pressing task of consolidating the alliance between the Russian workers and the peasants of the new Soviet national state formations, the alliance which Lenin called the Alpha and Omega of Soviet government. As socialism was being established for the first time, in a capitalist encirclement, it was of paramount importance to ensure the unity of the Soviet peoples in foreign relations and to strengthen the Soviet republics' defences.
93Thus, in the five years following the October Revolution the formerly oppressed and unequal nations created independent Soviet states grouped round the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. They had accumulated ample experience in organising fundamentally new, socialist relations which, in a situation of civil war, foreign intervention and capitalist encirclement, provided for fraternal co-operation in the struggle for common goals. The Soviet republics' desire for unification grew more determined in the fierce battles with the joint forces of foreign and home counterrevolution. The military-political alliance formed during the civil war, close co-ordination in foreign policy, and the common efforts to rehabilitate and develop the economy and strengthen the defences at the first stage of building socialism naturally suggested the change from treaty relations to a federal union of the republics.
On the path towards forming an integral, federal Soviet state, such obstacles had to be overcome as the different social-- economic levels of the different peoples, the national strife and suspicion inherited from the past, bourgeois nationalism and greatT power chauvinism. The driving force of unification, just as of the socialist revolution, was the Russian working class.
``The key role in the emergence of the single federative state was played by the Russian Federation, round which all Soviet republics gathered on a voluntary basis,'' says the CPSU Central Committee resolution on the 60th anniversary of the formation of the USSR. ``Being the first multinational Soviet state, the RSFSR was the prototype of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.''
As it directed the development of the peoples' united movement, the Communist Party paid great attention to drawing general theoretical conclusions from the experience accumulated in dealing with the national question in general and national-state development in particular. The experience of the peoples' movement for unification in an integral multinational state contributed much that was new to the development of the principles of democratic centralism, equal rights and voluntariness, and to the types and content of socialist federation and correlation of the national and the international in the social life of peoples.
[94] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter V __ALPHA_LVL1__ FORMATION OF THE USSR AS A NATURAL,It is often alleged in Western writings on the formation of the USSR that after the October Revolution in Russia the Bolshevik Party discarded the slogan of self-determination of nations it had espoused before, embarking on the conquest of the national outskirts, which resulted in the establishment of an integral, multinational state. This idea, which has no foundation in fact, is sought to be validated in various ways but with the same purpose in mind, namely, to make readers believe that the formation of the USSR was the result of coercion rather than a voluntary act of peoples agreeing among themselves as equals to form an integral, federal state.
The Formation of the Soviet Union by Richard Pipes is typical in this respect. Pipes claims that after the overthrow of the Provisional Government the Bolsheviks completely discarded the slogan of self-determination of nations as useless and embarked upon the conquest of the outlying districts of the country. Some chapters of his book are characteristically entitled ``Soviet Conquest of the Ukraine and Belorussia'', ``Soviet Conquest of the Moslem Borderlands'', = [and] ``Soviet Conquest of the Caucasus''. Here is how Pipes describes the Bolshevik ``conquests'': ``The Bolshevik government established in the Ukraine in January 1918 ... was a regime founded on sheer military force without the active support or even the sympathy of the Ukrainian people.'' In the North Caucasus the Bolsheviks, he says, enlisted some of the deserters from the army and, by force again, ``obtained control over the principal Soviets in the Terek Region''. And in Central Asia, ``toward the Moslems, the Communists... pursued a dual course: on the one hand, seizure of power, overthrow of all native institutions which challenged or refused to recognise Soviet authority, and centralization of political power; on the other, a bid for the sympathies of all strata of Moslem society by 95 economic or cultural concessions and an alliance with Moslem nationalists."^^1^^ Pipes sees nothing but violence and armed conquest in the entire history of the formation of the integral, federal state. The proper interests of the nations and nationalities striving for social emancipation, wishing for an alliance with the more advanced nations of Russia, for their much need aid, simply do not exist as far as Pipes is concerned.
Association of the Soviet peoples into an integral multinational federal state is often depicted by Western Sovietologists as an artificial process marked by irreconcilable contradictions because of the ``fatal conflict" between the common and the special, the national and the international; between the ``compulsory assimilation" and the ``natural desire" of every people to wall itself off from others.
Some Sovietologists claim that the formation of the USSR is not a logical result of the Marxist-Leninist doctrine on national relations and their democratic principles but just a practical expedient for preserving a centralised, Russified state, a compromise between doctrine (``unitary state'') and reality (active nationalism), an attempt at reconciling the policy of centralising authority in the hands of the Party with the fact that nationalism has not disappeared along with the old regime.
Carrere d'Encausse, a French Sovietologist and author or several books on the national question in the USSR, writes in her aforementioned L'Empire eclate. La revolte des nations en URSS, that the Communists have always regarded the federal state merely as a compromise of the transitional stage on the path to the unitary state, of which the formation of the USSR was a typical example. Whether the independent Soviet republics joined the USSR on an autonomous or on a sovereign footing was purely a tactical point, the strategic aim of the Communist Party being to establish a unitary state in which nations were to disappear to give way to a new community of people united by class solidarity.^^2^^
The intention here is to belittle the role of the USSR as a form of socialist federation and, moreover, to twist the very motives and historical causes that inexorably conduced to the formation of an integral, federal state founded on genuine democracy.
It was no thirst for conquest or trying to get out of an impasse 96 that gave rise to the federation, but the people's natural desire for unity, engendered by the very process of social development.
Discussions on developing further the already existing federal relations and bringing this process to completion by establishing an integral multinational state were launched on the initiative of the republics themselves. Here are the facts. In the spring of 1922 the Politbureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Ukraine decided to give a concrete form to the relations between the RSFSR and the UkSSR, defining and specifying their mutual rights and obligations. Accordingly, the Politbureau of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) by its decision of May 11, 1922, set up a commission. The commission reached the conclusion that it would not be enough to discuss merely the relations between two republics and invited all Soviet republics to discuss their mutual relations. In the summer of 1922 these matters were taken up by the party bodies of the Ukraine, Byelorussia, and Transcaucasia.
On August 10 the Organising Bureau of the CC RCP(B) set up a commission of representatives of the Soviet republics, which was to elaborate the question of inter-republican relations for the forthcoming Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee. The commission---it included among others Kuibyshev, Myasnikov, Ordzhonikidze and Stalin---prepared a draft mentioning for the first time the idea of ``autonomisation''.
The commission resolved among other things this: ``To consider it desirable for a treaty to be concluded by the Soviet republics of the Ukraine, Byelorussia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia and the RSFSR on the aforesaid republics officially joining the RSFSR, leaving the question of Bukhara. Khorezm and the Far Eastern Republic open and concluding with them so far a treaty on tariffs, foreign trade and foreign and military affairs, and so on.'' The resolution considered it desirable to extend the competence of the Central Executive Committee, the Council of People's Commissars, and the Labour and Defence Council of the RSFSR to the corresponding central Soviet institutions of the republics, and unite the People's Commissariats for foreign affairs, foreign trade, defense, railways, finance, and the post and telegraph of __PRINTERS_P_97_COMMENT__ 7---748 97 the other republics with the corresponding departments of the RSFSR.
The resolution on ``autonomisation'' of the republics was submitted for consideration to the Central Committees of the Communist Parties of the independent Soviet republics, whereupon the Commission of the CC RCP(B) gave its final approval to the draft.^^3^^ It should, however, be taken into account that Lenin, who was gravely ill at the time, was unable to take part in the work of the Commission. At the end of September 1922, after acquainting himself with all the materials---the Commission's resolution on the plan for ``autonomisation'', the minutes of its meetings, and the resolutions of the Central Committees of the Communist Parties of the republics---Lenin put forward a new idea in opposition to the ``autonomisation'' plan. The idea was to create a form of federation in which the republics would unite as absolute equals, retaining their sovereignty. In accordance with Lenin's plan, the republics were not to become members of the RSFSR, as they would have to under the resolution passed by the Commission, but to unite with the RSFSR on an equal footing into a union, the right to secede freely from the federation being reserved to each republic.^^4^^
That was the gist of Lenin' idea of a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as a new form of Soviet federation.
Lenin's precepts were reflected in the new draft prepared by the Commission, On Relations between Sovereign Union Republics. The draft was submitted for consideration to the October 1922 Plenary Meeting of the CC RCP(B). On October 6, after hearing the report On the Unification of Soviet Republics in the USSR, the Plenary Meeting adopted a resolution which stated in Article~1: ``To consider it necessary for the Ukraine, Byelorussia, the Federation of Transcaucasian Republics, and the RSFSR to conclude a treaty on their joining into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, reserving to each the right of free secession from the Union."^^5^^ It was proposed that the highest body of the USSR should be the USSR Central Executive Committee comprised of representatives of the Central Executive Committees of all the republics, the number of seats allocated being proportional to the population represented. The USSR Council of People's Commissars, appointed by the USSR Central Executive Committee, was to be the executive 98 body of the latter. Some people's commissariats were to be consolidated (acting for the Union as a whole) and to have their representatives in Union republics, appointed by Union people's commissars in co-ordination with the Central Executive Committees of the republics concerned. The decision worked on the assumption that the republican people's commissariats of finance, food supply, the economy, labour, and workers' and peasants' inspection, as well as the bodies responsible for fighting counterrevolution, would become union-republican or be amalgamated. People's commissariats of justice, public education, the interior, agriculture, health, and social security were to be independent, i.e., only republican.
To carry out preparatory work for forming the USSR, the Plenary Meeting set up another commission to help the republics to frame the bill (the treaty) on their unification, which was to be submitted for discussion to republican congresses of Soviets. The immediate task before the commission was to draft the Main Points of the Constitution of the USSR. When preparing this document, the commission accepted Lenin's suggestion on fixing the number of chairmen of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR according to the number of the republics. It also accepted the proposal made by M. 1. Kalinin that the highest body of the USSR should be the All-Union Congress of Soviets electing the Central Executive Committee of the USSR which, in its turn, elected the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR. The Main Points of the Constitution of the USSR were sent to the republics, to be considered and endorsed at their Congresses of Soviets. On November 30, 1922, a meeting of the Politbureau of the CC RCP(B) approved the Main Points, after which they were sent for discussion to the Party organisations of the republics. The Government and Party organisations of the Ukraine, Byelorussia, and the Transcaucasian republics discussed the Main Points and approved them unanimously.
On December 16, 1922, a commission of the Plenary Meeting of the CC RCP(B) adopted the draft Declaration and Treaty on the formation of the USSR. The commission resolved that the Declaration and the Treaty constituted the single Fundamental Law of the USSR. On December 18, the CC RCP(B) held a meeting which elected the Central Executive Committee of the __PRINTERS_P_99_COMMENT__ 7* 99 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1982/SNU207/20070404/199.tx" __EMAIL__ webmaster@leninist.biz __OCR__ ABBYY 6 Professional (2007.04.04) __WHERE_PAGE_NUMBERS__ bottom __FOOTNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [*]+ __ENDNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+ USSR and endorsed the draft Treaty on the formation of the USSR. By decision of the Meeting, the text of the Treaty was to be sent for consideration and ratification to the Central Executive Committees of the republics and, upon getting their approval, put into effect at once and subsequently endorsed by a session of the Central Executive Committee and then by the 2nd Congress of Soviets of the USSR.'' It was decided to postpone the election of the USSR Council of People's Commissars and organisation of people's commissariats of the USSR till the session of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR which was to convene in April 1923.
Thus, the plenary meetings of the CC RCP(B) in October and December 1922 fully confirmed Lenin's principles of the formation of the USSR, whereby the Soviet republics joining into the Union were to retain their sovereignty. After the October Meeting, the discussion of the formation of the USSR was transferred to the individual republics.
A broad movement for the unification of Soviet republics in an integral, federal state was launched throughout the country.
When working out the fundamental principles on which the Soviet multinational state should be founded, the Party had to overcome the resistance of diverse national-deviationists as well as to correct the errors committed by central and local bodies and individual functionaries. At that time opinion in the Party on the specific forms of the unification of Soviet republics diverged along three lines.
The first line was represented by a group which included among others Stalin, Manuilsky, Myasnikov and Kamenev, who were for the independent Soviet republics joining the RSFSR as autonomous republics, i. e., they supported the so-called `` autonomisation" plan.
Carrying out of this plan would mean, in practical terms, a substantial limitation of the sovereign rights of independent Soviet republics and create conditions for displaying greatRussian chauvinism, which would inevitably increase distrust in the relations between peoples.
The second group (Mdivani, Makhar^dze, Rakovsky and others) came out, in effect, for maintaining the already existing relations by treaty without founding any integral federal state.
100The third group, representing the majority of the Party members, which included among others Kalinin, Frunze, Petrovsky and Tsurupa, advocated a close political union of Soviet republics, even though they did not, as yet, clearly see what form such an association might take. Thus, the solution of the question of the formation of the USSR was adversely affected by two fundamentally fallacious deviations on the national question. One of them reflected great-power sentiments. It was revealed in the intention to give the Russians a privileged status in the peoples' union. The other was an expression of local nationalism. Objectively, it served to inflate nationalist sentiments and loosen the ties of friendship and fraternal co-operation between peoples and isolate them from one another.
Both the great-power and local nationalist deviations could gravely harm the cause of building socialism. In the specific historical circumstances, however, in which the USSR was formed, great-power chauvinism was the greater evil.
Lenin proposed that all Soviet republics including the RSFSR should unite on a voluntary and equal basis into a new state, a Union of Soviet Republics. He particularly stressed that it was necessary to demonstrate---and by all means have it understood by the republics---that the formation of the USSR did not cancel their independence but created ``another tier'', a federation of equal republics. Thereby Lenin explicitly formulated the proposition that in the conditions of the new form of association, too, the political independence of Union republics was maintained and provided for in fact.
The idea of a federal Soviet state resting on the free and equal association of independent Soviet republics was put forward by Lenin in 1922 during a nationwide movement for forming an integral, federal state, and Lenin's plan constituted an essentially new conception in comparison with the other projects then suggested.
The vast and difficult work of building a Soviet multinational state, the USSR, was carried on under Lenin's personal guidance. In spite of his progressing illness, he kept in touch on these matters with all members of the Central Committee of the RCP(B), presided over the more important meetings and talked with representatives of fraternal republics. Lenin was going to 101 address the 10th All-Russia Congress of Soviets which dealt with the question of the RSFSR joining the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics but was unable to because of ill health.
Fundamentally important propositions concerning the formation of an integral, federal state were set forth by Lenin in his notes, which he dictated in December 1922, at the time of the 1st All-Union Congress of Soviets, under the common heading ``The Question of Nationalities or `Autonomisation'~".^^7^^ In that work Lenin pointed out that ``. . .we must maintain and strengthen the union of socialist republics. Of this there can be no doubt. This measure is necessary for us and it is necessary for the world communist proletariat in its struggle against the world bourgeoisie and its defence against bourgeois intrigues".^^8^^ Lenin stressed that diplomatic work, the area of foreign relations, as well as the guidance of the armed forces, must be kept under the control of the USSR. As for the other areas of state politica activity, Lenin considered that, given certain conditions, the question of transferring the relevant functions to Union republics might be presented for discussion at the next Congress of Soviets.^^9^^
Lenin's plan for the voluntary unification of equal Soviet republics in the USSR was wholeheartedly supported by the working class and all the working people in the course of its nationwide discussion. Everywhere at mass meetings, conferences and republican and regional congresses of Soviets decisions were adopted urging the need for the Soviet republics to unite on federal principles and expressing the desire of the working people to build the new life by common effort.
The question of uniting the Soviet republics was in the focus of attention at the 7th Ukrainian Congress of Soviets which met on December 10--14, 1922. The Congress, acting in full conformity with the wishes and the will of the mass of the Ukrainian working people, called on the workers and peasants of Russia, the Ukraine, Byelorussia, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan to take steps to legalise the already existing Union of Soviet Republics and proposed to the republican Congresses of Soviets to ``time the calling of the All-Union Congress to coincide with the termination of the All-Russia Congress of Soviets".^^10^^
Lenin's idea of the political unification of the Soviet republics was warmly supported by the mass of the Byelorussian working 102 people. Their support was expressed in numerous resolutions and mandates passed by local congresses of Soviets and meetings of town Soviets and their executive committees. The Minsk Soviet, for example, wrote in its mandate that the formation of the USSR ``would make . . . the ties between Soviet republics even stronger, while allowing each Soviet republic to continue to exert its influence on the affairs of the entire Union''. Formation of the USSR was supported by the 4th Byelorussian Congress of Soviets (December 14--18, 1922).
The movement for forming a federal state was mounting in the Transcaucasian Soviet republics too. The 2nd Armenian Congress of Soviets (November 29-December 3, 1922) resolved to support the formation of a Union of Republics. Similar resolutions were carried by the congresses of Soviets of Abkhazia and Adzharia. The 1st Transcaucasian Congress of Soviets (December 10--13, 1922) adopted a resolution on the formation of the USSR.
The political campaign for establishing a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which took place in the latter half of 1922, was coming to its finish.
It is worth noting that in order to guarantee the absolutely voluntary character of the unification movement the RSFSR did not formally express its attitude to the formation of an integral, federal state until the 10th All-Russia Congress of Soviets. This question was put up for discussion for the first time at a meeting of representatives of Soviet republics early in August 1922. The meeting considered it necessary to form a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and to start working out its constitutional principles. Some days before the opening of the 10th All-Russia Congress of Soviets the Presidium of the AllRussia Central Executive Committee had received the decisions of the congresses of Soviets of the Ukraine, Byelorussia and the Transcaucasian Soviet republics on the need for forming a federal state. The 10th All-Russia Congress of Soviets considered it desirable for the four Soviet republics to join into a Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and suggested that their union should be formed on a voluntary and equal basis, each republic retaining the right to secede freely from the Union. The Congress asked its delegation to work out jointly with the delegations of the Ukraine, the Transcaucasian Republic and Byelorussia a 103 draft declaration on the establishment of a Union of Republics, explaining the circumstances making it necessary for the republics to unite into an integral, federal state, and also instructed its delegation to work out the terms on which the RSFSR was joining the Union of Republics. The Congress bound its delegation in considering the Treaty of Alliance to insist on the formation of appropriate federal legislative and executive bodies; amalgamation of the People's Commissariats of the Army and Navy, Railways, Foreign Affairs, and the Post and Telegraph; subordination of the People's Commissariats of Finance, Food Supplies, National Economy, Labour and Workers' and Peasants' Inspection of the contracting republics to the directives of the respective federal People's Commissariats; and full guarantee of the interests of national development of the peoples of the contracting republics.
The Congress elected a delegation to the conference of authorised delegations of the republics, which included among others Kalinin, Kursky, Stalin and Tsurupa.
The conference of authorised delegations elected by the congresses of Soviets of the RSFSR, the UkSSR, the TSFSR, and the BSSR convened in the Kremlin on December 29, under the chairmanship of Kalinin. After an exchange of views, it endorsed the drafts of the Declaration and the Treaty on the formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The 1st Congress of Soviets of the USSR opened on December 30, 1922. After a comprehensive discussion, it unanimously adopted the Declaration and the Treaty on the Formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Of the 2,215 delegates attending the Congress, the RSFSR, the Ukraine, Byelorussia and the Transcaucasian Federation accounted for 1,727, 364, 33 and 91 delegates, respectively. The Congress unanimously approved the Declaration and Treaty on the formation of the USSR, which were based on Lenin's idea of equal rights and fraternal co-operation of free peoples, the idea of socialist internationalism. The principles of a free state, political union of equal peoples formed the basis of the first Constitution of the USSR which was finally approved by the 2nd Congress of Soviets of the USSR on January 31, 1924.
The 1924 Constitution of the USSR legalised the integral 104 and centralised principles of foreign relations, foreign trade and defence, and fixed the main principles of regulation of the national economy and finances of the USSR. Simultaneously the Constitution recorded fresh guarantees of the equal rights of Union republics, the voluntary nature of their unification, and their sovereign rights. All conditions were provided requisite to the further development of the fraternal union of the republics.
At the time the USSR was founded there were three political formations on the territory of Central Asia, viz., the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic which was a part of the RSFSR, and the People's Soviet Republics of Bukhara and Khorezm. In these republics, national delimitation was carried out, in strict conformity with the principles of equal rights and voluntariness.
In the mid-1920s in Central Asia, just as in other areas of the Soviet country, the formation of nationalities into nations intensified, and the peoples' desire for attaining national statehood became more pronounced on this basis. By decision of the highest bodies of certain republics some of their regions were renamed. In 1921, the Transcaspian region of the Turkestan ASSR was renamed the Turkmen Autonomous Region. A separate Mountain Kirghiz Region comprised of the Kirghiz districts of the Semirechye (Seven Rivers), Syr Darya and Ferghana regions was constituted by a decree of the Central Executive Committee of Turkestan on April 2, 1922.
In April 1924 the Politbureau of the CC RCP(B) approved in principle national delimitation. Simultaneously it was decided to discuss the matter yet another time at the end of May, with the participation of the delegates of the Communist Party of the Central Asian Republics at the 13th Congress of the RCP(B). At the end of April 1924, a joint meeting of the Central Asian Bureau of the CC RCP(B) and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Turkestan set up a commission which was to prepare and carry out delimitation in Central Asia. The commission was divided into three subcommissions, one Kazakh, one Uzbek, and one Turkmen.
After examining the materials submitted by the Commission for Delimitation of Central Asia, the Central Asian Bureau of the CCRCP(B) decided, on May 12, to establish two Union 105 republics (the Uzbek SSR and the Turkmen SSR), two autonomous regions (the Tajik, as a constituent part of Uzbekistan, and the Kara Kirghiz), and to incorporate the Kazakh districts of Turkestan into the Kazakh ASSR.
All the documents of the commission and the decision of the Central Asian Bureau of the GC RCP(B) on delimitation in Central Asia were submitted for consideration to the CCRCP(B).
On June 12, 1924, the CC RCP(B) adopted a decision on carrying out national-political delimitation of Central Asia, which provided concrete guidelines on all basic principles of the delimitation. One of the points of this decision envisaged the institution of a special territorial commission under the Central Asian Bureau of the CC RCP(B), to be comprised of representatives of all major Central Asian peoples.
The commission worked during the summer of 1924, subjecting to all-round discussion the questions involved in dealing with the complicated problems of national-state development in Central Asia.
By September 1924 the preparatory work was finished in the main. All outstanding issues were passed on to the central Party and Government bodies for further consideration and final decision.
On September 25, the Politbureau of the CC RCP(B), having discussed all the materials concerned with the national-- territorial delimitation, adopted a decision on that matter. A commission was set up under V. V. Kuibyshev, which prepared a draft decision of the Politbureau of the CC RCP(B), taking into account the opinion of the representatives of the political units being established. Simultaneously discussion in the republics was continued.
In 1923 the Central Executive Committee of the Bukhara Republic granted the Turkmen delegates' petition on the establishment of an integral Turkmen Region within the borders of Bukhara. Similar decisions were also adopted in the Khorezm People's Soviet Republic where the Turkmen (Tashauz) Autonomous Region and the Kazakh-Kara-Kalpak Autonomous Region were set up in 1923.
As for the Central Asian republics themselves---the Turkestan ASSR and the Bukhara and Khorezm republics---they were 106 formed mainly within the old, prerevolutionary administrative boundaries of the Turkestan Governorship General, the Bukhara emirate and the Khiva khanate, which went counter to the task of establishing national Soviet statehood of the Central Asian peoples.
By ethnic composition, none of the republics was representative of national Soviet statehood of any one people. Of all the Uzbeks in Central Asia 66.5 per cent lived in the Turkestan ASSR; 22.2 per cent, in the Bukhara People's Soviet Republic; and 11.3 per cent, in the Khorezm People's Soviet Republic. Turkestan accounted for 42.2 per cent of the Turkmen inhabiting Central Asia, while Bukhara and Khorezm accounted for 27 and 29.8 per cent, respectively. The Central Asian Kazakhs were likewise scattered over the three republics, 19.3 per cent of them living in the Turkestan ASSR; 1.5 per cent, in the Bukhara PSR; and 3.5 per cent, in the Khorezm PSR. The other Central Asian peoples were also distributed among these republics.
On September 19, 1924, the 5th Congress of Soviets ( Kurultai) of the Bukhara People's Soviet Republic adopted this decision: ``Expressing the supreme will of the peoples of Bukhara, we announce our agreement to form, jointly with the Uzbeks of Turkestan and Khorezm, an Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic and a Tajik Autonomous Region. We also express our fraternal consent to the Turkmenian people of Bukhara being incorporated in the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic. The Kurultai firmly states the necessity for Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan to join the USSR.''
A similar resolution was adopted on September 29 by the 5th Khorezm Kurultai of Soviets.
On September 16, 1924, the 3rd extraordinary session of the Turkestan Central Executive Committee adopted a resolution on the national-state delimitation of the Turkestan ASSR.
On October 11, 1924, the Politbureau of the CC RCP(B) held an extraordinary meeting attended by representatives of all republics and regions. The meeting heard reports and views of Party and Government bodies of the Central Asian republics and a co-report of the CC RCP(B) commission. It passed decisions on all major problems concerning the delimitation of 107 Central Asia and defined the procedure of economic delimitation and the allocation of public funds and capitals over the new republics and autonomous regions.
On October 27, 1924, the 2nd Session of the USSR Central Executive Committee adopted this decision: ``The 2nd Session of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR confirms that the free expression of the will of the working people is supreme law, and requests its Presidium to give a legal form to the newly constituted republics in Central Asia in conformity with the decisions of the congresses of Soviets of these republics.''
Thus, acceding to the wishes of the mass of working people, the Soviet state legalised the formation of the Uzbek and Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republics, the Tajik ASSR, and the Kirghiz and Kara-Kalpak Autonomous Regions. The Kazakh districts of Turkestan joined the Kazakh ASSR. The latter accounted for 93.4 per cent of the Kazakhs living in the USSR (57.4 per cent of the total population of the KazASSR). It was one of the socio-political prerequisites of the eventual reorganisation of this Autonomous republic into a Union republic.
The newly-formed Uzbek SSR accounted for 82.6 per cent of the Uzbeks and the Turkmen SSR for 94.2 per cent of the Turkmen, and the Tajik ASSR accounted for 75.2 per cent of the Tajiks living in the USSR.
After the formation of the new republics and regions, the Turkestan, Bukhara and Khorezm Central Executive Committees of Soviets resolved at their session in November 1924 to cease their work. All power was transferred to provisional bodies---the Revolutionary Committees of the newly-formed republics and regions. A special committee under the authorised representative of the Council of Labour and Defence in Central Asia was set up to carry out the economic delimitation of the republics and regions and close down certain organisations and institutions.
On February 13, 1925, a Constituent Congress of Soviets of the Uzbek SSR opened in Bukhara. The Congress adopted a Declaration on the formation of the Uzbek SSR and proclaimed its voluntary accession to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The Constituent Congress of Soviets of the Turkmen SSR 108 opened on February 15, 1925, at Poltoratsk (now Ashkhabad). It was greeted on behalf of the Government of the USSR by M. I. Kalinin. The Declaration adopted by the Congress proclaimed the formation of the Turkmen SSR as a part of the USSR.
The establishment of national Soviet statehood of the Central Asian peoples sped up the natural process of formation of the Kazakh, Uzbek, Turkmen, Tajik, Kirghiz, and Kara-Kalpak socialist nations. The territorial integration of these peoples was a major factor in the social-ethnic changes that were due to the common successes in building socialism in the USSR.
The decision of the 3rd Congress of Soviets of the USSR on the Incorporation in the USSR of the Turkmen and Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republics was adopted on May 13, 1925. In October 1929 Tajikistan, which earlier was an ASSR in the Uzbek SSR, itself became a Union republic. The decision on its reorganisation was approved by the highest bodies of state authority of the USSR---the Central Executive Committee of the USSR (December 1929) and the 6th Congress of Soviets of the USSR (March 1931). The Kirghiz Autonomous Region was made a Kirghiz ASSR in 1926. In 1932, the Kara-Kalpak Autonomous Region was reorganised into the Kara-Kalpak ASSR and became a part of the RSFSR, and since 1936, in accordance with the Constitution, it has been part of the Uzbek SSR. In 1936 the Kazakh and Kirghiz ASSRs were reorganised into Union republics.
During the national-state delimitation proposals were made about uniting the republics of Turkestan, Bukhara and Khorezm into a Central Asian Federation which would be a part of the USSR. It was considered undesirable to set up such a federation, as the main purpose of national-state delimitation in Central Asia was to unite the Turkmen, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Kazakhs, Kirghiz and Kara-Kalpaks residing in the multinational Turkmen, Bukhara and Khorezm republics into their own, i. e., preponderantly nationally-uniform Soviet republics.^^11^^
Helene Carrere d'Encausse writes in her L'Empire eclate: ``A mixture of liberalism and control, the nationality policy of the USSR in the twenties sought to forge a new community, a Soviet proletarian nation which would witness that class solidarity 109 can triumph over national consciousness."^^12^^ This description of the goals of Soviet national development, of the formation of the USSR, has no foundation in fact. The development and drawing together of nations is a historical process. Hence, no artificial speeding up or slowing down of this process is permissible. Soviet national statehood, and the USSR which integrates the different forms of this statehood are there precisely because they are called upon to safeguard and sustain the sovereign rights of all nations and nationalities irrespective of size and historical past, to help them to unfold to the full their potentialities, and to promote their flowering and drawing together. The correlation between class solidarity and national self-awareness is certainly of no small importance to socialist statehood, but it is an objective natural feature, and to imagine that it is dependent on the political attitude is to go astray from a truly scientific conception of the problem.
A new stage in the development of state, political unity of the Soviet peoples started after the triumph of socialism. This triumph signified the firm establishment of the peoples' actual political, economic, and cultural equality. Thereby socialism opened the road to the further flowering and drawing together of socialist nations.
[110] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter VI __ALPHA_LVL1__ POLITICO-LEGAL STATUS OF THE USSR ANDThe numerous views and judgements to be found in Western literature on the form of the state structure of the Soviet Union are often contradictory and mostly far from true. Some writers are inclined to see the USSR not as a federation but as a confederation, since each of the republics enjoys the right of secession from the Union. Others infer from the right of Union republics to establish diplomatic and consular relations with other states and take part in the work of international organisations that the USSR is a confederation from the standpoint of international law and a federation in terms of constitutional law. Others still consider the USSR to be a purely federal state. In his Dispersal and Reunion. History of Soviet Russia E. Garr describes the USSR as a federation in pure form.^^1^^
Eclectically combining different views, some Western authors maintain that, although predominantly marked by federalism, the Soviet system nevertheless has some features characteristic of a confederation, while in practice it is in many respects a unitary state. The idea which is most current in the West, however, is that while a federation in form, the Soviet Union practically is a unitary state.
In their commentary to Section III of the 1977 Soviet Constitution, which deals with the national-state structure of the USSR, some Western authors claim that throughout the fifteen years that the draft Fundamental Law of the USSR was in preparation, a debate was allegedly going on on the possibility of a change from the federal to a unitary state nor does the declaration of adherence to the principle of federalism, stated in the new Constitution, put an end to that debate.^^2^^ It is argued that ``Soviet federalism, in the very application of the constitutional provisions, can progressively vanish, to become limited to no 111 more than a certain linguistic and cultural autonomy which is, at that, actually the essential of federal reality".^^3^^
Surely the Soviet Union is a federal state uniting fifteen national republics, each possessed of a range of powers that make them sovereign states. The USSR is not a confederation, i.e., an international-legal union of individual states, as it is itself an integral, federal, sovereign state. But neither is the USSR a unitary state for it has all the attributes of a federal state. The Soviet federation is a federation of an absolutely new, socialist type, harmoniously combining the advantages of a democratically centralised state with broad independence and initiative of each nation within the framework of its national statehood. It is a state, political union of equal republics, founded on fraternal co-operation of nations, account being taken of the distinctive way of life, culture and economic development of each.
Being socialist by its character, the Soviet federation is shaped on the ethnic-territorial principle. It means that the subjects of the federation of the USSR are national socialist states---Union republics distinguished by the way of life of their nations, ethnic composition, and territorial integrity.
The ethnic principle of the structure of the Soviet federal state is reflected in the structure of the highest body of state authority---the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, which has a special chamber, the Soviet of Nationalities, which represents the specific interests of the nations and nationalities inhabiting the USSR. Thus the people of every Union and autonomous republic, autonomous region and autonomous area can take part, through their deputies elected to the Soviet of Nationalities, in decisionmaking on matters affecting the whole state and keep the country's supreme body informed of their own needs and requirements.
The principle of national-territorial structure of the Soviet federation, while expressing and securing the sovereignty of peoples, simultaneously serves the purpose of strengthening their unity, thus providing a solid basis for the existence and successful development of the USSR as a whole.
It is entirely different with federations in bourgeois states which are usually formed merely on the basis of territorial 112 unification. Moreover, the federal structure there has no mechanisms securing the interests of nationalities. The subjects of a bourgeois federation are not national territories but, as a matter of fact, administrative-territorial units. Such are American and Brazil States, Swiss cantons, Canadian provinces, and so on. In the USA, for example, there are fifty States, and no more than seven major ethnic groups. Canada has ten provinces but is populated mainly by the English and the French. In the USSR, on the other hand, all Union republics are national states in which the people that gives the name to the republic makes up the bulk or a large portion of the population.
One cardinal principle of the Soviet federation is the voluntary character of unification of Soviet national republics. It means that at the basis of the structure of the Soviet federation is the free expression of will by the working people themselves. The voluntary principle permeates all constitutional acts concerned with the formation of the USSR. It is at the basis of the sovereignty of the constituent republics of the USSR. The voluntary unification of the Union republics in an integral, federal state is provided for by the constitutional guarantee such as the right freely to secede from the USSR (Article 72 of the USSR Constitution). The right freely to secede is a major legal expression of the voluntary character of republics' membership of the federal union.
Another key principle of Soviet federalism, formalised in the 1977 Constitution of the USSR, is the complete equality of all Soviet socialist republics. The principle of equality in an integral, federal, multinational state means that all Union republics have equal rights in every sphere of life and enjoy to the same extent the advantages deriving from their membership of an integral, federal state. The principle of equal rights is expressed, among other things, in the fact that Union republics, whatever their territory, population, economic or cultural development, have equal rights and duties. To illustrate, although the Kazakh SSR has 91 times the territory of the Armenian SSR, and the population of the Estonian SSR amounts to one thirty-fifth that of the Ukraine, these republics have equal rights, just as all the other republics that make up the USSR.
Immense importance attaches to the principle of democratic __PRINTERS_P_113_COMMENT__ 8---748 113 centralism as a principle of structuring the Soviet federation, which ensures the free and equal development, flowering and gradual drawing together of all nations. Democratic centralism makes it possible to combine in the best way the common, international interests of all peoples of the republics with their national interests. It determines the identity of the goals and efforts of the USSR in general and each republic in particular. This dependence is based on the fact that democratic centralism as a single principle is a composite whole comprised of two basic parts: the centralism and the democratism of the socialist state, which form an indissoluble and integral unity. It presupposes centralisation as far as the basic questions of state administration are concerned and at the same time implies the independence of Union republics, takes account of ethnic and other local features in the best possible way and provides for the involvement of citizens of different nationalities in running the state and in public life.
Democratic centralism as a principle of Soviet federation characterises the content of the relation between the USSR and Union republics as its subjects. Some Western writers hold that in the Soviet federal system the principle of centralism, which ``makes decisions by higher bodies binding on lower-ranking ones" prevails over the principle of democracy.^^4^^ The truth is, however, that in the USSR democratic centralism is implemented in such a way as to ensure that the interests of the state at large be strictly observed, while democracy be furthered in every possible way in the relations between the USSR and Union republics. The gist of relations in the Soviet socialist federation is combining in the most sensible way of the common interests of all Union republics with the interests of each individual republic rather than opposing of the centre to the provinces.
Soviet federal statehood and the forms of Soviet ethnic statehood are inseparable; their content is elicited most completely in the unity of the international and the national, the former playing the decisive part. This certainly does not rule out the relative independence of both federal and ethnic statehood.
Describing the structure of the Soviet federal, multinational state as an embodiment of the unity of development of ethnic 114 statehood with federal statehood, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Canada William Kashtan said: ``Lenin demonstrated the dialectical relationship between the fight for the 'right of nations to self-determination, including secession and the formation of an independent state' and the struggle against separatism and for a voluntary and free union and federation of nations in their common struggle for socialism. The independent Soviet Republics that have united in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics have not lost their sovereignty as a result. On the contrary, they have consolidated it even more because the entire might of the USSR constitutes a guarantee of the independence and freedom of each of them."^^5^^
Federal statehood is expressive of the more essential national interests and needs. Accordingly, the entire machinery and legal system of the federal state are oriented towards responding to, expressing, and meeting these interests and needs in full.
In addition to this, the purpose of all forms of Soviet ethnic statehood, whether states (Union and autonomous republics) or state formations (political units, such as autonomous regions and autonomous areas), is to fulfil and guarantee the interests and specific requirements of the nations and nationalities living on their territory. From the social-class standpoint, all these forms of ethnic statehood are essentially international, owing to which they simultaneously represent the statehood of the whole, usually multinational, population of the national state or national-state formation.
In this connection, it is of major importance that a Union republic as a form of ethnic statehood is exactly a sovereign state. Article 76 of the Soviet Constitution contains a direct reference to the sovereign character of a Union republic.
The fulness of sovereign rights of each of the Union republics stems from a number of factors which, as a single system, represent a politico-legal mechanism both providing for and safeguarding its sovereignty. So, outside the spheres listed in Article 73 of the Constitution of the USSR, a Union republic exercises independent authority on its territory.
Whereas under the previous Constitutions of 1924 and 1936 the relation between the sovereignty of the USSR and that of its constituent republics mainly boiled down to the relation __PRINTERS_P_115_COMMENT__ 8* 115 between the competence of the Union and of the republics as represented by their highest bodies of state authority and administration, the 1977 Constitution contains an essentially new element of the mechanism regulating this relation, viz., the participation of a Union republic in decision-making in matters that come within the jurisdiction of the USSR. The fulness of rights enjoyed by a Union republic is therefore genuinely implemented also in the sphere of joint activity with the bodies of the USSR. Article 77 of the USSR Constitution rules that a Union republic shall ensure comprehensive economic and social development on its territory.
The principle of comprehensiveness implies by the same token close co-ordination of the activity of the Union, Union-- republican and republican bodies of state authority and administration. A Union republic facilitates exercise of the powers of the USSR on its territory and implements the decisions of the highest bodies of state authority and administration of the USSR. In matters that come within its jurisdiction, a Union republic coordinates the activity of enterprises, institutions, and organisations subordinate to the Union.
A Union republic exercises its sovereignty by taking part in decision-making in the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, its Presidium, the Soviet Government, and other bodies of the USSR in matters that come within the jurisdiction of the USSR. So, for example, the chairmen of the Supreme Courts of Union republics are ex officio members of the Plenum of the Supreme Court of the USSR. Since 1966, the chairmen of the Planning Committees of Union republics have been made members of the State Planning Committee of the USSR and the Ministers of Education of Union republics have been made members of the USSR Ministry of Education's Council for Secondary Schools of General Education, to ensure that the interests of Union republics in the field of school development are taken full account of, and so on.
When the 1977 Constitution of the USSR was adopted, some Western ideologists set themselves to prove that it failed to expand the rights of Union republics in any way substantially, which rights were supposedly still curtailed and insufficient. This contention has given rise to the conception of ``delegation'', 116 according to which Union republics have their powers delegated to them by the centre.
Some Western writers try to prove that Union republics have no genuine statehood by arguing that these republics do not own their territory, mineral resources, farm land, and so on, and that, to these writers, is incompatible with sovereignty.
Let us, however, take a look at the Constitutions of Union republics which define the more essential matters relating to the competence of republics in different spheres, with the specific features of the state structure of each republic being taken into account.
In the area of state development the jurisdiction of a Union republic, as represented by its highest bodies of state authority and administration, covers: the adoption, amendment and control over the observance of the Constitution of that republic; ensurance of conformity of the constitutions of autonomous republics to the Constitution of the Union republic; submission for endorsement by the Supreme Soviet of the USSR of the formation of new autonomous republics and autonomous regions; decision-making in matters concerning administrative-territorial structure; approval of changes in the boundaries between autonomous republics; establishment of the boundaries of autonomous regions and autonomous areas; determination of the legislation of the republic on matters coming within its jurisdiction; ensurance of uniformity of legislative regulation throughout the territory of the republic; maintenance of public order and protection of citizens' rights and freedoms; definition of the procedure of organisation and activity of republican and local bodies of state authority and administration; granting of citizenship of the republic, amnesty and granting of pardon to citizens sentenced by the courts of the republic; representation of the republic in international relations.
In the sphere of economic, and social and cultural development the jurisdiction of a Union republic covers: pursuance of a uniform social and economic policy, direction of the republic's economy; ensurance of scientific and technical progress and implementation of measures for the rational use and conservation of natural resources; the drafting and approval of state plans for the economic and social development of the republic, 117 and endorsement of reports on their fulfilment; co-ordination and control in matters that come within its jurisdiction of the activity of enterprises, institutions, and organisations subordinate to the Union; the drafting and approval of the Budget of the republic, and endorsement of the report on its execution; determination in conformity with the laws of the USSR of the revenues forming the Budget of the republic; direction of the execution of the Budgets of autonomous republics and autonomous regions, territories, regions and cities subordinate to the republic; direction of the sectors of the economy and of associations and enterprises under Union-republican and republican jurisdiction; establishment of the rules of the use of land, minerals, forests and waters; environmental protection; direction of housing management and the municipal economy, trade and public catering, personal and repair services, construction of housing and improvement of towns and other populated localities, and road building; direction of the health service, social security, public education, culture and science; protection of historical and cultural monuments; direction and organisation of physical culture and sports; and other matters of republican significance.
The terms of reference of Union republics are set out in detail in special Union and republican acts. For example, in accordance with the fundamentals of legislation of the USSR and the laws of Union republics on health protection the jurisdiction of Union republics covers: adoption of republican plans for advancing health protection and carrying out sanitary measures; adoption of republican plans for advancing scientific research and introducing in medical practice the results of science, new methods of diagnosing, treatment and prevention of disease; adoption of republican plans for the training of medical and pharmaceutical personnel; allocation of experts graduating from medical and pharmaceutical higher and specialised secondary schools; training of research workers and advanced training for medical workers and pharmacists; adoption of republican plans for the production of drugs and medical equipment; control over the quality of medicines made at pharmacies and enterprises of the Health Ministry of the republic; direction of the republic's health protection bodies and centres; administration 118 of enterprises, organisations, research and other health protection centres, medical and pharmaceutical higher and specialised secondary schools subordinate to the republic; and so on.
The constitutions of Union republics treat separately also such a sphere of competence as the exercise of legislative power on matters coming within the jurisdiction of Union republics. This refers to such spheres of law-making as legislation on the courts and court procedure, adoption of civil, criminal and corrective labour codes, labour legislation, legislation on marriage and the family, and so on.
Adopted and operating in Union republics are labour codes, marriage and family codes, water codes and special republican laws on public education, health protection and budgetary rights, laws on village, settlement, district and city Soviets, and other acts.
The early experience of state development and the subsequent legislative practice show that the functions of the highest bodies of the USSR and Union republics are closely intertwined and interrelated.
Especially typical in this respect is the sphere of Union-- republican competence, where the USSR, as represented by its highest bodies, merely exercises general guidance and establishes uniform principles obligatory for all Union republics, while the latter exercise immediate control over the corresponding sectors of the economy and culture, working out in detail and specifying the general directives with reference to their own conditions and distinctive features.
The interrelation between the competence of the USSR and Union republics is especially vividly manifested in the sphere of legislation. In recent years, more than ten all-Union legislative acts were adopted dealing with different areas of the country's economic life, and each of these laws describes the relation between the competence of the USSR and that of Union republics.
For example, the Fundamentals of Legislation of the USSR and Union republics on Public Education refer to the competence of the USSR the adoption of all-Union plans for the development of public education and for training skilled workers and graduate experts for the national economy, while Union 119 republics deal with these matters with reference to their own tasks. Further, the definition of general principles of methodological guidance of all educational institutions, endorsement of curricula, and definition of the procedure of endorsement of syllabuses corne within the terms of reference of the USSR, and Union republics carry out, following the prescribed procedure, methodological guidance of the educational institutions of republican and local subordination.
The USSR endorses the plans for its economic and social development and approves the consolidated Budget of the USSR.
Union republics approve appropriate plans and the republican budgets. The Budget of the USSR integrates the federal budget and the budgets of Union republics.
Union republics enjoy a wide range of powers in the sphere of international relations. They have the right to enter into diplomatic and consular relations with other states, and take part in the work of international organisations.
These and numerous other facts are a testimony of the interrelation and interdependence between the competence of the USSR and Union republics in general, and in the sphere of legislative competence in particular.
From the standpoint of classical bourgeois doctrine, federation presupposes collisions between the centre and the localities, which makes it necessary for the latter to possess legal guarantees against unlawful encroachments on the part of the centre. Certain Western writers allege that in the USSR members of the federation lack any such guarantees.
Citing the provision of the Constitution of the USSR that in the event of a discrepancy between Union-republican law and an all-Union law, the law of the USSR shall prevail, some Western writers argue that when adopting an ail-Union law the Supreme Soviet of the USSR may thereby limit the real extent of the powers inherent in Union republics. Lastly, bourgeois writers often see the proof of the absence of legal guarantees of Soviet federation also in the fact that the Constitution does not establish any procedure whereby a republic could protect its rights in case of conflict with the federal government, as the Soviet judicial system does not include any constitutional court to which 120 a republic could go for protection from excessive encroachments of the centre.
As a complex politico-legal attribute of the state, implying the supremacy of state authority, sovereignty may not be divided, transferred or circumscribed. Therefore, the sovereignty of Union republics, too, is full and indivisible. It is, nevertheless, an essential distinguishing feature of a Union republic that it is a sovereign state and simultaneously one of the subjects of the Soviet federation, the USSR. Having become members of the USSR, the Union republics have voluntarily transferred some of their rights to the Federation, but that does not mean at all that they have circumscribed their sovereignty. It means merely that the Union republics, in full conformity with the Constitution of the USSR and their own Constitutions, exercise their state authority within the limits of the powers reserved to them. As concerns Article 76 of the USSR Constitution, which states that a Union republic exercises independent authority on its territory outside the spheres listed in Article 73, it has to do here with dividing terms of reference between the USSR and Union republics. It also follows that limited is merely the extent of the terms of reference, not the sovereignty of Union republics. Compared with its predecessor, the 1977 Constitution not only preserves the sovereign rights of Union republics, but also extends them. For instance, it establishes the right of a Union republic to take part in decision-making in matters that come within the jurisdiction of the USSR (Article 77) and to initiate laws in the Supreme Soviet of the USSR (Article 113).
Simultaneously it must be noted that under developed socialism the role of the integral, federal, multinational state increases further. It is therefore natural that the 1977 Constitution of the USSR should be characterised by a redistribution of terms of reference between the USSR and Union republics, which tends to strengthen centralism in the administration of the whole country and extend the competence of federal bodies in certain fields. Thus, the Constitution, while enlarging the sovereign rights of Union republics, simultaneously provides for the consolidation of the federal principles. Membership of the USSR is the most durable guarantee assuring the sovereignty of every nation and nationality. In other words, the sovereignty of Union 121 republics can only be secured by the USSR as a whole, that is, by the efforts of all Union republics. This guarantee of the sovereignty of Union republics is constitutionally consolidated in Article 81 of the Fundamental Law of the USSR.
Other constitutional guarantees of the sovereign rights of a Union republic are: the right to have its own Constitution; secede from the USSR; the right to alter its territory; the right to enter into relations with other states; broad representation in the highest bodies of state authority and administration of the USSR, and others.
Another important factor in safeguarding the interests and sovereign rights of Union republics is the constitutional system of Soviet state bodies, viz., the two-chamber structure of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and broad representation of Union republics in these chambers. Each Union republic elects thirtytwo deputies to the Soviet of Nationalities, regardless of the size of its territory or population. Thus, the principle of the equal rights of peoples implies that all national political units of the same type, whatever,the size of their territory and population, are equally represented in the Soviet of Nationalities of the USSR Supreme Soviet. Besides deputies from Union republics, elected to the Soviet of Nationalities are eleven deputies from each Autonomous republic, five deputies from each autonomous region, and one deputy from each autonomous area.
One of the guarantees of the equal rights of Union republics is that a representative of each of them must be elected as a Vice-Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. All Union republics take part on an equal footing in the formation of the Council of Ministers and the Supreme Court of the USSR and other highest bodies of the USSR.
Guaranteed to each Union republic is the right to initiate legislation through its highest bodies of state authority, as well as the right to submit proposals to the Supreme Soviet or the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR that bills and other very important matters of state be brought to a nationwide discussion (Articles 113 and 114 of the Constitution of the USSR). The sovereignty of a Union republic is guaranteed by the provision of the Constitution of the USSR under which the territory of a Union republic may not be altered without its 122 consent while the boundaries between Union republics may be altered by mutual agreement of the republics concerned, subject to ratification by the USSR (Article 78).
In the relation of Union (federal) and national statehood, the former is pre-eminent. This is, of course, no accident. The international cannot but be of key significance with relation to the national. In his speech at the May 1977 Plenary Meeting of the CC CPSU, Leonid Brezhnev, describing the constitutional principles of the USSR as a multinational state, emphasised that the objective process of the progressive drawing together of the nations and nationalities of the USSR had prompted the need to strengthen the federal foundations of the state.'' This tendency had found reflection in the constitutional definition of the USSR as an integral, federal, multinational state (Article 70). Consolidation of the federal principles is also expressed in other provisions of the Constitution of the USSR.
Improvement of the forms and methods of the rational distribution of tenns of reference between the bodies of state authority and administration of the USSR and corresponding bodies of Union republics is one of the main lines of the further development of the Soviet federal state. Better management of the economy and of social and cultural development requires in its turn a better correlation of the powers of the Union republican bodies and those of the bodies of their autonomous republics, regions and areas. The process of looking for and finding the most effective proportions between the terms of reference of the bodies of authority and administration of the USSR, Union and autonomous republics, autonomous regions and areas, and local Soviets is largely dependent on the objective need to intensify the federal approach and build up the principle of democratic centralism.
The unity of the USSR and Union republics is founded on the unity of the economic and political systems in socialist society, and on an integral system of state authority.
And the major means providing for the uniformity of state authority in the Soviet federal state is its integral legal system, the principle of unity of the socialist rule of law.
The Soviet legal system is characterised above all by the unity of aims and principles which make it possible to unite the 123 federal and republican legislation into a single whole. That is why the system of Soviet normative legal acts develops as a form of law which integrally includes the rules enacted by the bodies both of the USSR and of Union republics. The uniformity of Soviet law is provided for by the enactment of all Union laws. Federal legislation is the normative basis of republican legislation.
Uniformity of the legal system of the Soviet federal state is also ensured constitutionally by the power of the USSR to enact the fundamentals of legislation of the USSR and Union republics in different fields of public life. The fundamentals establish the basic principles of legal regulation of any one sphere of social relations. As for the laws of Union republics, they, while reproducing the respective general principles, also work them out in detail, make them more exact, elaborate and specify them, and enact new rules on all matters that come within the jurisdiction of republics. Legislation of Union republics, in conformity with the principle of democratic centralism, makes possible full and free development ``not only of specific local features, but also of local inventiveness, local initiative, of diverse ways, methods and means of progress to the common goal".^^7^^ It is thus obvious that republican legislation must take into account the distinguishing features of each republic as fully and expediently as possible.
Co-ordination and uniformity of the rules constituting the Soviet legal system are achieved and safeguarded through the exercise of the following constitutional principles:~
``The ensurance of uniformity of legislative norms throughout the USSR and establishment of the fundamentals of the legislation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and Union Republics" (Point 4 of Article 73 of the Constitution of the USSR);~
``control over observance of the Constitution of the USSR, and ensurance of conformity of the Constitutions of Union republics to the Constitution of the USSR" (Point 11 of Article 73);~
priority of All-Union laws over those of individual republics: ``The laws of the USSR shall have the same force in all Union republics. In the event of a discrepancy between a Union 124 republic's law and an All-Union law, the law of the USSR shall prevail" (Article 74).
The Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR may ``revoke decisions and ordinances of the Council of Ministers of the USSR and of the Councils of Ministers of Union Republics should they fail to conform to the law" (Point 7 of Article 121 of the Constitution of the USSR). The Council of Ministers of the USSR has the right, in administrative and economic matters within the jurisdiction of the USSR, to suspend execution of decisions and ordinances of the Councils of Ministers of Union republics (see Article 134 of the Constitution).
Uniformity of the Soviet legal system is also ensured by the principle of uniformity of the socialist rule of law, which is implemented through a centralised system of agencies of the Procurator's Office, headed by the Procurator-General of the USSR. Under the Constitution of the USSR (Articles 164 and 166), supreme power of supervision over the strict and uniform observance of laws by all ministries, state committees and departments, enterprises, institutions and organisations, executive and administrative bodies of local Soviets of People's Deputies, collective farms, co-operatives and other public organisations, officials and citizens is vested in the Procurator-General of the USSR and procurators subordinate to him. The Procurators of Union and autonomous republics are appointed by the Procurator-General of the USSR.
According to Sovietological conceptions, with the adoption of the new Constitution, which consolidates the Communist Party's leading role in society, the reality of Soviet federalism becomes ``even more" doubtful. The arguments advanced to give plausibility to this conception are that being international by its nature, the Party is an exponent of the interests and consciousness of classes, not nations; and as the Soviet state is organised round the Party, the unitary tendencies of the Party must prevail over the federalist tendencies of the state. But in fact that is not so. The Party's united leadership provides to a great extent for co-ordination of the interests of republics with those of the Union as a whole. That is one of the most important manifestations of the effect of the constitutional provision on the leading and guiding role of the Communist Party.
125The RSFSR is the first Soviet Republic, the mother of socialist statehood. It was proclaimed by the 2nd All-Russia Congress of Soviets on October 25 (November 7), 1917, i.e., on the day of the Great October Socialist Revolution. This republic made the greatest contribution of all to the founding of the Soviet Union, which is reflected in the opening lines of the National Anthem of the USSR:
A powerful union of sovereign republics
Great Russia has rallied for ever to last.
The Russian Soviet Republic generously shared its material arid spiritual wealth with other republics.
It founded and organised the Soviet Union together with other republics.
The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic is the second Soviet republic. It was founded on December 25, 1917. The 1st Ukrainian Congress of Soviets, by an expression of the will of its delegates, decided to establish) full co-ordination of goals and actions between the Workers' and Peasants' Government of the Russian Federation and the Workers' and Peasants' Government of the Ukraine. The Declaration of the Provisional Workers' and Peasants' Government of the Ukraine, adopted on January 26, 1919, proclaimed this on behalf of the working people of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic: ``First of all we firmly declare our solidarity with the Soviet Russian Federative Republic, the cradle of world revolution. . . . Close historical, economic, and cultural ties between the Ukraine of workers and peasants and Soviet Russia make it incumbent on us to align our revolutionary class front above all on the Russian proletariat's. We declare all enemies of Soviet Russia to be the enemies of the Soviet Ukraine. We have the same political and economic objectives.''
The Ukraine was the first to adopt a Declaration on the formation of the USSR and to join the USSR voluntarily as its equal member.
The Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic was constituted by the Manifesto of the Provisional Workers' and Peasants' Government of Byelorussia on January 1, 1919. Declaration issued on February 3, 1919, by the 1st Byelorussian Congress of Soviets proclaimed: ``Arising independent on the ruins of serfbased tsarist Russia, Soviet Byelorussia recognises the necessity of 126 establishing close economic and political relations with its elder sister, the Russian Soviet Republic, which has done much to help the Byelorussian Republic to rehabilitate its ruined economy. Basing itself on this will of millions of Byelorussian toiling people, the First Byelorussian Congress of Soviets hereby resolves to start talks with the Russian Soviet Republic on establishing federal relations between it and Soviet Byelorussia.''
Like the RSFSR and the UkSSR, the Byelorussian Soviet Republic is an initiator and founding member of the USSR which is evidenced, in particular, by the special resolution, On the Formation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, adopted by the 4th Congress of Soviets of the BSSR on. December 18, 1922.
The fourth founding member of the USSR was the TransCaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (TSFSR), which was established in 1922 by a Treaty of Alliance which stated that the socialist Soviet republics of Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia concluded a close military, economic, and political alliance.
As the TSFSR, after fulfilling its tasks, was dissolved in 1936, and each of its constituent republics joined the USSR in its own right, we shall describe these republics one by one in chronological succession, bearing in mind the dates of their foundation.
The Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed on April 28, 1920, by the Revolutionary Military Committee of Azerbaijan. Chronologically, it is a fourth Soviet Republic formed on the territory of the former Russian empire. The Revolutionary Military Committee of the Independent Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan proposed that the Government of the Russian Soviet Republic conclude with it a fraternal alliance to fight together the ``onslaught of the combined gangs of external and internal counterrevolution".
In a telegram sent to the Soviet Socialist Government of Azerbaijan, Lenin declared that the Council of People's Commissars hailed the emancipation of the working people of the independent Republic of Azerbaijan and expressed their firm conviction that under the leadership of its Soviet Government it would, together with the RSFSR, defend its freedom and independence.
The Azerbaijan Republic joined the USSR on December 127 30, 1922, not on its own account, but as a member of the Transcaucasian Federation. It became a Union republic in its own right on December 5, 1936, after the dissolution of the TSFSR and adoption of the 1936 Constitution of the USSR.
The Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed on November 29, 1920. On that day the Revolutionary Military Committee of Armenia issued a Declaration stating: ``By the will of the insurgent working people of Armenia, led by the Communist Party, we declare Armenia a Socialist Soviet Republic.'' As a member of the Transcaucasian Federation, Armenia became a part of the USSR on December 30, 1922, and, like the other Transcaucasian republics, after the TSFSR had been dissolved, joined the USSR in its own right on December 5, 1936.
The Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed on February 16, 1921, by the Revolutionary Committee of Georgia. The birthday of Soviet Georgia is, however, February 25, 1921, when the insurgent working people of Georgia together with the Red Army took the capital Tiflis (now Tbilisi) and overthrew the traitorous Menshevik government.
Like Azerbaijan and Armenia, the Georgian Soviet Republic belonged to the USSR since December 30, 1922, as a member of the Transcaucasian Federation and joined the USSR independently on December 5, 1936, as a sovereign Union republic.
The Turkmen and Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republics emerged simultaneously. The history of their formation is related to the national delimitation in Central Asia carried out in 1924.
As a result of this delimitation, the territories inhabited by a compact majority of Turkmen, Uzbek, Tajik, Kazakh and Kirghiz population, respectively, were put apart, and national Soviet republics formed accordingly. The Central Executive Committee of the USSR adopted, on October 27, 1924, a decision On the Delimitation of Soviet Republics in Central Asia and Admission to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics of the Uzbek SSR and the Turkmen SSR.
On February 17, 1925 the 1st Congress of Soviets of the Uzbek SSR issued a Declaration on the Formation of the Union Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic which stated: ``In the name of carrying out national self-determination at the Eastern outpost 128 of Soviet government, Central Asia, following the elimination of all obstacles to full implementation of the fundamental ideas of national self-determination, the mass of working people of the villages in the Uzbek lands, hereby, solemnly and publicly proclaim through the 1st Congress of Soviets, attended by delegates from all over the former Turkestan, Bukhara, and Khorezm republics, that they establish henceforth on the territory of the Uzbek people, comprising the Tashkent, Samarkand, Ferghana, Kashka Darya, Zeravshan, Surkhan Darya and Khorezm regions, for the first time in the history of this people, an Uzbek Union Soviet Socialist Republic of Workers and Peasants, with the Tajik Autonomous SSR forming part of it.''
The Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic was founded on October 27, 1924. The Declaration on the establishment of this republic, adopted by the 1st Turkmen Congress of Soviets on February 20, 1925, stated that the Turkmen working people through the 1st Congress of Soviets proclaimed the territory occupied by the Turkmen since long ago an independent Soviet Socialist Republic.
By decision of the 3rd Congress of Soviets of the USSR the Turkmen and Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republics were admitted to the USSR. The 3rd Congress of Soviets hailed the free expression of the will of the peoples of the Turkmen and Uzbek republics to join the USSR. Admission of these republics to the USSR, the decision said, was yet another proof of the USSR being indeed a voluntary association of equal peoples and a reliable bulwark of formerly oppressed peoples.
The Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic passed through several stages of national-state development. In the course of national delimitation, Tajikistan was at first contemplated as an autonomous region, but then it was given the status of an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic incorporated in the Uzbek SSR, in which status it continued merely till 1929 when, by decision of the highest bodies of the two republics, the Tajik ASSR withdrew from the Uzbek SSR and was reorganised into a Union republic.
The resolution of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR on this matter, adopted on June 12, 1929, pointed out that economically, ethnically and geographically the Tajik __PRINTERS_P_129_COMMENT__ 9---748 129 Autonomous Republic was a unit quite apart from the Uzbek SSR. Therefore, in the interests of more successful economic and cultural development of Tajikistan it was considered timely and proper to raise the question of its separating from the Uzbek SSR and joining the USSR as an independent Union republic. This finally happened on March 17, 1931, when Tajikistan was admitted to the membership of the USSR as a Union republic by the 6th Congress of Soviets of the USSR.
The Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic started as an Autonomous republic incorporated in the RSFSR on August 26, 1920, when it was called the Kirghiz ASSR. By a decree of the AllRussia Central Executive Committee of June 15, 1925, it was renamed the Kazakh ASSR.
Under the 1936 Constitution of the USSR the Kazakh and Kirghiz ASSR became Union republics.
The Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic, unlike the Kazakh republic, passed through two stages of national autonomy before becoming a Union republic. It was founded on October 14, 1924, as a Kara-Kirghiz Autonomous Region and reorganised into a Kirghiz Autonomous Republic on February 1, 1926. The Kazakh people expressed their will concerning the reorganisation of the Kazakh ASSR into a Union republic in a letter addressed on October 4, 1936, to the governing bodies of the USSR. The letter had been discussed at 9,200 meetings of working people of Kazakhstan and signed by 1,487,000 persons.
The ^Kirghiz people, on their part, expressed their will for the Kirghiz ASSR being reorganised into a Union republic through the decision of the Extraordinary 5th Congress of Soviets of Kirghizia on November 6, 1936.
The Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. A Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was first constituted on October 12, 1924, as part of the Ukrainian Union Republic.
When Bessarabia was reunified with the Soviet Union, the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, complying with the wish of the people of Bessarabia and the Moldavian ASSR that the Moldavian population of Bessarabia be reunited with the Moldavian population of the Moldavian ASSR, and being guided by the principle of free development of peoples, adopted on August 2, 130 1940, the law on Forming the Union Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic.
The Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian Soviet Socialist Republics attained Soviet statehood in two stages. For the first time Soviet government was proclaimed in these republics in December 1918. The Government of the RSFSR recognised the independent Estonian Soviet Republic by a decree issued on December 7, 1918. Similar decrees, recognising the independent Lithuanian and Latvian Soviet republics, were issued on December 22, 1918. On December 25, the All-Russia Central Executive Committee adopted its decision On the Recognition of the Soviet Republics of Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia.
Soviet power in these republics continued for a comparatively short time, being overthrown by the combined forces of internal counterrevolution and foreign interventionist armies. The working people of these republics had to struggle for twenty-two years against the domination of big landowners and the bourgeoisie, and it was not until 1940 that the Soviet state system was restored in Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
The Supreme Soviet of the USSR, after hearing the declarations of the authorised commissions of the diets of Lithuania and Latvia and the authorised commission of the State Assembly of Estonia, enacted the laws on admitting the Lithuanian, Latvian, and Estonian Soviet Socialist Republics to the membership of the USSR.
Such is, briefly, the history of the formation of all the fifteen Soviet socialist republics and their joining together in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The facts cited below show that only in the conditions of state, political unity, within the framework of a great federal state, could each of the Soviet republics attain unprecedented heights in its economic, social, and cultural development.
[131] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter VII __ALPHA_LVL1__ ECONOMIC CO-OPERATION OF NATIONS IN THE USSRThe federative form of organisation of the state fully retains its vitality and significance at the current stage of development of Soviet society. If we were to enumerate the major prerequisites of the continued existence of federation under developed socialism, the first to be named among them would be attainment of a high measure of plan-guided organisation of social material production and the most rational and efficient use of the country's material wealth and manpower resources to provide for the social, and cultural and intellectual development of Soviet society.
The 1977 Constitution of the USSR defines the country's economy as a single economic complex. It means that the comprehensive development of the economy of Soviet republics within the integral economic structure of the USSR will rest--- as it has always rested---on uniform objective laws and principles and the common economic interests and goals of nations and nationalities; on further improvement of the socialist division of labour among the republics; on rational distribution of production; on plan-guided balanced exploitation of natural resources; and so on. The solution of these tasks demands, and simultaneously results from, the finding and steady employment of an adequate mechanism of combining the interests of the entire federal state with those of each of the Union republics, of the common economic interests of the Soviet people as a whole and the individual nations. The federative form of organisation of the Soviet multinational state allows the common and specific ethnic interests to be combined in the best possible way.
Western Sovietologists readily recognise certain successes achieved by Soviet nationality policy and the practice of socialist federalism. They often note that Soviet nationality policy 132 has proved an effective means of drawing the formerly retarded peoples of Russia into modern life. Diverse publications mention the strides made by the ethnic areas of the Soviet Union in industrialisation, the higher living standards attained, the excellent education and health protection systems developed, the progress made in national personnel training, and the growth of the local intelligentsia.
Yet, such acknowledgements serve as often as not merely as a background for the basic strategic line of challenging the real worth of Soviet nationality policy and national statehood in the USSR and insinuating that the national question in the USSR has far from been solved and, moreover, tends to become aggravated.
Some Western writers even say that the economic and cultural advance of the national Soviet republics speeds their `` denationalisation'', i.e., the absorption of some peoples by others.
The very establishment of the USSR was decisive to the solution of the problem of actual equality of peoples.
National inequality was rooted in the economic and cultural inequality of peoples that had shaped in the course of history. Many peoples who had not passed through the capitalist stage of development and had practically no industry or proletariat of their own were unable without assistance from other peoples, and from the Russian proletariat in the first place, to ascend to a high stage of development and catch up with advanced nations. And unless they did catch up with them, no stable cooperation among the peoples of the integral, federal state was possible.
Concentrating in its hands the material resources, the Soviet federal state redistributed them so as to deal with this task. The population of the retarded ethnic areas were given immense material and organisational assistance. The expenditures of some Union republics were met for years mainly from the federal budget. The population of the poorest republics and regions were exempted from all or some taxes for many years. Simultaneously the purchasing prices of farm produce were fixed at levels conducive to the economic development of the formerly retarded areas.
The policy of state purchasing prices did much towards 133 levelling off the economic development of ethnic areas. To provide for the flow of means from the developed agricultural areas of the European part of the USSR to less developed areas, the state paid very high prices---sometimes in excess of prime cost---for the staple farm products of retarded districts, especially in Central Asia and Transcaucasia, while the purchasing prices of the staple farm products of developed districts were more than moderate. In this way some of the income earned by the more advanced areas was channelled to those less developed. Enormous assistance was given to the fraternal peoples of the less developed union republics in advancing their culture, education and personnel training. These measures largely promoted priority growth rates of the economy and culture of the once retarded ethnic areas and so speeded up the evening-out of the social, economic, political, and cultural levels of all peoples.
Of the peoples of the Soviet Union who made an unprecedented stride from backwardness to progress, about thirty million or one-sixth of the total population, effected their transition to socialism by-passing the capitalist stage. Peoples who once were at low stages of historical development, who knew nothing or hardly anything of mechanised production, now boast modern industries and large-scale, efficient agriculture. In the 1920s there was no industry at all in the ethnic areas of the Far North, Mountain Altai and Khakassia and merely eight semi-artisan enterprises in the Buryat Region and Yakuntia, whereas now all these national republics and regions have been industrialised. In the conditions of developed socialism one has, of course, no reason to speak of any economic or cultural lag of the outlying ethnic areas. That is all past and gone. Nevertheless, the problem of the economic evening-out of individual districts of the country is still there.^^1^^ Chronologically, the evening-out of the economic levels of republics is divided into three principal stages.
The first covers the period of the transition from capitalism to socialism (from October 1917 to the mid-1930s). During that time the multistructural pattern of the economy was eliminated, the socialist reconstruction of the economy was carried through, and developed industrial and farm production set up. By the mid-1930s socialist production relations had been firmly 134 established. At that stage the tasks affecting the underlying processes of the social-economic and cultural development of the peoples were dealt with.
The second stage terminated in the 1960s, when a developed socialist society was built. At that stage the process of equalising the economic levels took place in the circumstances of the triumph of the socialist relations of production in town and country, and was marked by an intensive economic and cultural growth of the formerly retarded national republics.
The third stage began after the developed socialist society was built in the USSR. At this stage the still remaining differences in the levels of economic and cultural development are being evened out on the basis of the actual equality of peoples.
Equalisation of the levels of economic development presupposes the existence of developed industry, extensive employment of the results of the scientific and technological revolution, the flourishing state of the economy in every republic and development of specialisation and co-operation among the republics, as well as high labour productivity in all sectors of the national economy and practically the same standard of living of the working people. By the time developed socialism had been established, the economy of Union republics reached a high level, providing a solid basis for their further industrialisation.
The share, role and place of each Soviet republic in the single national economic complex are determined not only by the volume of output and available productive assets, but also by the natural and labour resources, specialisation of the economy, and its respective share in the output of certain products. Important to the country's economy are the industrial products of the RSFSR, the metal of the Ukraine, the cotton produced by the Central Asian republics, Byelorussia's tractors, Tatar oil, Bashkirian petroleum products, and so on. All these kinds of products are important to the Soviet Union as a whole.
The main indicators of the levelling-off of the economic development of national republics are the growth in national income, full employment, approximately the same conditions of work and payment, approximately equal productivity, and the provision of high living standards for the population of all Union republics. The share of industry and agriculture in the aggregate 135 social product, per capita output of the major kinds of goods, and other things must also be taken into account. To illustrate, the fact cotton production continues to be the key industry of Uzbekistan does not mean that it is economically less developed than other republics. It is important to know how advanced are the technical standards of agricultural production, how much power is available per worker, to what extent production is mechanised, etc. None of these indicators can characterise the level of economic development fully by itself, but only all of them taken together. The most general indicator of the economic level of a republic is the growth in its industrial production and national income. For example, the notable difference in the growth rates of per capita national income in the Union republics is largely due to the demographic situation---population growth, the ratio between the gainfully employed persons and their dependents or those supported by the state.
Thus in the Latvian SSR there is less than one dependent per one working person, whereas in the Tajik SSR almost two dependents. In republics with a high natural growth rate of the population there is a smaller share of able-bodied persons and consequently lower national income than in other republics. Thus, while the population growth in the Soviet Union in 1972 amounted to 9.9 per 1,000, the corresponding ratios were 27.1:1,000 in the Uzbek SSR, 26.7:1,000 in the Turkmen SSR, 29.0:1,000 in the Tajik SSR, 6.3:1,000 in the RSFSR and the Ukraine, 4.5:1,000 in Estonia, and 3.2:1,000 in Latvia.^^2^^
In an article on the ``internal division of labour" in the Soviet Union, the West German sociologist Boris Lewitzkyi looks for differences in the degree of industrialisation of ethnic areas, in their per capita national incomes, and in deductions from turnover tax in individual Union republics to question the results of the economic levelling-off policy.^^3^^ In reality, however, the entire economic policy of the Soviet Union is aimed at achieving a balanced development of the whole national economic complex and providing for the priority development of those sectors of the economy in republics or economic districts which are of significance to the country as a whole. Hence, the accelerated development of industry in one republic or another, where favourable economic and natural conditions are present for it 136 is regarded from the standpoint of the interests of the whole country.
The planning bodies of the USSR distribute capital investments in such a way as to provide for accelerated economic growth of the less developed republics, ensure the best possible use of their manpower and natural resources and give them a definite specialisation in the nationwide division of labour.
Priority growth rate of capital investments was ensured not only at the expense of each Union republic's own income, but also through subsidies from the Budget of the USSR for the construction of large industrial projects, irrigation systems, gas and oil pipelines, and so on, as well as by deductions from, among other things, the turnover tax which accounts for a large share of total accumulation. The Kazakh, Turkmen, Tajik and Armenian SSRs, for example, used almost all the turnover tax receipts for some years to further their own economic development. So, the Budget of the Tajik SSR in the first five-year plan period amounted to 417 million roubles, 290 million of it contributed by the federal government. Merely in four fiscal years (1925/26 through 1928/29 inclusive), the Uzbek SSR received 106 million roubles from the federal government. In certain years the Turkmen SSR had up to 73 per cent of its expenditures met from the USSR Budget.^^4^^
To quote 1976 as an example, deductions from the federal state taxes and incomes made up 41.9, 46.2, 63.1, 91.7, 100, 84.1, 67.7, 98, 60, 44.1, 94.5, 90.1, 84.3, 100 and 57.3 per cent of the budgets of the RSFSR, the Ukraine, Byelorussia, the Uzbek SSR, the Kazakh SSR, the Georgian SSR, the Azerbaijan SSR, the Lithuanian SSR, the Moldavian SSR, the Latvian SSR, the Kirghiz SSR, the Tajik SSR, the Armenian SSR, the Turkmen SSR, and the Estonian SSR, respectively.^^6^^
The budgetary policy of the Soviet Union is designed to further the interests of both the USSR and the individual republics and to meet the need for building up the country's economic might in every possible way. National income is redistributed among the republics to establish optimal proportions in socialist reproduction and provide for the fulfilment of the main economic task of building the material and technical basis of communism. Redistributing the finances in conformity with a single 137 government plan and providing for accelerated development of industry in some republics, the Soviet state relies on the fact that the economy of any one of the republics is a part of the single national economic complex and its achievements are therefore the result of the work of all the fraternal peoples. In this way, the budgetary policy and rational distribution of the productive forces are used as important instruments of the further evening-out of the levels of economic development of Union republics and economic areas. The comprehensive approach to the distribution of productive forces provides for the further drawing together of the economic levels of Union republics. During the tenth five-year plan period the economic relationships between republics became much closer, the efficiency of the territorial division of labour increased, and so did the contribution of each republic to the solution of the tasks of the whole state. That is vividly illustrated by the table below.
Growth of Average annual output of industrial output farm produce Republic in 1980 in 1P76-1S80 compared with compared with 1975 (percent) 1971--1975 (per cent) RSFSR 136 116 the Ukrainian SSR 133 113 the Byelorussian SSR 143 112 the Uzbek SSR 136 122 the Kazakh SSR 140 115 the Georgian SSR 141 129 the Azerbaijan SSR 139 121 the Lithuanian SSR 132 112 the Kirghiz SSR 137 113 the Tajik SSR 139 116 the Armenian SSR 146 124 the Turkmen SSR 130 119 the Estonian SSR 126 117 the Moldavian SSR 147 137 the Latvian SSR 127 116An accelerated development of the productive forces and growth of the economic potential are taking place in the eastern parts of the country---in Siberia, the Far East, Kazakhstan and 138 Central Asia. The production of fuel, aluminium and electric power, and timber logging and processing are growing apace there. Agriculture and the industries providing for the growth of the people's well-being are also developing rapidly. Set up in the first place are high technology enterprises requiring a minimum labour. Labour-intensive industries are sited in republics and economic areas with a better balance of labour resources. In the European part of the RSFSR, the Urals and the Ukraine the emphasis is on the retooling and reconstruction of the enterprises in operation. The targets for building up the productive forces are based on the successes already achieved by the country in the territorial division of labour, on the exploitation of new sources of raw material, and on the construction of new power-, fuel- and metal-producing facilities, development of the transport network, and improvement of the system of training skilled workers and specialists in different branches of the economy.
The evening-out and drawing together of the levels of the economic, social-political and cultural and intellectual development of nations and nationalities is a historical regularity logically resulting from the internationalist essence of the socialist system and from its communist and democratic nature. At the same time, the greatest possible levelling-off of the economic development of the Soviet republics is a long and complicated process. Marxism-Leninism proceeds from the assumption that even under the communist system certain differences will persist in the conditions of life in individual areas. It will be possible to reduce them to a minimum, but never to eliminate them entirely. The gist of the problem today is to further evening-out of the economic development levels of the republics, insofar as the individual economic areas of the country develop at different rates, have different sectoral patterns, different levels of labour productivity, different labour resources, and so on.
One lever of redistributing the material resources to bring the development of republics to the same level is still the fiscal policy of the Soviet state. Budgetary policy as well as the policy of state purchasing prices of staple farm products, which influence the level of material security of collective farmers and farm workers, taxation policy serving the same purpose, and so on, enable the state, in redistributing the material resources, to 139 influence effectively the rate of the social and economic development of a republic and its population. As sharp imbalances in the peoples' social-economic and cultural-political development are eliminated, they develop at a more and more even rate.
Of course the difference in the economic development of individual Soviet republics does not stem from their history alone, but also from their different natural and geographical conditions and the degree in which their territory is economically developed, which largely depends on the density of population, the extent and quality of the transportation system, and so on.
The further levelling-off is largely connected with the solution of the problems of the division of labour in the country and systematic and rational siting of the productive forces within the boundaries of individual economic areas. The material basis of such levelling-off is the all-round development of the productive forces throughout the country and in each separate republic.
The process of economic levelling-off of the individual parts of the country essentially implies that they should reach a more or less the same high level of productive forces and labour productivity in the same branches of the economy. It also implies the elimination of difference in the technical equipment of labour, in the growth rate of the total volume of output, in per capita national income, and in power consumption. The other chief indicators of levelling-off are full employment in all areas, similar conditions of work and pay, equal training opportunities, and approximation of personal incomes and consumption.
The policy of economic equalisation of republics is a consistent expression of the principles of socialist internationalism. This policy ensures peoples' actual equality today and meets both the interests of individual nations and nationalities and the political and social-economic aims of the entire international community---the Soviet people. Simultaneously it would certainly be wrong to interpret this policy as a striving for some sort of mechanical levelling of economic potentials. This policy must take into account the historically established territorial division of labour between the republics and economic regions of the country and improve this division so as to have social production develop everywhere at the high modern technological level. The differences that still remain in the peoples' economic and 140 cultural development will be gradually eliminated as the socio-economic, cultural and other differences between town and country are obliterated, the essential differences between mental and manual labour disappear, and complete social homogeneity of all peoples is achieved.
The actual equality of nations and nationalities in the USSR does not exclude certain differences in the economic and cultural levels of Soviet republics. Even so, their differences are merely partial, relative and purely quantitative in the context of their essential qualitative unity. Differences in the levels of development of some industries, farming and the culture of Soviet republics, of socialist nations and nationalities, certainly do not exclude the fact that actual equality of peoples has been reached, which represents a qualitatively new stage in their development, inseparably bound up with developed socialist society having been built in the USSR. The Party pursues a policy of eveningout the levels of economic and cultural development of republics and peoples.
The economic levelling-off of Soviet republics has been greatly furthered by the rational siting of productive forces, responding to the needs of the socialist state as a whole and to the tasks involved in achieving an upsurge of the former ethnic borderlands. The intensive construction of industrial complexes in Central Asia, Kazakhstan and Transcaucasia, in Siberia and the Far East, the Volga area and the Urals, has done much to help eliminate the lag of the areas largely populated by the formerly oppressed peoples.
In Western writings on the Soviet Union it is often alleged that the economic ties between the Union republics and the Union, as well as the economic relations among the republics themselves, are very nearly colonialist. For instance, Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone (Canada), writing on the trade and economic relations between the European centre of the USSR and Central Asia, asserts: ``The exchange between Soviet Central Asia and European Russia followed the typical colonial pattern, characterized by the export of raw materials and the import of capital goods and manufactures."^^6^^
Certainly it is simply ridiculous to speak of any manifestations of colonialism in the USSR.
141The economic and social progress of Soviet society is simultaneously the progress of the Russian Federation, the Ukraine and Kazakhstan, Byelorussia and Moldavia, the Central Asian republics, the Baltic republics, Transcaucasia.
One most important form of co-operation among the Union republics is still the exchange of material values, of different kinds of raw material and equipment, industrial and farm products. This exchange is mutually profitable and rules out any possibility for a republic to use its geographical situation or resources to secure any special advantages for itself.
Thus, the Russian Federation covers by imports from Union republics 15 per cent of what it needs of iron ore and ferrous metals, 10 per cent of chemicals, roughly 8 per cent of its requirements of the products of the light and food industries, and 7 per cent of its requirements in machines and equipment. Simultaneously, the Russian Federation exports to Union republics 12 per cent of its output of machine-tools, 17 per cent of ferrous metals rolled stock, 12 per cent of non-ferrous metals, 8 per cent of cement, 11 per cent of fuel, 13 per cent of products of the timber, wood-working and pulp-and-paper industries, 20 per cent of cotton articles and about 30 per cent of silk articles, and so on.
Take, for instance, the Sverdlovsk Region---one of the industrially developed areas of the RSFSR. Products made there are sent to all Soviet republics. The machines made in the Sverdlovsk Region are used to produce 75 per cent of the country's total iron ore and sink more than 80 per cent of the gas and oil wells. Ninety per cent of the sintering plants and 70 per cent of the blast furnaces in the Soviet Union are fitted out with equipment made in the Sverdlovsk Region. In their turn, the enterprises of that region receive from other republics and regions electrical equipment, engines, cable, liquid fuel, chemicals, and other products.
The output of the Moscow Likhachev Motor-Works, the Gorky and other motor-works of the RSFSR, too, is sent to all Soviet republics. Running along highways are lorries produced at the mammoth motor-works constructed on the river Kama, KamAZ. It is a big industrial complex comprised of six specialised plants fitted out with up-to-date equipment and linked by 142 a continuous technological process. Rolling off the KamAZ conveyer, totalling dozens of kilometres in extent, are 150,000 lorries a year.
The Russian Federation makes a sizable contribution to the country's farm production. It sends to other republics a considerable proportion of grain and animal products. It is not fortuitous that representatives of many peoples take part in implementing the programme of transforming the Non-Black-Earth zone into a flourishing land. Working in many regions of that zone are envoys of the Ukraine, Byelorussia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Azerbaijan, Georgia and other republics.
A prominent place in the exchange between republics belongs to the Ukrainian SSR. Its great economic potential, the rapid growth of all the key branches of the national economy, the rich variety of natural resources, and the intensive process of specialisation and co-operation in production, all provide the material foundation for the republic's broad participation in the countrywide division of labour and inter-republican economic relationships. All the regions, towns and districts of the Ukraine maintain close economic ties with the regions, towns, districts, collective and state farms in the RSFSR, Byelorussia, the Baltic. Transcaucasian and Central Asian republics, and Kazakhstan. In 1960--1975 the volume of exchange between the UkSSR and other republics increased by 87.8 per cent. It increased even faster with some individual republics, e. g., the Turkmen SSR (by 300 per cent), Moldavia (180 per cent), Armenia (170 per cent), and Uzbekistan (120 per cent).
One characteristic of the way the Ukraine's exchange with other republics develops is that its imports from other republics grow at a faster rate than exports. To illustrate, in 1975 imports increased by 94.8 per cent compared with 1960, while exports increased by 82.8 per cent. Specifically, imports into the RSFSR grew by 89.6 per cent and exports, by 71.9 per cent. The corresponding figures for Byelorussia were 118.2 and 35.4 per cent; for Uzbekistan, 293.8 and 188.1 per cent; for Lithuania, 156 and 1.7 per cent; and for Latvia, 162.3 and 1.4 per cent.
Being one of the biggest grain producers in the USSR the Ukrainian SSR supplies many regions and territories of the RSFSR with farm produce and provides raw materials for the 143 light and food industries of fraternal republics. It mainly exports, however, such important products as coal, iron ore, pig iron, steel, rolled stock, and electric power. Ukrainian industry supplies to other republics power-generating plant and power facilities, metallurgical equipment and chemical plant, equipment for the coal and mining industries, transport and railway engineering, tractors, farm machinery, and many other kinds of equipment.
As the eastern parts of the Soviet Union began to contribute a larger share of coal, gas and oil production, the share of fuel and power deliveries from the UkSSR over the recent years has decreased, that republic beginning to get more electric power than it supplies. The Ukraine receives from fraternal republics large amounts of petroleum products and chemicals. The largest proportion of the Ukraine's chemical imports is accounted for by the RSFSR, Byelorussia, the Baltic republics, and Transcaucasia following in descending order. Chemical products are made at hundreds of Soviet enterprises, the Moscow, Voronezh, Yaroslavl, Yerevan, and Baku tyre factories, the Byelorussian Potassium Integrated Plant, and the Uralkalii being some among them.
A number of industries in the UkSSR can only develop successfully thanks to the deliveries of engineering products from fraternal republics. Ukrainian enterprises have machines made at Leningrad, Moscow, Gorky, Urals and other factories of the Russian Federation. The Ukraine gets from fraternal republics 60 per cent of machines and equipment for its factories, about 50 per cent of excavators and bulldozers, 80 per cent of lorries, more than 66 per cent of wood, paper and container board, about 20 per cent of chemicals and 25 per cent of light industry products. Two-thirds of the woolen, cotton and linen fabrics, and more than a third of cultural and household goods sold at Ukrainian shops come from other republics.
Recently the UkSSR has been getting much varied machinery for its agriculture. Working in the fields of the Ukraine are tractors, lorries, and diverse farm machines made by the workers of the Russian Federation, Byelorussia, Georgia and other republics. Fuel and lubricating oil are delivered from the RSFSR and 144 Azerbaijan, mineral fertilisers and chemicals, from Byelorussia and the Baltic republics.
The leading place in the exchange of the Ukrainian products belongs to the Russian Federation which accounts for about three-fourths of the total inter-republican freight turnover. Especially intensive is the development of economic relations between the Ukrainian SSR and the Central economic area, Moscow in particular. The Central area accounts for over a third of the total inter-republican import and export of the Ukraine. Leningrad, the Volga area and the Urals also account for large shares of the freight turnover.
Next after the Russian Federation comes the Byelorussian SSR. It supplies to the Ukraine tractors, lorries, electronic computers, bicycles, radio sets, clocks and watches, machine-tools, silage combines, timber, rayon, fabrics, shoes, paper, board, ethanol, carpets, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, and many other goods. Byelorussia imports from the Ukraine coal, metal, engineering products, machine-tools, and so on. By the start of the ninth five-year plan period Byelorussia's annual shopping list in the Ukraine included all of a hundred items of major goods, including, among other things, 870,000 tons of rolled stock, about 80,000 tons of steel pipes, more than 370,000 tons of cement, more than 13 million square metres of rolled roofing materials, and so on.
The Byelorussian SSR also has varied economic ties with other republics of the USSR, It ships there more than 73 per cent (in terms of value) of its gross output of machine building and metal working, including about 84 per cent of tractors and spare parts to them, 84 per cent of farm machines, about 90 per cent of the output of the instrument-making and electronics industries, 73 per cent of bearings, about 60 per cent of metal-- cutting tools and machine-tools, 70 per cent of man-made fibre, 54 per cent of plywood, 40 per cent of knitted goods, and 40 per cent of the output of the dairy industry. Byelorussia is linked with the Bashkir ASSR by an oil pipeline. Of key significance to Byelorussia are its economic ties with the Russian Federation from which large quantities of petroleum products, ferrous metals, various equipment, etc., are imported. Exchanges with other republics, too, keep increasing.
__PRINTERS_P_145_COMMENT__ 10---748 145In recent years the pattern of exchanges between the Moldavian SSR and other republics has altered considerably. Their total volume has doubled, mainly owing to the addition of new industrial products. Receiving coal (more than 98 per cent of it is imported from the Donets Basin), petroleum products (from the Volga area), metals, cotton, wood and chemical raw materials, Moldavia, along with its traditional exports---fruit, wine, vegetables, and tinned fruit and vegetables---contributes to the country's commodity exchange electric power, machines, plant, instruments, furniture, textiles, knitted goods, footwear, transformers, cable, etc. It exports to the fraternal republics a large proportion of its tractors and other farm machines, machinetools, electrical engineering articles, tinned food, vegetable oil, tobacco, and fruit. It receives from the Ukraine increasing amounts of petroleum products (their supply to Moldavia increased 6.8 times in 1960--1975), coal, pig iron, ferrous metals, rolled stock, and so on.
An ever increasing part in exchanges between republics is played by the Transcaucasian republics. Along with the further growth of the food and light industries there, the share of the electric-power, engineering and chemical industries is increasing. An important place in the all-Union specialisation in production belongs to the oil and gas industry and the associated petroleum and gas chemical industry, the basic chemical industry, machine building, the mining and mining-and-chemical industries, and non-ferrous metallurgy.
The commodity exchange between Transcaucasia and other republics increases from year to year. Thus, commodity exchange between the Azerbaijan SSR and other republics has amounted in recent years to about 55 per cent of Azerbaijan's aggregate social product.
The Georgian SSR is one of the biggest Soviet producers of grapes and citrus fruit, tobacco and tea, and high-grade wine. In 1970 the republic accounted for 98.5 per cent of the allUnion production of citrus fruit, 94.7 per cent of high-quality tea leaf, and 11.5 per cent of grapes. In the ninth five-year period, new industries appeared in Georgia, viz., the oil industry, production of copper, china, and so on.
The Georgian SSR ships to the fraternal Union republics 39 146 per~cent of its entire industrial output. It annually exports to the RSFSR goods of 750 million roubles worth, receiving from it industrial and agricultural products of 1,000 million roubles worth, viz., equipment for power stations, machine-tools, ferrous metals, grain, sugar and other goods.
The Armenian SSR receives from the RSFSR more than fifty per cent of the machines and tools it needs, more than forty per cent of ferrous metals, and 96 per cent of timber. Simultaneously Armenia ships to the RSFSR and other republics 60 per cent of its engineering output, almost 50 per cent of its chemical output, about 60 per cent of its tinned food, wines and cognac, construction materials, and so on.
The economy of the Baltic republics is characterised by a high share of the food and light industries in it. Non-metal-intensive engineering industry is also broadly developed there. The Latvian SSR occupies a prominent place in all-Union production. During the tenth five-year period its electrical and radio engineering, electronics, medical and other industries made further strides. The republic accounts for a large proportion of the all-- Union production of automatic exchanges, passenger cars, radio sets and radiogramophones, tram-cars, household and washing machines, electric bulbs, cord fabric, glass fibre, woollens and other knitted goods, and hosiery. The catch of fish has increased quite considerably, and so has the production of tinned fish exported to many republics.
Latvia is not very rich in mineral resources. For this reason, its close ties with the colossal potential of the large-scale industry, science and technology of the country at large are of decisive significance to it. These ties allow Latvia to concentrate its efforts on the industries which are most effective under the local conditions and to tackle certain major technological problems while making the greatest possible contribution to the Soviet economy as a whole. The delivery of different hardware components, raw and other materials, semi-manufactured, and fuel-and-energy resources from other Union republics is the key condition of the fulfilment of economic plans by the electrical engineering, radio, electronics, instrument-making, electric-- power, transport engineering and other major industries of Latvia. The latter's ties with all economic areas of the country, based 147 on the integrated economic development plan of the USSR, keep extending. To quote an example, the big VEF radio engineering factory at Riga is supplied by almost 900 enterprises of the Russian Federation, the Ukraine, Byelorussia and other republics. More than 200 factories across the Soviet Union supply their products to the Riga Diesel Factory. And it is so in literally every sector of industrial production, whether it has to do with the delivery from fraternal republics of articles and assemblies in complete sets, industrial equipment, machines and plant for the continuous renewal of the material facilities of the economy or with the provision of skilled personnel and joint solution of diverse difficult problems posed by the technological revolution. The people's fraternal alliance alone has made it possible to implement in Latvia such large-scale construction programmes as the building of two thermal electric power plants in Riga, a chemical fibre plant at Daugavpils and a glass fibre plant at Valmiera, the Pliavinas and Riga hydroelectric stations, the Riga Minibus Factory at Yelgava, and numerous other projects. The Ventspils dockyard---a priority building project of the tenth five-year period---has been constructed with the most active participation of many republics.
On their side, the working people of Soviet Latvia vigorously contribute to the major undertakings of the multinational Soviet people. They helped and are helping to build the mammoth motor-works at Naberezhnye Chelny, the Sayan-Shushenskoe hydroelectric complex, the Nurek and Toktogul hydroelectric power stations, the oil fields in the Tyumen Region, the Baikal-Amur Railway, and many other projects in the country's territorialproduction complexes.
The Lithuanian SSR, too, maintains close economic ties with all Soviet republics. It imports various machines and equipment to meet the need of its own economy. The Ukrainian SSR, for instance, supplies Lithuania and other Baltic republics with ferrous metals, coal, natural gas, tractors, machine-tools, sugar, grain and many other things. Lithuania, in its turn, supplies to the Ukraine and other republics precision metal-cutting machinetools, radio and electrical engineering products (it accounts for upwards of 90 per cent of all electrical machine-tools made in the USSR), fuel and construction equipment, metal, paper, 148 textiles, footwear, silk articles and products of the food industry. Lithuanian goods are exported to all parts of the Soviet Union and to seventy foreign countries.
The Estonian SSR is a major shale producing and processing area, with developed electric-power, machine-building, chemical, timber, pulp-and-paper, textile, and food industries. Its agriculture specialises in raising dairy and pedigree cattle and bacon pigs. The Estonian SSR maintains the closest economic ties of all with the RSFSR which accounts for almost 50 per cent of Estonia's exports and imports, and with the UkSSR, which accounts for 7.3 and 6.5 per cent of Estonia's total imports and exports respectively. Products of the Estonian meatpacking, butter and fish industries are exported to many republics. Applied art objects in leather, metals, textiles and wool made in Estonia are highly prized in the Soviet Union and abroad.
A large contribution to the inter-republic exchanges is made by the diversified industry of the Kazakh SSR which supplies much coal and ferrous and non-ferrous metals for the country. The share of Kazakhstan in the Soviet production of zink, lead and copper is especially high. The industrial enterprises of Kazakhstan contribute to the national fund great quantities of steel, rolled stock, titanium, magnesium, aluminium, synthetic rubber, mineral fertilisers, polyethylene, synthetic fibre, tractors, excavators, electric motors, metal structures, machine-tools, precision instruments, cement, textiles, footwear, furniture, clothing, and many other things. Much is contributed to national production by the construction materials, oil and chemical industries, power generation is increasing, and more and more farm produce is provided. In 1976 the Kazakh SSR supplied more than 16 million tons of grain for the country. In their turn, the RSFSR, the Ukrainian, Byelorussian and other fraternal republics supply to Kazakhstan motorcars, equipment for the coal industry and non-ferrous metallurgy, excavators, and different products of the light and food industries.
The Central Asian republics have become a major fuel-- andpower producing areas of the country. The integrated development of the chemical industry and non-ferrous metallurgy irj these republics is of significance to the whole country. 149 Simultaneously the Central Asian republics continue to specialise in the production of cotton, astrakhan, and raw silk. Some industries in the Uzbek SSR occupy a leading place in the country. Uzbekistan produces, for instance, 100 per cent of the cottonpickers, over 94 per cent of different machines for cultivating cotton, and 20 per cent of spinning frames. Especially great successes have been scored in cotton growing. The republic produces more than two-thirds of the national output of raw cotton, annually delivering to the state more than five million tons of cotton. The working people of Uzbekistan generously share the fruits of their efforts with all the republics. In return, they get from all the republics and territories of the USSR all that is necessary for developing the economy and satisfying their material and cultural requirements. The RSFSR, the Ukraine, and Kazakhstan send to the Uzbek SSR machine-tools and metal, Byelorussia sends tractors, the Baltic republics, send radio equipment, and so on. The RSFSR accounts for 55 per cent of Uzbekistan's imports and 45 per cent of exports.
The Kirghiz SSR is one of the country's biggest suppliers of mercury, antimony, many kinds of the products of the light and food industries, and valuable agricultural raw materials. The 1,200,000-kw Toktogul Hydroelectric Power Station has begun sending current to the Central Asian power grid; the Kirghiz integrated textile mill producing annually more than 80 million metres of cloth has been put into operation. The Kirghiz SSR receives from the RSFSR, the Ukraine, the Baltic and other republics equipment for building projects, complex machines, tractors, motor-cars, and so on, and, besides, consumer goods, farm products, foodstuffs, etc., for its population.
The South Tajikistan territorial-production complex in which the state has invested more than 820 million roubles (or about 1,500 million dollars, at the 1980 exchange rate) plays an ever increasing economic role.
Rapid strides are made by the economic relations of the Turkmen SSR with the Russian Federation, the Ukraine and other republics. The major kinds of goods produced in Turkmenia are cotton, raw silk, cotton and woolen yarn and fabrics, carpets, astrakhan, dried fruit, and so on. Especially notable has been the growth of oil and gas production and mineral fertiliser 150 output. The Turkmen SSR imports from the RSFSR and other fraternal republics all it needs for its economy.
Owing to the rapid economic development of the Central Asian republics and Kazakhstan, their economic ties with the other republics have acquired an essentially new content. Whereas in the past the Central Asian republics and Kazakhstan exported many unprocessed goods, such as ore, agricultural raw material, and so on, in the 1960s and 1970s the manufacturing industry was set up and developed there, which has been a major factor in eliminating the one-sided development of their economy.
Growing co-operation among the peoples of the USSR is bound up with their disinterested mutual assistance. One vivid example of it is the restoration of Tashkent ruined in 1966 by an earthquake. The whole country came then to the victims' aid and the city was completely restored within the space of three years. In 1970, the peoples of the USSR rendered all-round assistance to Daghestan in similar circumstances.
Under mature socialism, which is characterised by the improved pattern of and further specialisation in production, the Party pays more and more attention to the development of stable economic ties between industries and enterprises and better organisation of co-operative deliveries both within separate economic areas and republics and on a national scale. To illustrate, the Kama Motor-Works producing heavy lorries was constructed in the Tatar Autonomous Republic with the participation of over two thousand factories and a hundred research and development centres and design organisations. The equipment was made by five thousand factories and plants, and the construction materials and varied machinery was supplied from 307 cities and towns. Working at the building project were people from 96 towns and regions, representing more than eighty nationalities of the USSR.
More than 170 enterprises and R&D centres helped to construct the Cheboksary Industrial Tractor Factory in the Chuvash Autonomous Republic. More than a hundred Soviet cities and towns supplied the machines and equipment for the construction of the world's largest blast furnace at the Krivoy Rog Metallurgical Works named after Lenin. The ``3600" rolling mill at 151 the Azovstal Works was constructed with the participation of 214 enterprises of thirteen Union and seven autonomous republics. The production of Minsk motor-cars is provided for by 1,240 enterprises all over the Soviet Union.
The Kiev Krasny ekskavator Factory is linked with almost fifty cities and towns of the Soviet Union from which it gets supplies. The Kherson, Order of Lenin, Ship-Building Yard received machines and plant from 492 enterprises; the Black Sea Ship-Building Yard, from 300 cities and towns of fourteen Union republics; the Nikolaev 61 Communards Works, from 250 cities and towns; the Kharkov Tractor Factory, from 400 enterprises; the Lvov Bus Factory, from 580, and the Kremenchug Motor-Works, from 129 factories in different Soviet republics; and so on.
Under developed socialism, the gist of the inter-republican economic relations consists in a rational distribution of the material values which increase in the course of building communism, for the sake of building up the economy of the whole country and of individual republics, and strengthening the friendship and internationalist unity of the peoples of the USSR.
The principal directions in which the inter-republic economic relations develop are characterised by the growing role of the Union-wide division of labour for the purpose of covering the requirements of the developing industries in fraternal republics; by the diminishing volume of the import and export of products of the industries reflecting the tendency towards comprehensive economic development in Union republics, and with superfluous transportation becoming less as production is being brought nearer to the sources of raw material and areas of consumption; by more finished manufactures being imported and exported while raw material exchanges diminish; and by more extensive exchanges with adjacent, and fewer ties with remote, republics and areas.
The country's single economic organism provides a durable material basis for the friendship and co-operation of peoples. The system of Soviet federation constantly implements its intrinsic function, viz., to make up, by joint efforts, for the weakness of some of the members of the federation.
In the circumstances when the economic lag of some parts 152 of the country has been eliminated and the development of different areas is being levelled off, relations between republics are marked by friendly co-operation and a rational coordination of effort through the division of social labour.
In all the republics industry accounts for a high share in the economy. Even in those republics which specialise in agriculture, industry accounts for more than fifty per cent of gross social product (e.g., in Turkmenia, Moldavia, and Uzbekistan). Big gaps in the levels of labour productivity no longer exist.
The achievement of peoples' actual equality means that at the current stage no special measures need to be taken any longer to advance the economy of individual republics as was the case, for instance, during the early five-year periods or soon after war. This is evidenced by the notable drawing together of the rates of development of Union republics. Thus, while in 1951--1955 the highest growth rate (the Lithuanian SSR) exceeded that of the Union by 75 per cent, and in 1956--1960, by 44 per cent, during the ninth five-year period the difference amounted to merely 17 per cent (the Turkmen SSR and the Armenian SSR), and in the tenth, to 10 per cent (the Moldavian SSR). At present allocations from the state budget of the USSR are made to this or that republic not for the purpose of eliminating a lag but primarily for other reasons. Over the years of Soviet government the economic development of all Soviet republics has been brought to a more even level. Capital investments are allocated with account being taken of the natural and manpower resources available there and of how feasible and profitable their use may be to the country as a whole and to the republic concerned in particular.
The higher the economic and cultural level of a socialist nation or nationality and the more it can contribute to the development of the Soviet economy and culture, the more it can influence other peoples in terms of the further strengthening of the unity of the entire multinational Soviet people.
Today Kazakhstan turns out five times as much industrial output as did the whole of tsarist Russia. The Sokolovka-Sarbai ore-dressing integrated plant alone produces more iron ore than the whole of prerevolutionary Russia. In 1978, the volume of 153 industrial output in the republic increased 233 times compared with 1913, 30 times compared with 1940, and 12.9 times compared with 1950. In 1980, the growth rate of industrial output was 244 times that in 1913. Currently Kazakhstan produces as much industrial output in seven days as in the whole of 1937, while its monthly industrial output equals the entire annual output of 1950.
One important result of the dynamic development of the economy of Kazakhstan is that a powerful economic complex has been created in that republic, capable of dealing effectively with major economic and social problems. Suffice it to say that today the Kazakh SSR is third in the USSR (after the RSFSR and the Ukraine) in the volume of industrial output, leads in the production of non-ferrous metals, is second in oil production, and third in the production of coal, iron ore, electric power, pig iron, steel, rolled stock, farm machines, total grain yield, meat production, and cattle stock.
The Kazakh SSR accounts for about 90 per cent of the national production of phosphorus and is one of the leading producers of tripolyphosphoric chromic compounds and a number of other chemical products.
Industrially, Soviet Kazakhstan is abreast of the foremost industrialised countries of the world. It produces 150 per cent as much iron ore as Britain, the Federal Republic of Germany and Italy put together and 150 per cent as much coal as France and Japan put together. Its enterprises turn out more than 2,000 items of machinery, instruments and automata. The lead and zink produced by the Ust-Kamenogorsk integrated works and the cathode copper of the Balkhash mining and metallurgical integrated works have been registered as standards at the London Non-Ferrous Metals Exchange.^^7^^
Before the establishment of Soviet rule, the capacities of electric power stations in the area did not exceed the capacity of a modern diesel locomotive. Since then, the power-generating facilities of the republic have grown quite considerably. Produced in 1980 was 67,800 million kWh of electricity as against 1.3 million kWh in 1913. Currently the amount of electric power available per worker in Kazakhstan exceeds the national average, while in per capita output of electric energy Kazakhstan is ahead of 154 some developed countries of Europe and America. A very large power-generating centre, to be fired by Ekibastuz coal, is being set up there, which will significantly contribute to the economic development not only of Kazakhstan but of the South Urals, West Siberia, and the Central Asian republics.
Of great significance to Kazakhstan's economy are the Karaganda-Temir Tau, Pavlodar-Ekibastuz, Kara Tau-- Dzhambul and other territorial-industrial complexes.
Agriculture is developing apace in the republic. It has over 2,000 state farms and about 440 collective farms, most of them specialised ones, which use over 240,000 tractors, 113,000 grain harvesters, and more than 132,000 lorries. The Virgin Land epic gave a powerful impetus to the productive forces of Kazakhstan. The development of virgin lands not only made Kazakhstan a major grain supplier of the USSR, but also promoted an allround growth of its diversified industry, and science and culture. Grain production has reached 30 million tons.
Kazakhstan was an extremely backward area in the past. Not so was Latvia which nobody could describe as a backward ethnic borderland even before the victorius socialist revolution of 1940 and Latvia's accession to the USSR. Yet, having embarked on the socialist path, this republic has demonstrated one of the highest rates of economic development and social progress in the Soviet Union, traversing a road equal to a century. Suffice it to say that since Soviet government was established there, Latvia's industrial output has increased 41 times over. Now as many products are turned out in nine days as were in a year under bourgeois government.^^8^^ It took Latvia merely two years after the last war to restore industrial output to its prewar, 1940, level. And under the rule of the nationalist bourgeoisie, twenty years (1920-- 1939) had not been enough for industry to reach the 1913 level, even though Latvia had sustained much less damage in the First World War than in the Second.
After the war, more than two hundred enterprises have been built or restored in Latvia, all of them boasting a high technical level of production. Take but one example, the famous VEF factory. In the place of the old workshops, a new factory has practically been constructed, which is the flagship of Latvian industry. Besides its Spidola transistors, of well-deserved fame, it now 155 produces the most modern automatic telephone and telegraph systems and telephones.
Latvian agriculture has changed enormously. It has turned into large-scale, highly mechanised production. Every Latvian collective and state farm has on average 51 tractors, more than 20 harvesters of all kinds, and 23 lorries. In 1979 gross farm output per worker was 280 per cent higher than in 1940, although the working day has become much shorter since.
Close co-operation between republics in dealing with nationwide problems is an objective necessity and is dependent on the giant scope of the socio-economic tasks, the greater scope of production, and the rapid progress of science and technology. In their turn, specialisation and co-operation of the republican economies promotes the growth in the social productivity of labour, helps to make production more efficient, and facilitates the further development and drawing together of the socialist nations and nationalities, their close co-operation. One concrete manifestation of this is the growth and strengthening of inter-republican economic ties.
The Soviet economy today is a single economic complex embracing all parts of social production, distribution and exchange on the territory of the country. Within this huge economic complex the economy of all Union republics is united by stable and ever expanding mutual economic ties.
The single economy is directed through state plans of economic and social development, with account being taken of the sectoral and territorial principles, centralised management being combined with the economic independence and initiative of enterprises, associations, and other organisations. The socialist system of democratically centralised planning and management of the economy rests on the state economic plan as the basis of purposeful organisation of the work of all branches and territorial units of social production. Centralised planning makes it possible to concentrate the resources and efforts on a nation-wide scale so as to tackle the urgent tasks of economic and cultural development and use to the best effect the principles of the socialist division of labour and a rational, science-based distribution of productive forces. Economic management based on a single plan of social and economic development provides conditions for 156 selecting the most rational ways of developing the economy of Union republics. Thus every republic can specialise, according to plan, in developing the industries and lines of production which are most consistent with its natural and economic conditions and are, at the same time, effective and necessary for the comprehensive development of the economy of the country as a whole. Each republic exercises direct control over the local, republican and Union-republican industries, and the branches catering for the population, such as trade, the municipal economy and everyday services, health protection, and so on. When sectoral plans of production and capital construction are drafted, Union republics submit their proposals aimed to ensure the best proportions in the development of territories and to improve production through a better use of resources.
An important role in dealing with economic and political tasks belongs to the state budgets of Union republics, which form a part of the single budgetary system of the USSR. Any republic which has not enough resources of its own to carry out the measures envisaged by the state plan, has additional means allocated to it in a centralised fashion from the USSR Budget, usually through a proportion of federal revenue being channelled to its budget. Apart from that, Union republics receive from the USSR Budget special allocations over and above the allocations from federal revenue.
The character of individual republics and economic regions is increasingly determined by the implementations of major economic programmes and the establishment of territorial-production complexes. The Angara-Yenisei Compliex, for instance, is an unprecedented event in the world practice of regional economic development. Simultaneously with the construction of mammoth electric power stations there, a powerful system of enterprises of the manufacturing industry is being brought forth. All this results in fundamental changes being worked in the economy of the region. In establishing the Kimano-Pechera complex, the country's major fuel centre, it is proposed to develop the light and food industries as well as farming which will provide the population of the country's north with goods of local production and fresh foodstuffs, milk, hothouse vegetables, and so on. The town of Ufimsk is; being built in the Komi ASSR, as well as a number 157 of up-to-date urban type settlements. Pechera, Vorkuta, Ukhta, Naryan-Mar and other northern towns will be expanded. Implementation of the imposing plans for setting up new and developing the old territorial-industrial complexes which determine the character of republics, territories and regions, will be a major stride in levelling-off their economic development.
Of great importance in this connection is the improvement of economic management and working out of comprehensive programmes on the more important economic and social problems. Combining sectoral and regional planning and developing the numerous branches of the economy today requires a uniform technical policy being pursued throughout the country. Improving all-Union planning combined with sectoral planning has become especially relevant today. This is a difficult and many-faceted task involving a search for optimal decisions and the organisation of systematic control over their execution. This approach becomes especially relevant as the Soviet economy grows and becomes more complex, and as fresh tasks are put forward by social development.
Approximation of the levels of pay and social security of industrial and office workers in the different republics and economic regions is one major manifestation of the drawing together of the living standards of working people in Union republics. Regulation of wages over economic regions is being steadily improved. Privileges for those working in the Far North and some parts of the European North of the USSR, the Far East, East Siberia, the Urals and some parts of Central Asia have been extended and increments introduced. The differences that still exist between wage levels and the price of public utilities and other services in individual areas are gradually levelled off. At the same time, the principles of socialist distribution rule out indiscriminate levelling in the use of resources. If a Union republic makes a better showing in one branch of the economy or another through higher productivity of labour, the economic incentive funds to be distributed among respective production associations and bodies of workers are increased accordingly. Socialist extended production makes it possible to raise systematically the material well-being of Soviet citizens and speeds up the levelling-off of their living standards in all republics.
158Every Soviet nation, big or small, contributes to the best of its ability to the building of the material and technical basis of communism and the creation of cultural values. The immense social-economic achievements of the country of developed socialism, of all Soviet republics, have been made possible by the international co-operation and constant mutual assistance of all fraternal peoples.
The Soviet federation is just that most perfect form of political organisation of big and small peoples within whose framework the economic integration of Soviet peoples will go on developing through the harmonising of the interests of the Union as a whole with those of national republics, autonomous regions and national areas. The objective requirements of economic development make it necessary not only that the federal form of organisation of the Soviet state be preserved also in the period of mature socialism, but that it be refined and developed.
[159] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter VIII __ALPHA_LVL1__ CULTURAL GROWTH OF SOVIET NATIONSThe integral Soviet multinational state is, as it has always been, a major instrument of the intellectual and cultural development of the multinational Soviet people and of mutual enrichment and drawing together of the national cultures.
The Soviet state inherited an onerous cultural legacy from prerevolutionary Russia. According to the 1897 census, 72 per cent of the population were illiterate. The rate of illiteracy among women reached 84 per cent. Even in the early 1920s the proportion of people who could neither read nor write reached 90 to 96 per cent in the Central Asian republics and 82 per cent in Kazakhstan.^^1^^ One of the varied and difficult tasks tackled in the course of the cultural revolution was to spread education among the masses, and for this it was necessary first of all to eliminate illiteracy among the adult population and set up a wide network of schools, especially in the countryside.
The drive to eliminate illiteracy was inaugurated by the Decree of December 26, 1919, On Stamping Out Illiteracy among the Population of the RSFSR, which stated that all citizens of the republic from eight to fifty years of age, who could neither read nor write, were to learn to do both either in their native language or in Russian, according to their own choice.
Illiteracy and semi-literacy among the formerly retarded peoples were eliminated at a rapid rate.
Schools for stamping out illiteracy were opened everywhere. Children and adults, men and women, were enthusiastically learning to read and write and acquiring the rudiments of political knowledge. People were so eager to learn that in Kirghiz villages, for instance, where they had no rooms, textbooks, copybooks and other necessary facilities, classes were held in the open air, and the students wrote on white felt with pieces of coal, for want of paper and pens.
160Still, there were not enough funds, teachers or just literate people around to carry on the campaign against illiteracy on a really large scale. The peoples of the former so-called ethnic borderlands constantly received disinterested fraternal assistance from other peoples and the Russian people in the first place in eliminating illiteracy, developing education and tackling other problems.
As early as 1918 the government of the Russian Federation allocated to the Turkestan Republic 177 million roubles for the purposes of education, thus helping it to build up its educational facilities.
As soon as the close of the reconstruction period (1925), three million adults in the country had done away with their illiteracy or semi-literacy.^^2^^ The number of students at the ABC schools increased from 32-odd million in the 1929/30 school year^^3^^ to 42.7 million in the 1931/32 school year.^^4^^
The drive for literacy acquired especially wide scope since mid1929, after the Central Committee of the CPSU(B) had adopted its decision On Work to Eliminate Illiteracy, which said in part: ``The almost general illiteracy of the population of some Eastern republics and regions, as well as among some national minorities, makes elimination of illiteracy the main and most important objective of the entire cultural work there.''
Let us take for the sake of illustration the Kirghiz republic, which used to be one of the most culturally backward areas. The RSFSR and other fraternal republics gave constant aid to the Kirghiz republic, as well as to the other Central Asian republics. In 1925 the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR allocated to Kirghizia from the federal budget an additional 300,000 roubles, including 100,000 for the needs of public education. The government of the USSR obliged, for example, the USSR People's Commissariat for Agriculture to send to Kirghizia additionally a large group of graduates of central colleges, qualified experts, scientists, engineers, and workers in literature and art. Altogether, in 1937--1940 there arrived in Kirghizia about 600 teachers with a higher or secondary education and more than 500 experts in industry, agriculture and other fields.^^5^^
Within the space of ten years, 1925--1934, more than 400 schools were built in Kirghizia, while allocations for education were stepped up from 592,500 to 28,581,200 roubles. By 1934 __PRINTERS_P_161_COMMENT__ 11---748 161 there was not a single large populated locality in the republic without a school of its own.^^6^^
The results of the work aimed to eliminate illiteracy were soon felt. In the 1929/30 school year alone 54,707 persons in Kirghizia learned to read and write, and during the second five-year period 673,000 persons were taught to read and write. Whereas the 1920 census showed that 96.5 per cent of the population of Kirghizia were illiterate, by 1939 this mass illiteracy has, in the main, been eliminated, 79.8 per cent of the population already being able to read and write.^^7^^
In 1906, Education Bulletin No. 1 wrote that it would take some 180--300 years to stamp out illiteracy and introduce universal primary education in Russia. Under Soviet government, however, this problem was dealt with, in the main, in less than twenty years.
Invaluable assistance in training highly skilled and mediumskilled experts for work in different branches of the economy and culture was rendered by the higher schools of other republics, since there were no such schools in Kirghizia in the early years of Soviet power, let alone before the Revolution. In 1926 special district recruiting committees were set up, to select and send Kirghizian students to educational establishments in the central parts of Russia. One of the documents issued in 1930 and dealing with the introduction of universal education in the republic notes with satisfaction that ``now we boast 600 Kirghiz who have graduated from different specialised educational establishments and there are 331 more currently studying in different cities of the Soviet Union''. In 1933, as many as almost 2,000 students from Kirghizia were attending colleges in Leningrad, Moscow and other cities and towns of the Soviet Union.
The government of the USSR granted a number of privileges to aboriginal candidates wishing to enrol at schools. Up to 1934, there had been in effect a special system under which members of the erstwhile culturally retarded peoples (among them the Kirghiz) had a definite number of places reserved to them at schools in the RSFSR and other republics and enjoyed different exemptions from the general rule. It was done to enable non-Russian students to pursue the courses normally, in spite of any insufficient preliminary training or poor knowledge of Russian. Practice 162 showed, however, that the problem of training graduate personnel could only be tackled properly through building an adequate network of colleges and specialised secondary schools in the localities.
The prerequisites for it were provided in Kirghizia as soon as the mid-1920s and early 1930s by the successes scored in building socialism and the growth of culture among the Kirghizian people. The first specialised secondary school was opened in the republic in 1925. It was the Institute of Public Education, reorganised in 1928 into the Central Republican Teacher Training School. The first-born of the higher school system of Kirghizia, the Kirghiz Teacher Training College, was opened at the town of Frunze in 1932, followed the next year by the Veterinary College. The higher schools of the country, those of the Russian Federation in the first place, took a most active part in the shaping and development of colleges in Kirghizia. Moscow, Leningrad and other cities of the Soviet Union sent to Frunze laboratory equipment, training appliances, and scientific literature. The organisers and teachers of the first higher and specialised secondary schools in Kirghizia were representatives of the Russian and other fraternal peoples of the USSR. Scores of teachers and research workers were sent to work in Kirghizia by the USSR Committee for the Higher Schools, the USSR People's Commissariat for Education, and the competent bodies of other republics. As soon as 1936, Soviet Kirghizia got its first ever locally trained graduate experts.
Today, Kirghizia's unified system of higher and specialised secondary schools, trains specialists in practically every branch of the economy, science, and culture. The ten higher and 39 specialised secondary schools of the republic have an aggregate enrolment of over 100,000, 55,000 of them in higher learning. Since their opening, these schools have trained altogether 136,000 graduates with a higher education and 206,000 those with a specialised secondary education.
At present, the republic's economy employs 117,000 specialists with a higher, and 140,000 with a technical secondary education. The bulk of them have been trained in Kirghizia. For comparison, let us recall that there were just 190,000 specialists with such qualifications in the whole of pre-revolutionary Russia. During the tenth five-year period alone 78,200 university, college and 163 technical secondary school graduates began their careers in the economy of the republic.^^8^^
How great a role the public education system plays in the social class integration of developed socialist society and the further progress of the social uniformity of the Soviet people as a new historical community, may be judged, for instance, from the levelling-off of the educational standards in town and country in the Kirghiz SSR and, especially, as between men and women. The number of women boasting a higher or a secondary education has grown markedly in Kirghizia as well as in other republics. This is evidenced by the data on educational standards in Kirghizia provided by the 1939, 1959, and 1970 censuses. The number of male town dwellers with a higher education, per 1,000 engaged in social production, was 20 in 1939, 58 in 1959, and 96 in 1970; and with a secondary education, 130, 477, and 637 respectively. The corresponding figures for women were: 18, 71 and 95 respectively with a higher education; and 178, 543, and 652 with a secondary education. In the countryside, the University and college students Technical secondary school students 1940/ 1965/ I970/ 1975/ 1976/ 1940/ 1965/ 1970/ 1975/ 1976/ 41 66 71 76 77 41 66 71 7tf 77 USSR 41 166 188 190 192 50 158 180 177 179 RSFSR 43 185 204 212 214 53 178 199 200 201 Ukrainian SSR 47 151 170 169 171 47 142 168 160 163 Byelorussian SSR 24 120 154 171 175 39 141 161 165 169 U/.bek SSR 28 159 192 175 176 37 99 135 132 136 Kazakh SSR 16 120 150 151 155 47 142 165 163 166 Georgian SSR 77 170 189 167 168 71 84 112 100 102 Azerbaijan SSR 44 144 192 174 174 52 120 136 127 132 Lithuanian SSR 20 155 180 189 194 22 193 206 206 208 Moldavian SSR 10 108 124 115 117 17 98 143 143 146 Latvian SSR 52 145 171 181 184 50 168 Ib3 168 168 Kirghiz SSR 19 123 161 149 150 38 121 139 131 132 Tajik SSR 15 119 149 145 145 38 90 118 109 107 Armenian SSR 82 174 214 191 192 66 140 185 181 185 Turkmen SSR 22 103 131 121 121 57 115 129 114 115 Estonian SSR 45 165 161 163 166 20 213 175 173 170 figures were somewhat lower: 2, 17 and 45 persons with a higher education per 1,000 men, and 38, 387 and 569 with a secondary 164 education; 1, 11 and 25 persons with a higher education per 1,000 women, and 17, 302 and 495, with a secondary education.9 The 1970 census showed that educational standards still differed over the republics. Thus, the proportion of those with a higher or secondary education (completed or otherwise) per 1,000 was 578 for Georgians, 508 for Russians, 462 for Estonians, 476 for Ukrainians, and 438 for Byelorussians. The corresponding figures in the Central Asian republics and Kazakhstan were somewhat lower, viz., 390 for the Kazakhs and Tajiks, 403 for the Turkmens, 400 for the Kirghiz, and 412 for the Uzbeks.^^10^^ Since the census was taken, this difference has been largely eliminated as education made big strides in the Central Asian republics and Kazakhstan.
To illustrate, here is a table showing the number of students in universities and colleges of higher learning and in technical secondary schools per 10,000 population in the USSR as a whole and in Union republics at the start of the academic year.^^11^^ (see the table on p. 164).
We see from the table that whereas in 1940 the number of university students per 10,000 differed quite considerably, by 1977 the gap was practically closed.
In future, the education system will have a still greater role as science and production do not require merely specialists with a higher education but creative exponents of technological, social and cultural progress. The proportion of graduate personnel required in fully automated production is as high as 20 or even 40 per cent.^^12^^ Scientists have estimated that in 20 to 25 years industry will need five to eight times as many graduate experts as at present.
The task is to ensure that the republics co-operate and assist one another in training personnel, making the most of the higher school system of the whole country. For instance, there is no need for launching new departments at higher schools in some of the republics if enough local personnel and that for the entire Union can be trained by using efficiently the already existing facilities. Towards this end, a fairly large number of places at colleges and universities in some republics are systematically reserved for young people from other republics. In 1967--1976, altogether 41,558 places at colleges and universities of the RSFSR were set aside in 165 this way for candidates from other republics. Of these, 27,480 places were to be filled by candidates from Union republics, and the rest, by candidates from the autonomous republics, regions and territories of the Russian Federation.^^13^^ In the Ukraine, about 5,600 students from other republics were enrolled on similar terms, 1,919 of them from Moldavia, over 600 from Byelorussia, 795 from Uzbekistan, 624 from Turkmenia, 510 from Kazakhstan, about 560 from Kirghizia, 982 from Azerbaijan, and so on.^^14^^ On the same basis, 240 students from the Ukraine were enrolled at the higher schools of the Russian Federation. In their turn, all Union republics helped the smaller peoples of the RSFSR to train local personnel.
A new form of mutual assistance has been brought into being---the training of graduate experts on a co-operative basis. It has been practised since 1964, extending to the Caucasus (the Georgian, Armenian and Azerbaijan SSR), the Baltic area (the Estonian, Lithuanian and Latvian SSR), and Central Asia and Kazakhstan (the Uzbek, Kirghiz, Tajik, Turkmen and Kazakh SSR).
The plan of co-operative training of specialists at higher schools was developed on the basis of previously agreed proposals submitted by the ministries of education of Union republics. Under this plan, those having passed the competitive examinations and wishing to study at a college in another republic, stood to be enrolled there accordingly.
Ample experience in this respect has been accumulated by the Central Asian republics whose higher schools took care of 3,071 students under the co-operative training plan in 1966--1977. Over this period Uzbekistan's higher schools trained 1,316 specialists for other republics simultaneously, 958 graduates were trained for the republic in Kirghizia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Turkmenia.^^15^^
Starting from 1969, higher schools throughout the Soviet Union have been running preparatory departments for future students from fraternal republics. The principle here was the same as in admitting students to the first year at college on non-competitive terms, the greatest contribution in this respect has been made by the higher schools of the Russian Federation and the Ukraine. In 1970--1977, places at the preparatory departments throughout the Soviet Union took in altogether 4,343 native citizens of Union 166 republics. The total places thus allocated in 1970--1976 were distributed over the republics as follows: 2,630 or 70 per cent of them were available at the higher schools of the RSFSR; 360, at the higher schools run by the USSR Ministry of Higher and Specialised Secondary Education; 494, at the Ukrainian higher schools and 232, at the higher schools of the other union republics.^^16^^
One important form of Union republics' co-operation and mutual assistance consists in sending scientists to deliver lectures and organise research work at higher schools. This measure extends to practically all Union republics and is carried out in a planned way.
Top-grade scientists are trained in the Academies of Sciences of all Union republics. To illustrate, the postgraduate department of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences prepares research workers for nine other republican academies; that of the Byelorussian Academy of Sciences, for five; those of the Moldavian Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Sciences of the Kazakh SSR, for three each; and that of the Uzbek SSR, for two republican academies of sciences.^^17^^
Many highly distinctive features marked cultural development in the parts of the USSR populated by the small peoples of the North and Far East. The vast expanses of taiga and tundra stretching all the way from the Kola Peninsula to Chukotka have been settled since long ago by small peoples whose chief occupations only recently were reindeer breeding, hunting and fishing. Under the tsars, these peoples, separated by vast distances from cities and industrial areas, were among the most backward and deprived groups in Russia's population. Their implements were of a most primitive kind, and socially they had still retained many elements of the primitive communal system. It needed a special effort on the part of the Soviet state to introduce these peoples to the new way of life. As a matter of fact, it had to help the Northern peoples to go over from their patriarchal, tribal selfgovernment to socialist statehood, skipping all the intermediate stages.^^18^^
Already in the early period of Soviet power, with a civil war raging in the country and its economy ruined, certain transformations were occurring in the Far North. No marked change, however, could be worked at that time in the situation of the 167 Northern peoples, owing to the country's economic plight and the remoteness of the Far North from the European centre and Southern Siberia. It was not until 1924, when the Presidium of the All-Russia Central Executive Committee set up a special body, the Committee for the Peoples of the North, that these peoples were drawn into Soviet development. At the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s, the social and cultural development of the Northern peoples considerably intensified. Mixed co-- operatives, which greatly helped to improve the supply of foodstuffs and implements for the peoples of the North, were introduced and became widespread at that time. Notable changes occurred also in cultural development, aimed to stamp out the extreme cultural lag of these peoples. Much was done to disseminate culture among them by the cultural centres set up by the North Committee in the more remote areas, which provided all-round cultural service. By 1934, thirteen such centres had been built. They were operated by an aggregate staff of 500.
In 1929--1930 National Areas were formed in the Far North. It was a major political event which had a great impact on the social and cultural development of the population. The formation of National Areas made it easier to respond to the Northern peoples' economic and cultural needs. One of the principal measures towards raising the cultural level of the peoples of the North was the building of schools and introduction of universal primary education. Systematic school development began in the North in the late 1920s and made spectacular progress in the 1930s. The enrollment increased from about 20 per cent of the children of school age in 1930 to an average of 60 per cent in the mid-1930s. In some areas, however, the proportion was much lower than that, which showed that there were yet not enough schools. Besides, it was hard to persuade parents to send their children to school. Providing school education for the children of nomads was an especially difficult problem.
The development of writing in the native languages of the Northern peoples, who, for the most part, knew very little Russian, was of great significance to their cultural and social progress. In the early 1930s, the alphabets of indigenous languages were evolved, and, as a result, textbooks, political books and fiction began to come out in these languages. This publishing effort 168 increased especially after 1936, when the new writing systems were switched from the Latin to the Russian alphabet. This also made it easier for the natives to learn Russian. As National Areas were formed and the cultural revolution advanced, and as collectivisation came under way in the 1930s, there was a greater need for trained personnel, preferably of native origin. This was also one of the demands of the nationality policy of the state, aimed at the social and cultural levelling-off of all peoples of the country. That period saw the establishment of all sorts of schools and training programmes, starting with short-term courses and up to the Institute of the Peoples of the North which made an outstanding contribution to the formation of the native intelligentsia. Promotion of capable local organisers to executive jobs in the bodies of government and the economy was also of great significance. Already in the pre-World War II period, scientists like A. P. Pyrerka, a Nenets, and V. P. Khabarov, an Aleutian, and the first, as yet non-professional, fiction writers and poets appeared among the indigenous Northern intelligentsia.
In the ten years preceding the war, the population of all Northern national areas, except the Chukcha, doubled and trebled, and in some areas urban population appeared. All this could not but have an impact on the character and pace of the social, cultural and ethnic processes developing among the Northern peoples. At that time the indigenous population began to be drawn into industrial production, so far being engaged mainly in the traditional Northern industries, as workers at fishing and sea-hunting enterprises and state farms specialising in reindeer breeding and raising fur-bearing animals. Cultural development in the North continued also in the hard wartime conditions. More schools were built, the number of pupils and teachers grew, and the cultural establishments functioned successfully. Still, the war brought with it many problems. There were not enough secondary school teachers; the school facilities, especially with regard to primary schools, were inadequate; many children stayed away from school; the publication of textbooks and other books in the native languages ceased; less local personnel were trained; and the effort to reorganise the life of the indigenous peoples slowed down.
After the war, however, great progress was made in the social, economic, and cultural development of the peoples of the 169 North. Towards the end of 1947 the transfer to universal primary education had been completed. Certain progress was made in training specialists from among the Northern peoples. The training of teachers made the greatest progress of all. Great changes occurred in the life of the Northern peoples after the 1957 Decision of the CC CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR On Measures for the Further Development of the Economy and Culture of the Northern People. The Decision set forth a detailed programme of economic and cultural development which comprised measures towards switching the nomad population on to a settled way of life and raising the living standards of reindeer breeders, trappers and hunters. Steps were taken to expand the enterprises in the North. The number of farm workers increased. Now they and the collective farmers together form the largest social section of the Northern peoples.
Currently, industrialisation of the North is progressing faster than ever before. The oil-and-gas industry is growing rapidly in the north of Western Siberia, in the Khanty-Mansi and Yamalo-Nenets National Areas. As industry develops in the North, it draws in more local people, so that now there is a local force of industrial workers, mechanics and engineers. This is especially noticeable in the Lower Amur area (the Far East) and, more recently, in the Ob area as well. The social composition of the Northern peoples has become much more varied. The development of technical facilities in the Northern hunting and fishing industries has demanded more personnel skilled in running machinery and more specialists with higher qualifications.
Under Soviet power a considerable professional force grew up in the North, engaged mostly in providing services for the population, such as teachers, doctors and other medical personnel, and those working at cultural centres. Teachers form by far the largest proportion of the local intelligentsia, accounting for nearly fifty per cent of all those of native origin with secondary and higher education qualifications. One of the major results of social change is that the North is becoming urbanised. The proportion of towns people, which was less than one per cent in 1926, increased to 10.8 per cent in 1959, rising to almost a fifth (18 per cent) of the total population of the North in 1970. In this respect the peoples of the North and the Far East are ahead of 170 some Union republics, e.g., the Kirghiz SSR. The rate of urban growth is highest in the Amur area, inhabited by the Orochi, the Nivikh and the Nanai, where urbanisation started earlier and developed on a larger scale than elsewhere in the Far East or North. Before the revolution, merely twenty of the 130 peoples of what is now the Soviet Union had more or less developed systems of writing. The Russians, Ukrainians, Georgians and Armenians, with their developed literary languages, used their own alphabets. Many systems of writing were associated, either more or less, with religion. Thus some Christian ethnic groups (the Mordovians, Ossets, Chuvashes, Komi, Udmurts and Yakuts) in varied degrees borrowed the Russian alphabet. The Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians used the Latin script. The Buryats and Kalmyks, among whom Buddhism was widespread, used a variety of the Old Uighur-Mongolian system of writing. The Karaites, Crimean, Caucasian, Central Asian and East European Jews used the Hebrew alphabet. The numerous Moslem peoples of Central Asia and the Caucasus used systems of writing based on the Arabic alphabet. Various adaptations of the latter were current among sixteen different ethnic groups : the Uzbeks, Tajiks, Kazakhs, Azerbaijanians, Tatars, Chechens, Ingushes, Kabardinians, Balkars, Karachais, Adyge, Kumyks, Avars, Laks, Tabasarans, and Lesghins. The masses, however, were illiterate. In many languages the use of the alphabet was practically confined to the religious sphere. The problem of writing was an extremely difficult one to solve because it involved many peoples whose languages belonged to entirely different linguistic families and groups and could not be more unlike structurally.
Cultural development and education were also held back by some essential defects in the systems of writing already in use. This referred especially to the Old Uighur-Mongolian, Hebrew and Arabic systems of writing. But, whereas the first and second were in use among a few smaller groups, the third was used by such numerous peoples as the Uzbek, Tatar, Kazakh, Azerbaijanian and Tajik. Of the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet only sixteen are of a distinctive shape. The rest are distinguished by diacritical marks, which makes them difficult to grasp and to print. In addition, almost every letter is spelled in two or three ways, depending on its position in the stem (initial, medial or 171 final). The basic alphabet has just three vowel letters. These imperfections were not particularly felt at the time when people only wrote by hand. But when books came to be printed and people were taught to read and write on a mass scale, all these latent defects glared, and they held back the spread of education. It was the chief reason responsible for the slow progress of the campaign against illiteracy among the peoples using the Arabic alphabet. According to the 1926 census, the proportion of those able to read and write among nine-years-olds and older age brackets did not exceed 25.2 per cent in Azerbaijan, 22.8 per cent in Kazakhstan, 15.1 per cent in Kirghizia, 12.5 per cent in Turkmenistan, 10.6 per cent in Uzbekistan, and 3.7 per cent in Tajikistan.
In the 1920s, the imperfect systems of writing of the Old Uighur-Mongolian, Hebrew and Arabic types, were latinised. New systems of writing based on the Latin script provided the answer to the problem. Subsequently in the late 1930s, an absolute majority of the peoples of the USSR changed to the Russian alphabet.
The transfer of the Soviet Turkic languages from the Arabic to the Latin writing and then to the Russian alphabet was of great progressive significance. The alphabet developed on the basis of the Russian graphic symbols helped resolve printing problems and made it easier to express in local languages the socio-political and scientific terms borrowed via Russian. Besides, this essentially uniform alphabet proved more convenient for the centralised methodological direction of linguistic development in an integral multinational state like the Soviet Union.
Linguistic development is not concerned merely with the external aspect (the written, literary expression) but also has to do with the internal aspect, i.e., with the specification and formation of terms. All this is clearly evident from the history of the improvement of the grammar (orthography, morphology, syntax, style of speech, etc.), enrichment of the word stock, and stimulation of the social function of the language of any Soviet people.
The effort to latinise writing was co-ordinated by the Central New Turkic Alphabet Committee, subsequently reorganised into an All-Union body. The Committee also directed the development of alphabets for the languages which lacked them altogether.
The highly honourable yet extremely difficult task of studying a multitude of languages of different types, improving the 172 existing systems of writing and putting 50 oral languages into writitig was thus accomplished. It was an effort unexampled in the history of culture.
Owing to the strides made by the economy and to rapid social progress, the national literary languages blossomed forth. This was due to a great extent also to their interaction and mutual enrichment. Assimilation from Russian of hundreds and thousands of Russian and international strata and terms, which led to the formation of a large layer of shared vocabulary in the numerous local languages, was of particularly great significance in this respect. In these circumstances, intellectuals in many ethnic republics considered it desirable to go over to the Russian script. As a result, in 1937--1940, the peoples of Central Asia, the Volga area, the North Caucasus, and Azerbaijan adopted the Russian alphabet. The Armenians and Georgians retained their distinctive alphabets that had been in use among them for centuries. Vigorous linguistic development which went on in the context of rapid cultural and national development breathed new life into the literary languages, investing them with greater significance and prestige. Literary languages were enriched by dialects, while the latter became less divergent.
Even more striking are the changes that have occurred over the past sixty years in the languages recently put into writing. As written languages, they are able to meet diverse national requirements and fulfil numerous social functions. A considerable number of literary works are produced in them, periodicals (newspapers, magazines and literary miscellanies) are published, and instruction is given in the primary and often also in eight-year schools. Native theatres and theatrical companies perform and radio and television broadcast in these languages. And, of course, they are used extensively in economic, administrative, social and political activities.
Notable changes have occurred in oral languages too, especially in their vocabulary, which reflects the changes in the life of their speakers. But as the latter are not numerous, often only 2 or 3 thousand or even a few hundred, they usually have a good working knowledge of the language of a larger neighbouring people. This they use as their literary language as, for instance, Tajik is used by the peoples of the Pamirs, or Georgian by the Babis, Kistans and Svans, or Russian by the small Northern peoples.
173The languages of the peoples of the USSR are equal, just as the peoples themselves are, and their mutual influence and enrichment play an enormous role in their development.
The language policy of the Soviet state provides for free development of the languages of the peoples of the USSR and guarantees all citizens absolute freedom to speak and educate their children in any language. No privileges, restrictions or compulsion in the use of some languages or other is tolerated.
The progress of languages is expressed in the enrichment of their word stock, development and improvement of writing systems, expansion of their social functions, and so on. In recent years, more research centres concerning themselves with the development of local languages were opened in Union and autonomous republics. Books and periodicals are published in these languages on a mass scale. According to the 1979 census, 93.1 per cent of the population of the USSR consider their ethnic language as their mother tongue.^^19^^ Simultaneously, all Soviet peoples at present extensively use Russian along with their native languages. During the 1979 All-Union census Russian was named as their native language by 153.5 million (as against 141.8 million in 1970), including 137.2 million Russians and 16.3 million non-Russians. Furthermore, 61.3 million (as against 41.9 million in 1970) stated that they had a fluent command of Russian as second language.^^20^^
The objective process of the development of Russian into an international language is often falsified by Western theorists who would misrepresent it as compulsory assimilation and Russification of non-Russians. Censuses show, however, that while there are more people who know Russian, there are also more people who give the language of their own nationality as their mother tongue. The proportion of the Bashkirs, for instance, who named Bashkir as their mother tongue in the 1926 census amounted to 54 per cent. This figure rose to 58 per cent in 1939 and, further, to 67 per cent in 1979. Of the Ukrainians residing in the USSR, 82.8 per cent consider Ukrainian to be their mother tongue. At the same time, 49.8 per cent of the Ukrainians have a fluent command of Russian. The respective figures for the Byelorussians are 74.2 and 57 per cent; 85.9 and 68.9 for the Tatars; 90.7 and 38.6 per cent for the Armenians; 93.2 and 47.4 per cent for the Moldavians; 95 and 56.7 per cent for the Latvians.
174Sociological surveys have shown that 62.3 per cent of the Bashkirs prefer to watch and listen to performances and concerts in their native languages, and 51.3 per cent, in Russian. The respective figures for the Chuvashes are 16.7 and 73.3 per cent, and for the Mari they are 15.1 and 71.7 per cent.
The knowledge of Russian, a means of international communication, gives broad access to the cultural treasures of the Russian and other peoples in the USSR aind all over the world. Fortytwo per cent of the Bashkirs and 22.1 per cent of the Tatars prefer to read fiction in their native languages; 17.9 per cent of the former and 11.7 per cent of the latter read fiction in both their native languages and Russian. About 76 per cent of the Chuvashes and the Mari prefer to read fiction in Russian.
The results of surveys show that the younger the age, the greater the tendency to use Russian, the language of international contact. Thus, 61.7 per cent of those under twenty prefer to read fiction in Russian, 17.5 per cent in the native language, and 19,7 per cent in both the native language and Russian.
The significance of Russian as international language is evidenced also by the figures obtained on the Chechen-Ingush ASSR.^^21^^ The table below is based in the replies given to the question ``In which language do you prefer to read, listen in and write?''
In Russian In Chechen, In Chechen only Ingush and or Ingush (%) Russian only reading books 35.1 28.8 5 newspapers, magazines 18.3 48.7 10.2 listening in 20 51.1 11.6 watching television 18.3 48.7 10.2 watching theatre plays 15.5 47.5 11.6 writing and getting letters 46.3 30.3 8.1Thus, the spread of Russian among all Soviet peoples takes nothing from the importance of the languages of other peoples, nor does it imply that any language is dissolved in any other. In 175 the Soviet multinational state free development of the vernacular languages, based on equality and mutual enrichment and on using Russian for international communication, involves no contradiction. Quite the contrary, all national languages interact and so supplement and enrich one another.
The amount of literature available in translation indicates, to a certain extent, the level of culture achieved by a people. Translations of fiction not only introduce readers to the best works produced by other peoples, but also promote the development of the national language, helping to reveal fresh potentialities in it. A comparative study of the distinctive features of the 26 most widespread languages used by 93 per cent of the population of the globe suggests that the distinctiveness of a language stands in direct relation to the amount of literature translated into and from that language.^^22^^ It is worth noting the exceptionally important part played by Russian as the international language of the Soviet peoples which successfully performs the function of mediator language in interlinguistic translation of literature, helping to expand cultural co-operation and international intercourse, spread information and share experience, and promoting mutual growth and mutual understanding. Through Russian translation, the non-Russian peoples can share their cultural treasures and develop their national cultures and languages.
The national cultures and languages of the peoples of the USSR further develop also through assimilation of fresh linguistic values, concepts evolved both in the native and other languages, that is, through the mutual enrichment of languages by means of allround contact, borrowing, through the internationalisation of life on a broad scale. The interaction and mutual influence of languages are long and involved processes. The equal and free development of languages makes it impossible for some languages to be ousted by other languages or for the functions of some language to be enhanced at the expense of another under the pretext of borrowing and evolving new terminology.
Of the roughly 130 peoples of the USSR, about 80 feel the need of pre-school and primary education on a bilingual basis. At least 110 need it in secondary education, and about 115 in higher education. Almost half of the Soviet population need both their mother tongue and the international language in 176 carrying on public, cultural and scientific activities and in co-- operating with other peoples.^^2^^"
While exerting a comprehensive and beneficial influence on the other languages, Russian itself borrows from them, thus enriching its own vocabulary. There is no language in the world with enough vernacular words in it to denote every object and idea occurring in the life of a people, particularly in view of the current scientific and technological revolution which is progressing rapidly. Every language, therefore, contains a large number of words borrowed from other languages. In Russian, for instance, more than 10 per cent of the vocabulary is borrowed. This, however, only makes it the richer. It is apt to recall at this point how Marx said that ``one nation can and should learn from others".^^24^^ Learning from other nations and simultaneously sharing with them one's own spiritual values is an objective feature which marks the development of national cultures and languages under socialism. Far from downgrading the original culture of the nonRussian peoples or the works of native writers and poets, the use of Russian enables them to display to the full their original creative genius. This is possible because Russian does not estrange creative writers from their own people but provides them with a flexible medium through which they reflect and interpret the world in imaginative terms and can bring their talents to bear upon society.
Rassul Gamzatov, the People's Poet of Daghestan, writes: ``We do not appreciate Russians for being Russian but, first and foremost, because we see them as exponents of the best, the progressive, features of the times. The Russian language has become a second mother tongue to us. We perceive Russian literature as our own. Russian literature has helped us to write better, more forcefully, in more precise and concrete terms, to convey thoughts and feelings with greater expression. It was more than just Russia and Russians, more than the Russian character, that Russian literature has let us see. It let us see ourselves, too, our destiny, our own reflections, thoughts and hopes. This people has learned from Russian literature the truth about itself."^^25^^
In the 1979 national census 77.6 million non-Russians (or more than every other non-Russian Soviet citizen) named Russian as their mother tongue or the second language of which they had __PRINTERS_P_177_COMMENT__ 12---748 177 a fluent command. All in all, in 1980 almost 215 million or 82 per cent of the population of the Soviet Union had a fluent command of Russian. This figure is likely to increase, owing, among other things, to the way Russians are distributed over the country. In 1970, for instance, almost 22 million Russians resided outside the Russian Federation.^^26^^
Russian began to spread among the peoples of Russia long before the Great October Socialist Revolution. That was due to the fact that the Russians as a nation were economically more advanced and it was among them that there arose and developed the most revolutionary, politically aware proletariat, consolidated and steeled in class battles. In the course of the socialist revolution and the building of a new society, the Russians played the key role in establishing the real equality of all peoples, to whom they gave constant, disinterested, and all-round assistance. Russian is the language of a great people, the language of Lomonosov and Radishchev, Herzen and Chernyshevsky, Pushkin and Tolstoy, Lenin and Plekhanov. The extraordinary richness of the Russian language, its meticulously and comprehensively elaborated grammar, its immense functional capabilities and vast terminology all made it natural that it should become the international language of the peoples of the USSR. Russian is one of the official languages of the United Nations Organisation, along with English, French, Chinese, Spanish and Arabic. It is taught at 2,000-odd universities and colleges and thousands of schools around the world. There are Russian groups and courses in 76 non-socialist countries. Hundreds of millions today are in varying degrees familiar with Russian.
Thus, taking place on the Soviet linguistic scene are the interrelated twin processes of the free growth of the vernacular languages on the one hand, and, on the other, of the extension of the functions of Russian as the international language of the Soviet peoples, which they use of their own free choice. These processes are embodied in the intensive growth of bilingualism in the USSR.
The spread of an international language is indispensable to the progress of science and technology. In this day and age, science and technology are internationalised more than ever before. Technological progress is a potent factor in national development and in the internationalisation of every facet of life. It is 178 essential to the growth of the country's scientific potential that research centres in all republics should be able to share their results. Unless they are, it is impossible either to raise the scientific and technological potential of the republics themselves or to provide adequately for combining the advantages offered by developed socialism with the results of the STR.
It is a major result accomplished by socialist culture that the local languages have extended their social functions to the point where the most intricate scientific subjects can be expounded in them. Simultaneously, the need for an international language in which to share the results achieved by science becomes ever more pressing. All this shows that this international language is indispensable in disseminating the results obtained by the Academies of Sciences and other scientific bodies of Union republics. Not only major works of Soviet scientists, but also the more important foreign publications are put out in Russian, and so are abstracts of foreign periodicals and books in the natural and social sciences.
Thus, national culture and especially the national language, which fulfils the broadest social functions, being as highly developed as they are, one has no reason at all to imagine that publishing scientific books or teaching technical subjects in Russian in national republics constitutes an encroachment on their own languages and culture. It is most important to the successful functioning and spreading of Russian as an international language in Union and autonomous republics that the principles of bilingualism should be consistently applied. Bilingualism is widespread in many other countries, besides the USSR. But in socialist society it rests on a fundamentally different basis, creating a linguistic environment in which the local language continues to develop and becomes enriched while the need to master Russian as the international language also increases.
It is, however, of fundamental importance that bilingualism is not in the least prejudicial to national interests. Simultaneously, increasing importance attaches to the spread of the international language. Owing to historical circumstances, this function has devolved on Russian. Fighting against the colonialist policy conducted by the tsarist autocracy and against bourgeois liberal hypocrisy on the national question, Lenin defended complete freedom 179 and equality of languages. He considered it to be a fundamental demand of the Party that the obligatory official language should be abolished?^^1^^
Bourgeois liberals maintained that Russian must continue in its privileged position of the official language because it was great and mighty. That was, to them, reason enough why all inhabitants of Russia should know it.
Arguing against this view, Lenin wrote: ``That is all true, gentlemen, we say in reply to the liberals. We know better than you do that the language of Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dobrolyubov and Chernyshevsky is a great and mighty one. We desire more than you do that the closest possible intercourse and fraternal unity should be established between the oppressed classes of all the nations that inhabit Russia, without any discrimination. And we, of course, are in favour of every inhabitant of Russia having the opportunity to learn the great Russian language.
``What we do not want is the element of coercion.'"^^28^^
Lenin explained that an official language meant coercion, and that did not make peoples speaking other languages like it. If anything, it made them hate it. Thrusting an official language upon other peoples was psychologically wrong, whereas the national question particularly required a careful psychological approach.
The spread of Russian as an international language is greatly stimulated by the economy which makes it necessary.
The socialist revolution ended the inequality of languages and the privileged position of Russian as the official language of the country, imposed by force on the non-Russian peoples. Under Soviet government, the Russian language has had no privileges conferred on it nor has it been granted any special legal status. Non-Russians learn and use it by choice. Russian spreads because it is used by the majority of the country's population. It serves to meet the general requirements of the scientific, technical and cultural growth of all Soviet peoples, big and small. Soviet republics, regions, towns and villages are populated by people of different nationalities. An international language is indispensable to them in their joint activities in production and in public and everyday life.
Under socialism, the Leninist principles of nationality policy, 180 including language policy, are consistently observed. Bilingualism is gaining ground, owing to the equality of all languages in the country. The purpose of the language policy of the Soviet Union is to provide the best possible conditions both for the development of national languages and for the dissemination of Russian and establishment of bilingualism. The principle of equality of the languages and peoples of the USSR is a constitutional provision. Article 34 of the Soviet Constitution reads: ``Citizens of the USSR are equal before the law, without distinction of origin, . . . language, ... or other status.''
The history of development of socialist nations shows that national forms do not become immutable or fossilised but alter, advance and draw together, getting rid of all that is obsolete, useless and at odds with the new conditions of life of the socialist nations. The culture of every nation is increasingly enriched by works that acquire international significance.
The interplay of national cultures is part of the drawing together of peoples which occurs naturally as socialism and communism are being built. This can be illustrated by the exchange of book output between republics. According to the data, supplied by the central book-trade organisations of the republics, in 1959-- 1972 the Russian Federation bought from other fraternal republics books to a value of 157.3 million roubles. The Moldavian republic bought books to a value of 16.1 million roubles; the Latvian SSR bought books to a value of 4.85 million roubles; the Lithuanian SSR bought books to a value of 2.69 million roubles; and so on.
Multinational Soviet culture is shared by the working people of all nationalities. But its intrinsic unity implies no levelling of the national cultures. The Miklukho-Maklay Institute of Ethnography of the USSR Academy of Sciences has investigated the optimisation of the social and cultural conditions of development and drawing together of Soviet nations as exemplified by the Georgian, Moldavian, Uzbek and Estonian SSR and some autonomous republics and regions of the RSFSR. The evidence obtained clearly indicates that the Soviet nations have developed many common features and have similar elements of culture and daily life. This change is particularly evident among the young people.
181Concrete studies (ethno-sociological investigations above all) indicate that the old distinctions in the rate of consumption of different kinds of spiritual culture by different peoples have by now been almost completely obliterated. In other words, not only have the socialist nations got equally broad access to every form of culture, but they avail themselves of their opportunities at the same rate. Of course every people has a sense of national identity and take pride in the cultural and intellectual values it has created and in its own contribution to world civilisation. At the same time, there can be no doubt that the common effort in tackling general social problems and the emergence of a new historical community of the peoples have engendered a common, internationalist consciousness founded on socialist ideology which is a synthesis of the common features in the national consciousness of each nation, an international value shared by them all.
Soviet culture is multinational and multilingual. It lives and proliferates in all languages of Soviet peoples. While not an aid to communication, multilingualism, nevertheless, symbolises the spiritual wealth of Soviet society, emerging as an inexhaustible spring of the many-faceted expression of socialist culture.
Speaking about the successes scored by the Soviet federal state, Leonid Brezhnev said: ``In the half-century of the existence of the USSR, a Soviet socialist culture has emerged and flourished in this country, a culture that is identical in spirit and basic content, embodying the most valuable features and traditions of the culture and life of each Soviet nation. At the same time, not a single Soviet national culture draws only on its own resources: it draws also upon the spiritual riches of the other fraternal nations and, in turn, contributes to these cultures and enriches them."^^29^^
Ideologists of nationalism try to cash in on certain processes occurring in the sphere of culture which, at first glance, may be taken to indicate the disappearance of ethnic elements from it. This is especially evident in the sphere of material culture, with fewer and fewer people every year habitually wearing native dress or feeding exclusively on native dishes or living in traditional native dwellings. And hardly anybody today uses none but traditional implements or travels only native fashion. None of it is, however, due to any ``Russification'', but derives from the 182 general features of the development of mankind in the 20th century and is the result of the process of natural history occurring not merely in the USSR but also in most of the countries all over the world and especially intensive in the age of the scientific and technological revolution. It is significant that the material culture of the Russians themselves has altered in recent decades quite as much as the culture, for instance, of the Byelorussians, Kazakhs, Azerbaijanians or Estonians.
This applies even to that sphere of material culture in which levelling started long ago as more factory-made clothing, shoes, implements, etc., became available, replacing home-made articles. The time seemed not far off when only such differences would remain in material culture as are dependent on specific regional climatic and economic features while ethnic differences inside the regions would disappear. Nevertheless, if this must happen, it is not going to happen very soon. In recent decades in the USSR and some other developed countries round the world more interest has been shown in material folk culture, a sort of revulsion from the mdnotony of mass-produced articles. Ethnic features are most tenacious in the diet, interior decoration, and so on. Of no small significance in this respect is the ever expanding production of all sorts of souvenirs symbolising ethnic traditions.
In the sphere of spiritual culture the tendency is towards ever greater convergence, rooted in the common ideology and in the socialist content of culture. At the same time, spiritual culture stays more nationally distinctive than material culture. This is largely due to linguistic reasons, but the subject-matter, which reflects the peculiar features of the history of each people and the local colouring of the works expressed in their style and genre, is also very important in this respect.
The current internationalisation of culture in the USSR will undoubtedly intensify in future. At the basis of this internationalisation, however, is not a levelling of national cultures but their mutual enrichment. The cultural riches of mankind are becoming more and more varied. This variety makes itself evident both on the individual and the regional levels.
National interests are certainly not limited to the sphere of culture. They embrace the entire way of life.
A special place in modern Western Sovietology is assigned to 183 so-called Central Asian studies that misrepresent the role and place of the Central Asian peoples in the system of international relations in multinational Soviet society.
This region has not been picked out at random. It provides the most palpable evidence of the obvious advantages accruing from the socialist path of development and from the consistent solution of the nations question. It demonstrates graphically the economic and cultural progress of the Central Asian peoples who have effected a leap, unexampled in world history, from patriarchal relations to the heights of developed socialism.
Then, there are historically shaped peculiarities in the demographic situation in that part of the Soviet Union. The population is mixed in the extreme; immigration is high; there is a large proportion of Russians, Ukrainians and Byelorussians whose Slavic languages are very unlike Oriental languages; and the patterns of domestic life differ noticeably. All this is widely exploited by Sovietologists as food for all sorts of misconstruction.
Thus, Geoffrey Wheeler's thesis about a conflict of different civilisations in Central Asia, duly updated, is the keynote of the collection of articles on the sociology of ethnic relations in the Soviet Union, contributed by different authors and edited by Prof. Edward Allworth. The chief argument adduced by the adherents of this concept is that Russians and other nationalities allegedly differ in their skill levels in production which breeds rivalry and a competition for jobs and makes Central Asians totally unfit for work, and so on, and so forth.^^30^^ The authors of some articles eclectically combine such assertions and inferences with the acknowledgement of the striking successes scored by the Central Asian peoples in their progress towards civilisation. One instance will suffice.
``There can be little doubt that by Western standards and in a material sense Soviet society has greatly improved the lot of the average Central Asian. Dramatic declines in mortality, increased literacy, increased skilled employment, and increased school and university enrollments for Central Asians have clearlybeen significant accomplishments under the Soviet government."^^31^^
Such acknowledgements are hardly consonant with the conclusions made by these very writers and their colleagues about the 184 general lines along which ethnic relations in Soviet Central Asia are developing at the current stage.
Discussing the history of the national-state demarcation in Central Asia which resulted in the formation of a whole range of national Soviet republics, Sovietologists usually proceed from the assumption that before the revolution the peoples of Turkestan had supposedly formed a single cultural and religious whole. Inferred from religious community they infer a community of material and spiritual culture at large. The argument about the community founded on religion is unconvincing. The Italians and the French, for instance, do not merge into one nation, although their countries have been Catholic for centuries. The false stereotype about the national-political identity of all Moslems of Turkic origin has never ceased to be exploited by the Pan-Turkists and Pan-Islamists. But religion does not determine the character of a nation, and in any case it is the question of those elements and features of social psychology which form stable patterns produced by ethnic communities and passed down the generations as a result of the socialisation of the individual.^^32^^
Among the forty-odd religions and religious sects to be found in the Soviet Union, Islam is second (next to the Russian Orthodox Church) in the number of followers. Moslems reside in the Uzbek, Kazakh, Azerbaijan, Tajik, Kirghiz and Turkmen Union republics, the Tatar, Bashkir, Daghestan, Kabardino-Balkarian, Chechen-Ingush and Kara-Kalpak autonomous republics and in some regions of the RSFSR. Most of them are Sunnites, although Shiites are to be found in the Caucasus, and Ismailites in the Pamirs. The Soviet state guarantees equal rights and freedoms to all citizens, irrespective of their religion, in every area of the economic, political, and cultural life. Soviet Moslems have at their disposal several hundred large and thousands of smaller mosques. Religious communities may rent or buy or construct buildings for worship. Moslem associations do avail themselves of this right. In recent years they opened new mosques in town^s and villages in Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, the Tatar and ChechenIngush autonomous republics, the Karachaev-Circassian Autonomous Region, and other parts of the country. Many mosques have been restored.
Moslem religious organisations exist on voluntary donations 185 from believers. No taxes are levied on their incomes. The state does not intervene in their internal (ecclesiastical and canonical) affairs.
The religious life of the followers of Islam is directed by four departments of public worship. These are in Tashkent, Ufa, Baku and Makhachkala. The departments supervise the training of clergymen, examine the proficiency of Islamic functionaries and teachers, allocate places at mosques, interpret theological texts, convene meetings of the Ulema councils and religious conferences, publish literature, and so on. The Department of the Moslems of Central Asia and Kazakhstan, for instance, put out the Koran five times during the past quarter-century. A magazine, Moslems of the Soviet East, is published. Lunar calendars are issued regularly.
The Moslem organisations functioning in the Soviet Union take an active part in the movement for peace and friendship among peoples. They are in touch with believers in almost eighty countries of the world, annually inviting to the USSR dozens of Moslem delegations and making return visits themselves. They also take part in international Islamic forums and in the activities sponsored by the World Peace Council, the Afro-Asian Solidarity Organisation, and other bodies. While availing themselves broadly of the rights and freedoms granted by the Soviet Constitution, Moslems in the USSR also honestly fulfil their public duties. They work for the benefit of the socialist homeland and guard its borders arms in hand. Many Moslems have been awarded orders and medals of the Soviet Union for their contribution to economic and cultural progress and for their part in strengthening peace. Some of them are religiuos leaders.
The truth about the real situation of the followers of Islam in Soviet society is simple and convincing. This is what A.B.M. Shamsuddoulah, Editor-in-Chief of the magazine Islam in the Modern Age (Bangladesh), had to say about it at the international Moslem symposium at Dushanbe: ``The allegation that Moslems are harassed in the USSR has become habitual in Western propaganda. Regrettably, some people believe these tales. Our visit to this country, and to flourishing Tajikistan in particular, has shown us that Moslems here live well, enjoy all benefits of civilisation and education, and do not suffer from joblessness. The USSR 186 is not a Moslem country, but the government of the Soviet Union has afforded Moslems such rights and opportunities as they have never been afforded in Moslem countries."^^33^^
The cultural development of Soviet society is ever more greatly expressive of the dialectical unity of the national and the international. This unity will be a determining factor in the further development of the multinational culture of Soviet society as it advances towards complete social uniformity. As long as classes exist, national culture was, is, and will be a class culture. All one can say concerning the future is that as class distinctions become obliterated on the road to universal communist culture, there has to be a stage of classless national culture. And the culture of each socialist nation will simultaneously be a component of the common culture of the Soviet people. Should this happen when there are different social systems, this common culture will not be a neutral, supra-class culture. Its partisanship will be expressed in its solidarity with the proletarian and democratic cultures of the non-socialist world, and in the common struggle against the ideology of imperialism and reaction.
Features of culture shared by all Soviet peoples emerge in developed socialist society first of all because in the USSR every opportunity has been provided so that representatives of all people may take part in scientific, technical, and cultural creative endeavour. The emergence of common features in culture is the natural result of the development of single socialist type of culture, the culture of socialist nations, a result of their continuous contact and mutual absorption of the best national traditions. The establishment of the culture of the Soviet nations, that is socialist in content and national in form, is of course not merely a totality of national cultures. It is the highest international unity, previously unknown to any socio-economic formation. Founded on a common ideological basis, socialist culture is more and more a combination of the national and the international. Manifestations of both typify also the essence of the culture of every nation at the current stage of social development. One of the most essential functions of the Soviet socialist federation is precisely that it organises and stimulates an intensive exchange of material and spiritual values, thus exerting an effective influence on the shaping of the future single human culture of communist society.
[187] __NUMERIC_LVL1__ Chapter IX __ALPHA_LVL1__ SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT OF SOVIET NATIONSRelations of friendship and co-operation of all classes and social groups, nations and nationalities, express the very gist of the social sphere of developed socialism. This is the further drawing together of the working class, collective-farm peasantry and intelligentsia; a gradual drawing together of nations and nationalities; and the elimination of differences and obliteration of distinctions between town and country and between physical work and brainwork. The structure of socialist society will continue to develop through the further consolidation of its social unity and its growing homogeneity. The movement of Soviet society towards complete social homogeneity is doubtlessly an objective historical process. It does not, however, follow from this at all that the process itself develops spontaneously. The practice of building socialism in the USSR and other countries amply confirms that this process develops in accordance with a scientifically elaborated programme and is actively influenced by a whole range of measures of a socio-economic, political and ideological kind.
The establishment of national relations of a socialist type has been made possible, above all, by the abolition of class antagonisms, the improvement of the entire pattern of social relations, and by the relations of friendship and co-operation between the classes and social strata. While determined by class relations, national relations do not lose at all their relatively independent quality. Nor should it be ignored that while being dependent on class relations, national relations also develop themselves, revealing new aspects and tangibly influencing, in their turn, the formation of a new historical community of people---the Soviet people. The definitive preconditions of its formation lie of course in the affirmation of the social class structure inherent in 188 developed socialism. But it also implies a system of new, socially mature, national relations. The new historical international community of the Soviet people rests on the solid unity of economic, social, political, intellectual and cultural principles inherent in all Soviet nationalities and ethnic groups.
The Soviet people is a historical community of an international type. Yet its essence is not to be reduced merely to the results of the drawing together of people's ethnic characteristics. The Soviet people is a qualitatively new community, both in the social sense and as an embodiment of new international relations.
There have formed in the USSR certain features shared by the constituent nations and nationalities of the Soviet people, which continue to develop and even spring up anew. These features are a common territory, the unity of economic and political life, of aims and interests, and common intellectual traits embodied in the common commitment to Marxist-Leninist ideology, in Soviet patriotism and socialist internationalism, and in the formation and development of an integral, multinational Soviet culture.
According to Article 19 of the Soviet Constitution, the state helps enhance the social homogeneity of society, namely the elimination of class differences and of essential distinctions between town and country and between mental and physical labour, and the all-round development and drawing together of all the nations and nationalities of the USSR.
The levelling-off of the social structure and the gradual emergence of social homogeneity of peoples is of particular significance to the development of the Soviet people. While it is an independent factor in social development, this process simultaneously has a fundamental effect on the entire system of national relations, intensifying the process of national development and bringing the peoples closer together at a faster rate.
Under the impact of economic, political, and cultural development, the ratio between urban and rural population in Union republics is steadily becoming more even. According to the 1970 census, the lowest proportion of rural population was 35 to 38 per cent for the RSFSR and the Estonian and Latvian republics, while according to the 1959 census the proportion for the same republics was 44 to 48 per cent. The highest proportion of 189 rural population in 1970, 63 to 68 per cent, was in the Moldavian, Uzbek, Kirghiz and Tajik republics. In 1959 this proportion was the highest in the Moldavian and Byelorussian republics, amounting to 78 and 69 per cent respectively.
One significant feature of the national development of the peoples of the USSR at the current stage is a steady growth of the working class in all republics. This growth is particularly rapid in the republics in which the proportion of the industrial workers in the population used to be much lower than in the central parts of the country. From 1924 to 1978, for instance, while the number of workers in the USSR as a whole increased 13.7 times, it increased 33.4 times in the Uzbek SSR, 43.1 times in the Kazakh SSR, and 42.6 times in the Tajik SSR.^^1^^
Remarkable changes have occurred in the ethnic composition of the working class. Not so long ago in many republics aboriginal workers were a comparatively small section, while now the ethnic composition of the working class in these republics corresponds much more to the multinational composition of the population of the USSR as a whole. The proportion of workers of native origin is increasing steadily. From 1939 to 1970, it rose from 15.6 to 65 per cent in Kazakhstan, from 12.2 to 50 per cent in Azerbaijan, from 12.4 to 41 per cent in Georgia, from 7.5 to 41 per cent in Kirghizia, and from 21.5 to 60 per cent in Armenia. During the tenth five-year period this upward tendency became still more marked. Sociological surveys show that in almost all Soviet republics workers of native origin currently account for about half or more of the total indigenous population in any republic.
The number of intellectuals is also increasing in all republics without exception. Some republics which had no engineers or scientists of their own, now boast a large force of engineers, technicians, agronomists, doctors, scientists and other trained specialists in all branches of the economy.
In many of what are known as young nations the formation of the intelligentsia proceeds at such a rate that they sometimes boast a higher proportion of it in the population than the old nations can.
The total number of research workers in the Soviet Union increasing ten times in 1939--1971, it increased 57 times among 190 the Kirghiz, 31 times among the Kazakhs, 26 times among the Turkmens, 28 times among the Uzbeks, and 20 times among the Tajiks. The most important prerequisite in that respect was the rapid growth of secondary and higher education in all republics. It was particularly intensive in the republics previously backward in education and culture. This is demonstrated by the table below.^^2^^
Persons with a Higher or a Secondary Education (complete or otherwise) among Those Engaged in the Economy (per 1,000)
1939 1976 National average 123 767 Uzbek SSR 61 779 Kazakh SSR 99 770 Tajik SSR 45 737 Kirghiz SSR 56 763 Turkmen SSR 78 795In Turkmenistan, specialists with university qualifications are trained in 56 specialities, in Moldavia in 71, and in Kazakhstan in 179. Before the October Revolution there were of course no universities or colleges there at all.
One of the ethnic processes characterising the drawing together of peoples consists in consolidation, whereby small ethnic groups unite with a related people. National consolidation occurred, for instance, in Daghestan, where several small peoples voluntarily merged into one socialist nation. According to the 1926 census, there were 26 vernacular languages and eight languages of other Soviet peoples in use in Daghestan. The figures supplied by the Daghestan ASSR to the USSR Central Executive Committee in 1930 showed that there were 86 tribes in that republic, speaking 36 dialects which fell into eight basic groups. The ethnic composition of Daghestan was not only remarkable for the very large number of small nationalities in it, but also for the fact that none of them came even to a fifth of the total population. Accordingly, twelve small ethnic groups of Western Daghestan, linguistically and culturally related to the much more numerous Avars, consolidated with the latter, forming one nation. This 191 process was facilitated by the fact that Avar had its own system of writing while the languages of the twelve nationalities which have now consolidated with the Avars were purely oral. At present, thirty-odd small nationalities in Daghestan are on the way to consolidating into four or five comparatively large peoples.^^3^^ The numerous ethnic groups of the Georgian origin have consolidated into one nation---the Georgians. A similar process is under way in Tajikistan where small ethnic groups related to the Tajiks are merging with the latter.
Another process developing simultaneously with consolidation is that of assimilation, persons of one nationality absorbing the language, culture, and mode of life of another. This is the case with Mordovians, Karelians, Jews and some other peoples. This process is aided by common work in social production of people of different nationalities, migration, and mixed marriages.^^4^^ E. g., in 1959--1970 in the Soviet Union, that is, within a mere 11 years, marriages were celebrated by 5.5 million persons of different nationalities. Statistics show that the proportion of heterogeneous families increased from 10.2 per cent in 1959 to 13.5 per cent in 1970, amounting to 21 per cent in Latvia, 20.7 per cent in Kazakhstan, and 19.7 per cent in the Ukraine.^^5^^ This upward tendency is a progressive development which indicates the growing confidence and rapprochement among peoples. In 1959 one in ten, in 1970 one in eight, and in 1975 almost one in seven marriages celebrated in the USSR were mixed, the total of mixed marriages amounting to about 8 million.
One essentially new feature of ethnic processes in mature socialist society is that nations do not develop merely through being joined by related ethnic groups, but also as different ethnic groups merge with them.
Owing to the construction of big economic projects, development of new areas and exchange of personnel between republics, migration intensifies and the population of republics and regions becomes mixed. The result is that the natural population growth in every republic is augmented by the influx of newcomers of other nationalities. New towns and large-scale building projects are especially multinational. The Baikal-Amur Railway, for instance, is being constructed by workers of at least eighty nationalities. The Kama Motor-Works and the Orenburg-Western border 192 gas pipeline are constructed by workers of sixty nationalities. The Atommash atomic engineering plant is being constructed by workers of fifty nationalities. Practically every establishment in the country has a multinational force today.
Migration vitally influences social patterns. As the bulk of migrants are workers, it is they who influence the social structure of nations and nationalities, simultaneously influencing their development and drawing together. This can be seen, for instance, from the fact that in 1959--1969 the Central Asian republics and Kazakhstan received 1,200,000 immigrants from other republics. Immigrants from other republics accounted for 45.3 per cent of growth in the working class in Moldavia in 1951--1969.
It was established by the 1970 census that 13.9 million changed their domicile in 1968--1969, 9.7 million of them town dwellers, mainly industrial workers.
Ethnic Composition^^6^^ (census statistics) Thousands of per- %% sons of the population Nationality 1959 1970 1959 1970 Total»population 8,119 11,800 100 100 Uzbeks 5,038 7,725 62.1 65.5 Kara-Kalpaks ; 168 230 2.1 2 Russians 1,092 1,473 13.5 12.5 Tatars i 445 , 574 5.5 ; 4.9 Kazakhs '343 \ 476 4.2 4 Tajiks 311 449 3.8 3.8 Koreans 193 148 1.7 1.3 Ukrainians 88 112 1.1 0.9 Kirghiz 93 111 1.1 0.9 Jews 94 103 1.2 0.9 Turkmens 55 71 0.7 ~ Other nationalities 254 328 3.1 2.7Migration makes for broader international intercourse and peoples' further drawing together. It promotes the exchange of material and spiritual values and mutual assimilation of the best in different national cultures.
People of many different nationalities live and work side by side in every Soviet republic, autonomous region, and big city. The population of the Kazakh SSR, for instance, currently __PRINTERS_P_193_COMMENT__ 13---748 193 ineludes millions of Russians, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, Uzbeks, Byelorussians and others. The Kirghiz population of Kirghizia in 1970 was only 43.8 per cent of the total, although in 1926 it accounted for 66.6 per cent of the total population of that republic. Also in 1970, in the Kazakh SSR the indigenous population accounted for 32.6 per cent (38 per cent in 1926), and in the Tajik SSR it accounted for 56.2 per cent (71.2 per cent in 1926) of the total population.
The international composition of the population of Uzbekistan is illustrated by the table above.
According to the 1970 census, the native population giving its name to the republic accounted for less than 50 per cent of the population in two republics, 50 to 70 per cent in seven republics, and 70 to 88.6 per cent in the rest.
In autonomous republics, ethnic composition present an even more variegated picture. According to the same census, the native population of an Autonomous republic from whom it derives its name accounts for less that 25 per cent of the total population in four, 25 to 50 per cent in nine, 50 to 70 per cent in another four autonomous republics, and for 74.3 per cent of the indigenous population in the Dagestan ASSR. The names of two autonomous republics, Ajar and Nakhichevan, do not reflect the native composition of their population. The population of the Ajar ASSR is 76.5 per cent Georgian, and in the Nakhichevan ASSR, 93.8 per cent of the population are Azerbaijanian. Consequently, the citizens of every republic constitute a multinational body integrally combining national distinctiveness with international, socialist, common Soviet features and traditions.
These changes in the ethnic composition of Union and autonomous republics make for stronger international unity and international community of Soviet citizens, which, in its turn, leads to a more intensive internationalisation of the life of the peoples.
Emergence of social homogeneity vitally depends on Soviet federation which is a major means of dealing with the national question on the basis of the socialist reorganisation of society at large, encompassing various forms of ethnic statehood.
Solution of the national question is a major prerequisite of the success of the efforts of the Party and the state towards making society socially homogeneous.
194In Marxism-Leninism, the national question is defined as a state of national relations chracterised by unequal rights^ and division of nations into privileged and deprived, imperial and oppressed. Society in which the national question remains unsolved usually, to a greater or lesser degree, suffers from discord, hostility and suspicion among various nations and ethnic groups. All these are indications of the unsolved state of the national question, and are rooted in the markedly unequal economic and cultural levels and the significant lag of the unequal and oppressed nations compared with the privileged and dominant ones. To solve the national question is to eliminate the actual inequality of nations and stamp out the vestiges of the old hostility and suspicion, mutual isolation of peoples, and so on.
It is a fundamental proposition of Marxism-Leninism that with the abolition of class antagonisms and of the exploitation of man by man the social roots of national strife and suspicion disappear and conditions arise in which nations begin to flourish and draw together. Nevertheless, under mature socialism, too, national relations are a reality which continually develops and poses fresh problems. Hence, it is always necessary to look for the best ways in which individual nations can develop and their interests be matched with the general interests of the Soviet people as a whole. At the same time, the further drawing together of nations is an objective process that can be neither sped up nor slowed down artificially.
The nature of national relations has radically altered with the building and triumph of socialism in the USSR. The content and scope of internal national relations have changed to a substantial extent. The internal unity of each nation, which is the basis of a new type of national consolidation, of the emergence of a new historical community---the Soviet people, has become stronger. Relations between nations have developed and advanced, and their friendship, co-operation and fraternal assistance have been consolidated. The old economic and cultural inequality of peoples has. been eliminated, and the economic and cultural levels of republics are steadily becoming more even. The process of interrelation and reciprocal influence of the national and the international in every area of the life of society has been intensified.
Soviet federation, which embraces the entire diversity of the __PRINTERS_P_195_COMMENT__ 13* 195 social, economic, cultural and other conditions of the national life of peoples at different levels of development, has proved an exceptionally effective means towards social change and the emergence of a new, socialist type of nations made possible by the establishment of a uniform social structure of Soviet society. It has accelerated the processes of national consolidation, of the growth of national self-awareness and the fulfilment of the intellectual potentialities of nations and nationalities, and provided for their full and free life in the fraternal family of peoples. Soviet federation has been the major means of shaping a new historical community---the Soviet people, continuing to play an essential role in the further development of that social and international community. Soviet federation provides conditions in which it is possible to extend and build up international relations founded on equality, co-operation and mutual assistance.
The new historical community of people---the Soviet people, which has taken shape over the years of building socialism, sums up, in a way, the immense socio-economic changes in the country's life.
Emergence of this historical community is dependent on the objective process of the drawing together of classes, social groups and national communities, and of the enhancement of their social and international unity. Incorporation in the varied system of relationships and relations within the Soviet people does not in any way reduce the social significance of the ethnic distinctive features of every nation and nationality. More than that, it is just because it belongs to an integral system of social-ethnic communities that each nation can enjoy the best opportunities and conditions for its all-round development.
Trying to frighten Soviet peoples with a loss of ethnic individuality, opponents of the socialist system ascribe to the CPSU a policy of national fusion, of forced assimilation.
Not infrequently, bourgeois writers on the national question in the USSR pervert the true meaning of the new historical community, misrepresenting it as the result of ``Russification'' of nonRussian peoples.
In the collection Soviet Nationality Problems, for instance, the figures drawn from a census taken in tsarist Russia in 1897 and two more, taken in the USSR in 1926 and 1959, and the pre 196 preliminary results of the 1970 census are subjected to detailed analysis and the conclusions are made that the Russians tend to disperse throughout all Union republics and other national formations, while the other nationalities tend to settle compactly within their national territories. Analysis of this kind is to be found, for instance, in The Mixing of Russians and Soviet Nationalities by Robert A. Lewis. The general conclusion he arrives at is that of all the nationalities ``only the Russians are mixing. The other groups appear to be concentrating''. Lewis claims that this conclusion is confirmed by the index of unequal distribution, found with the aid of Lorenz curves. Referring to the index, Lew:s says that if in 1897, for the Russians to be distributed absolutely evenly throughout the country, 37 per cent of them would have had to be resettled, in 1959 only 27 per cent of the Russians would have had to be resettled to achieve the same purpose. Russification is defined as ``the process through which a nationality adopts or begins to adopt Russian culture or certain of its aspects''. It is explained that ``a non-Russian who adopts Russian as his native language has, despite the various distinctions that could be made, become Russified''. Lewis notes that ``Russification'' and ``mixing'' are not identical: the presence of Russians in an ethnic area is in itself not enough for Russification to take place. The greater the difference between the native and the Russian languages, the lesser the degree of Russification.^^7^^
One cannot fail to see how illogical the American Sovietologist is in applying the category of ``mixing'', how one-sidedly he interprets this category. How is it that the Russians mix with other nations, and other nations do not mix with the Russians? Mixing is essentially a two-way process. Perhaps the author does not mean mixing but an inclination and readiness to mix? If so, that could hardly give particular reason for objection, except that a more suitable word would be required, to express the willingness of a people not only to migrate but to come in diverse other ways into contact with other peoples. It seems that ``the potential of a nation for drawing together with other nations" would be a happier expression. This term, current in Soviet sociological literature, means a nation's capacity and need for making use of other peoples' material and spiritual values and developing common features with them. It is also the need felt for closer immediate 197 contact, bilingualism and mixed marriages. The potential for drawing together with others is greater among town dwellers and brainworkers, as compared with villagers and manual workers, and increases noticeably in areas of immediate contact.
It appears that the mobility of a nation also depends on the ``drawing-together potential''. The Russians indeed have a higher migratory mobility compared with other nationalities which is due evidently to a range of objective causes. One of them is the special linguistic situation that shaped historically even before the Revolution and that makes it possible for Russians to find themselves in the native linguistic element in any area. This largely explains the demographic picture presented by Lewis on the strength of his sociological computations. (A similar picture, but with an entirely different concept of what it is about, is presented in Soviet sociological literature. M. S. Junussov, for instance, mentions that compared with the rate of urban migration among the Russians in 1968--69, the rates for other peoples were as follows: 0.6 for the Ukrainians, 0.5 for the Byelorussians and Lithuanians; 0.4 for the Latvians, 0.3 for the Kazakhs; 0.2 for the Armenians, Turkmen and Tajiks; and 0.1 for the Uzbeks, Georgians, Azerbaijanians, Moldavians and Kirghiz.^^8^^ The final conclusion reached by Lewis is that ``the impact of Russian mixing poses a basic problem for understanding contemporary Soviet society and the social change which will occur in it during the near and distant future".^^9^^
To be distinguished in Sovietological writings is a whole complex of typical methodological points, such as identifying the Soviet and the Russian, making centralism the absolute in describing the structural-functional features of the Soviet state and imputing to it, without sufficient reason, employment of artificial, essentially coercive, method of joining the nations and nationalities of the USSR into an integral community.
The gist of the interpretation of the Soviet people by contemporary bourgeois sociologists not infrequently is this: this community has allegedly been formed through coercion exercised arbitrarily by Soviet authorities; it is, they say, a mechanical conglomeration of national formations, which must crumble at a sharp turn of history; and it is claimed that everything national is being swallowed up in wholesale Russification. When the 1977 198 Soviet Constitution was discussed in the West, some Sovietologists thought it likely that the article on federalism would cause tensions to rise greatly ``between the Russians as the leading nation of the state" and the non-Russians who are to them ``supporters of decentralisation of the existing system of government.'' The centralist principles in the structure of Soviet federalism, their identification, in this instance as well, with what is Russian, are opposed to all that is national.
The process of formation of the Soviet nation is the affirmation of the international extra-ethnic economic, territorial, political, ideological, mental and cultural integrity. In addition to this, it is a more advanced process compared with national consolidation. Hence, the Soviet nation is not a new Soviet ethnic community but a new international form of social development marking a high level of maturity of the sum of socialist social relations.
In mature socialist society, common characteristics, independent of social and national features, become more and more evident. Development of the Soviet people, its greater unity and its ascent to ever higher levels of social maturity, conclusively show that in the organic unity of the tendencies for the flourishing and drawing together of nations, the latter is the leading one. The principal trend of the drawing together of the peoples of the USSR is determined above all by the steady growth of their social homogeneity, ever closer economic and cultural integration, and the development among them of identical features---- independent of social and ethnic differences---of behaviour, character and world outlook.^^10^^
In tackling the problems involved in the development of ethnic relations, the Party and the state are invariably guided by Lenin's behest that the greatest attention be paid to the development and interests of each nation. At the same time, there is no overlooking the detrimental consequences that follow from inflating and overemphasising national feelings. Under socialism this may derive from what are, by themselves, positive results of social development. Thus, spectacular economic successes or cultural growth may sometimes be a source of national self-conceit. Likewise, the contribution of some one people may be overemphasised or the aid received from other nations and the part played by 199 Emacs-File-stamp: "/home/ysverdlov/leninist.biz/en/1982/SNU207/20070404/207.tx" __EMAIL__ webmaster@leninist.biz __OCR__ ABBYY 6 Professional (2007.04.04) __WHERE_PAGE_NUMBERS__ bottom __FOOTNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [*]+ __ENDNOTE_MARKER_STYLE__ [0-9]+ the mutual assistance be belittled or altogether forgotten, and so on.^^11^^
Regarding the further drawing together of the nations and nationalities of the USSR as an objective process, the Communist Party and the Soviet state categorically object to any attempts at speeding up or slowing down artificially the process of the drawing together of nations, putting obstacles in its way or artificially perpetuating national insularity. They fight any manifestations of nationalist tendencies which are often interlinked with parochialism, and expose any attempts at inflating and encouraging survivals of nationalism.
The problems referring to relations between nations which arise in the course of the building of communism are dealt with by the Party and the Soviet state from consistently internationalist positions, in the context of Leninist nationality policy. This policy proceeds from the conviction that the progress of Soviet nations is to be achieved not only through the fullest possible development of the creative capabilities inherent in each of them, but also through making all-round use of other peoples' assistance and experience.
Already the second Communist Party Programme, adopted in March 1919, mentioned the federal association of states, organised after the Soviet pattern, as a ``transitional form to complete unity" which was to be achieved as the peoples' political unity became stronger and stronger. The theses on the national and the colonial questions, drafted by Lenin for the Second Congress of the Communist International, in 1920, ran: ``Federation is a transitional form to the complete unity of the working people of different nations... In recognising that federation is a transitional form to complete unity, it is necessary to strive for ever closer federal unity."^^12^^
The change to ``complete unity" in this instance did not imply that the federation was meant to exist only for so long, to be eventually replaced by the unitary state, but that social homogeneity of society would be achieved (``the complete unity of the working people of different nations'').^^13^^
Applying a variety of methods, the union of Soviet republics effectively influences complex social processes which comprise the very essence of society's progress towards ever greater social unity 200 and homogeneity. In this light, there is no disputing the conclusion that just such a state must exist throughout the historical period of the development and improvement of national relations of the Soviet peoples as an internationalist community.
``Persuasive facts show,'' says the CPSU Central Committee resolution on the 60th anniversary of the formation of the single federative multinational Soviet state, ``that the USSR is a dynamic and effective state association of Soviet nations and ethnic groups designed for the whole historical period of the gradual devel6pment of socialist statehood into communist public selfadministration.''
Thus, it may be stated (1) that the history of the Soviet federation has borne out the profound meaning of Lenin's definition of it as ``transitional'' to the complete unity of the working people of different nations. The federation will have carried out its functions and lost its significance as a political form when the complete social homogeneity of society has been achieved; and (2) that this definition embodies the profound idea of the development and improvement of the Soviet federation itself in the direction of achieving ever greater unity of its constituent republics. The process of the strengthening and development of the integral, federal, multinational state has for its objective basis the steadily growing social homogeneity of the socialist society.
National unity, founded on the solution of the national question and characterised by relations of close cohesion, friendship and co-operation, is achieved already in socialist society. Clearly, the conception of complete national unity presupposes a higher stage of development of national relations at which the prevailing tendency will not be the drawing together but fusion of nations and nationalities. Furthermore, complete national unity can be achieved by means of a socialist federation even while it exists. Evidently, the possibilities of federation will be used up, and it will be needed no longer, just as the first phase of the communist formation is over.
[201] __ALPHA_LVL1__ Notes and ReferencesChapter I
1. Kitano H. H. L., Race Relations, Prentice-Hall, Inc., New Jersey, 1974, p. XV.
2. Albertini M., ``L'idee denations'', in: L'idee de nation, Press Universitaires de France, Paris, 1969, p. 11.
3. Ibid., p. 11.
4. Ibidem.
5. Polin R., ``L'existence des nations'', in: L'idee de nation, pp. 37--38.
6. Isaacs H. R., ``Nationality: 'End of the Road?' '', in: Foreign Affairs, Vol. 53, No. 3, April 1975, p. 434.
7. Ibid., p. 445.
8. Laslett P., ``The Idea of the Nation'', in: L'idee de nation, p. 17.
9. Ibid., pp. 20, 21.
10. Albertini M., Op. cit., p. 13.
11. Ethnicity Theory and Experience, ed. by N. Glazer and D. P. Moynihan, Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1975, p. 56.
12. Connor W., ``Politics of Ethnonationalism'', in: Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 27, No. 1, 1973, pp. 2-3.
13. CoeercKuu Coto3 u coepejueHHuu Mtip, «Mnp H coitHajiH3M». Hpara, 1972, crp. 46.
14. Ethnicity..., p. 169.
15. Ibid., p. 169.
16. Ibid., p. 106.
17. ,H,5KyHycoB M. C., O6w,ecT8eHHbtii npoapecc u HaifuoHOAbHbie OTHOtuenua, Ajima-Ara, 1967, crp. 40--41.
18. Ibid., p. 43.
19. Ethnicity. . ., p. 15.
20. Ibid., pp. 173, 174.
21. Isaacs H. R., Idols of the Tribe Group Identity and PoliticalChange, Harper and Row Publishers, N. Y., Evanston, San Francisco, London, 1975, p. 23.
22. Abramson H. J., ``On Sociology of Ethnicity and Social Change: A Model of Rootedness and Rooflessness'', in: Econ. and Soc. Rev., Dublin, Vol. 8, No. 1, 1976, pp. 43--59.
23. Ethnicity. . ., p. 168.
24. Rakowska-Harmstone T., Russia and Nationalism in Central Asia. The George Washington University. The Jons Hopkins Press, Baltimore and London, 1970; Soviet Nationality Problems, ed. by E. Allworth, Columbia University Press, N. Y., London, 1971; The Nationality Question in Soviet Central Asia, ed. by E. Allworth, Praeger Publishers, N. Y., Wash., Lnd., 1973.
20225. King R. R., Minorities Under Communism. Nationalities as a Source of Tension Among Balkan Communist States, Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1973, p. 16.
26. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, ``Manifesto of the Communist Party'', in: Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 6, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1976, p. 503.
27. King R. R., Op. cit., p. 251.
28. Lenin V. I., ``Interview Given to Michael Farbman, Observer and Manchester Guardian Correspondent'', Collected Works, Vol. 33, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1973, p. 386.
29. Lenin V. I., ``Critical Remarks on the National Question'', Collected Works, Vol. 20, 1977, p. 27.
30. Lenin V. I., ``On the Declaration by the Polish Social-Democrats at the Zimmerwald Conference'', Collected Works, Vol. 41, 1977, pp. 380--81.
31. Lenin V. I., ``The Question of Nationalities or 'Autonomisation' '', Collected Works, Vol. 36, 1966, p. 607.
32. JIHTBHHOB M. M., B 6opb6e 3a Mup, M., 1938, crp. 93.
33. BHBIUHHH noAU.ru.Ka CoeercKoao Coiosa e nepuod HOti eouHbi, M., 1946, T. 1, cip, 146.
Chapter II
1. Frederick Engels, ``The Movements of 1847'', in: Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 6, p. 524.
2. Frederick Engels, ``The Civil War in Switzerland'', in: Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 6, p. 372.
3. Frederick Engels, ``Political Position of the Swiss Republic'', in: Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Collected Works, Vol. 12, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1979, pp. 91--92.
4. "Marx to Ludwig Kugelmann in Hanover, November 29, 1869'', in: Marx, Engels, Selected Correspondence, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1975, p. 216.
5. Ibid., p. 216.
6. The General Council of the First International 1868--1870. Minutes, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1974, p. 360.
7. Lenin V. I., ``The State and Revolution'', Collected Works, Vol. 25, 1977, p. 434.
8. Lenin V. I., ``The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination'', Collected Works, Vol. 22, 1964, p. 146.
9. MHCTHKOB O. H., «PCOCP H CTPOHTCJIBCTBO rocyaapCTBeHHOCTH HapoflOB CoBercKOH crpanbi (1917---1922)», B: Bonpocu ucropuu KUCC, 1972, M 11, cip. 8.
10. Lenin V. I., ``Mandate to Deputies of the Soviet Elected at Factories and Regiments'', Collected Works, Vol. 24, 1974, p. 355.
11. Lenin V. I., ``First All-Russia Congress of Soviets of Workers' and
203Soldiers' Deputies, June 3-24 (June 16-July 7), 1917'', Collected Works, Vol. 25, p. 37.
12. Lenin V. I., ``Eighth Congress of the R.C.P.(B.), March 18--23, 1919'', Collected Works, Vol. 29, 1977, p. 172.
13. KflCC a pe3OJitou,unx u peiuenunx ctesdoe, KonfyepeHu^uu u IIACnyMoe U,K, x. 2, 1953, crp. 251.
14. XII cTiesd POCCUUCKOU KoMMymiCTmecKoii napruu ( OoAbtueeuKOB), 17--25 anpeAx 1923 z. BtojuiereHu, M., 1923, cxp. 36.
15. JleneiiiKHH A. H., CoeercKuti. $edepaAU3M, M., 1976, crp. 172.
16. Carrere D'Encausse H., L'Empire eclate. La revolts des nations en U.R.S.S., Flammarion, Paris, 1978, pp. 17--18.
Chapter III
1. Lenin V. I., ``The Right of Nations to Self-Determination'', Collected Works, Vol. 20, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1977, p. 397.
2. For more detail see: JleH.UH.U3M u Ha^uoHaAbHblU eonpoc e COBpeMBHHbix ycAoeunx, M., 1972, cxp. 268--69, 272.
3. Lenin V. I., ``A Letter to S. G. Shahumyan, December 6, 1913'', Collected Works, Vol. 19, 1973, p. 500.
4. Lenin V. I., ``The Right of Nations to Self-Determination'', Collected Works, Vol. 20, p. 441.
5. Lenin V. I., ``On the Manifesto of the Armenian Social-- Democrats'', Collected Works, Vol. 6, 1964, pp. 328, 329.
6. CM.: McropUH CoeercKOu KoncTUTyuluu (e doKyMenrax). 1917--1956, M., 1957, crp. 106.
7. O6pa3oganue u paseurue Coiosa COBBTCKUX CoifuaAucTuiecKux Pecny6AUK (e doK.yM.emax.) , M., 1973, cxp. 90.
8. MseecTUH B11.MK, Ws 56 OT 24(11) Mapxa 1918 r.
9. )Ku3Hb HaifuOHdAbHOCTeu, N° 6 OT 15 <}>eBpajiH 1920 r.
10. CoeercKoe zocydapcieo u npaeo, 1969, N° 2, cxp. 20.
11. KHCC e pe3OAK)i{unx u peiuenunx..., T. 1, 1953, cxp. 559.
12. Ibid., cxp. 712.
13. XaKHMOB M. X., Paseurue HamioHa.Abn.ou COBBTCKOU zocydapcreeHHocru e ysdeKucraHe, TaiiiKeHt, 1965, cxp. 41--75.
14. LJTAOP CGCP, (}). 1318, on. 1, A. 1001, Ji. 1.
15. Cy PC#CP, 1926, N° 73, ex. 575.
16. CV PCOGP, 1931, JMs 8, ex. 98.
Chapter IV
1. CBBHXO P., CoeercKUii Corns e tfenrpe Mupoeoti noAimiKU, M., 1961, cxp. 141.
2. Lenin V. I., ``Speech at the First All-Russia Congress of the Navy, 204 November 22 (December 5), 1917'', Collected Works, Vol. 26, 1977, p. 344.
3. Lenin V. I., ``A Caricature of Marxism and Imperialist Economism'', Collected Works, Vol. 23, 1974, p. 68.
4. Cy PCOCP, 1919, NO 21, ex. 264.
5. The Slavonic and East European Review, 1970, No. 112, pp. 406--420.
6. PBBHM H. A., BouHa 6ea (ppoma, M., 1968, cxp. 237--42.
7. Cy PC*CP, 1919, ex. 264.
8. O6pa3oeanue u paseuTue Coiosa COBBTCKUX PecnydAUK (e doKymemax), cxp. 100--01.
9. flupeKTuebt KUCC u CoeercKozo npaeuTeAbcrea no HbiM eonpocam, x. 1, M., 1957, cxp. 203.
10. Cy PCOCP, N° 40, ex. 468.
11. Cy PC$CP, 1921, N° 18, ex. 113.
12. Cy PCOCP, 1921, N° 69, CT. 547; 1922, N° 1, ex. 14; N° 30, ex. 363.
13. Cy PC<DCP, 1922, Ns 4, ex. 43.
14. Cy PCtCP, 1922, JVs 41, ex. 481; Ns 75, ex. 936.
15. Cy PC*CP, 1922, N° 64, ex. 835.
16. The All-Ukraine Revolutionary Committee, for instance, passed a decision on January 27, 1920 to make all decrees promulgated on similar questions in the Russian Federation effective throughout the republic. (See: Upaeda, 31 HHBapa 1920.) In the same way, all laws of the Russian Federation were made valid in the Armenian SSR---with amendments and alterations introduced by the Armenian Revolutionary Committee and other competent bodies. (See: O. H. HHCXHKOB, BaauMOOTHOiuenuH coeercKux pecnydAUK do 06 pa3oeaH.ua. CCCP, M., 1955, cxp. 101.)
17. McTOpuH CoeercKOu KoHCTUTyyuu (e doK.yM.emax.), cxp. 315--16.
18. HonyMeHTbi eneuiHeu. noAUTUKu CCCP, x. V, SOK. 66, cxp. III.
19. See: Lenin V. I., ``To the Comrades Communists of Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia, Daghestan, and the Mountaineer Republic'', Collected Works, Vol. 32, 1975, pp. 316--18.
20. Three main periods can be distinguished in the development of the Transcaucasian Federation. The first began in May 1921 when agreements were concluded between republics to unite certain branches of the economy. This, essentially, was a federative period. The second began in March 1922 when a federative union of Soviet socialist republics was actually formed in the Transcaucasus. In that period the goals of the federation were finally determined and its patterns took a more or less definite shape. The third period is associated with the 1st Transcaucasian Congress of Soviets which was convened in December 1922 and transformed the federative union of republics into a Transcaucasian Federation. (See: flapKocaflse B. B., «HcxopnqecKaa pojifa SaKaBKaacKoft HHH», B: Bonpocbi ucTOpuu, 1968, N° 7.)
205Chapter V
1. Pipes R., The Formation of the Soviet Union. Communism and Nationalism 1917--1923. Harvard Univ. Press, N. Y., pp. 126. 196, 192.
2. Carrere D'Encausse H., Op. cit., pp. 17--21.
3. McropuR CoeercKozo eocydapcrea u npaea. KnHra BTopan, M., 1968, crp. 109.
4. See Lenin V. I., ``On the Establishment of the U.S.S.R. Letter to L. B. Kamenev for Members of the Politbureau'', Collected Works, Vol. 42, 1971, pp. 421--22.
5. HKy6oBCKaH C. M., CrpotiTeAbCTeo COIOSHOZO COBSTCKOZO cotfua.lucrunecKoeo eocydapcrea, M., 1960, crp. 150.
6. McTopun CoeercKozo eocydapcrea u npaea. KHnra Bropasi, crp. 113.
7. See Lenin V. I., ``The Question of Nationalities or ' Autonomisation' '', Collected Works, Vol. 36, 1966, pp. 605--11.
8. Ibid., p. 609.
9. Ibid., pp. 609--11
10. KoMMynucTunecKan naprux---edoxnoeuTeM u opeanusarop o6i>eduHUTeAbHozo deuxcenun yicpauHCKOeo napoda aa o6pa3 oeaHUB CCCP, C6opHHK flOKyMeHTOB H MaTepHaJioB, Knes, 1962, crp. 269--70.
11. XaKHMOB LU. X., «PasBHTHe coseTCKoft HauHonajibHoft rocyaapcTB6HHOCTH B y36eKHCT3He», B: FlpaeoBedeHue, 1975, Ns 2, crp. 42.
12. Carrere D'Encausse H., Op. cit., p. 25.
Chapter VI
1. Carr E., Dispersal and Reunion. History of Soviet Russia, Vol. 1, Penguin Books, Lnd., 1969, p. 411.
2. Carrere D'Encausse H., ``La Constitution de 1977: Continuite et changement'', in: Problemes Politiqu.es et Sociaux, 23 Dec. 1977, N 326, p. 35--36.
3. Gerald P., ``La Constitution d'octobre 1977'', in: Problemes Politigues et Sociaux, 23 Dec. 1977, N 326, p. 36.
4. Thalheim K. C., ``Die Wirtschaft in der neuen Verfassung der UdSSR'', in: Osteuropa, 28 Jg., Jan. 1978, Deutsche Verlags-- Anstalt, Stuttgart, S. 19.
5. Kashtan W., ``50th Anniversary of the Founding of the USSR'', in: Communist Viewpoint, 1972, Vol. 4, No. 5, p. 2.
6. Brezhnev L. I., Our Course: Peace and Socialism, Novosti Press Agency Publishing House, Moscow, 1978, p. 71.
7. Lenin V. I., ``Original Version of the Article 'The Immediate Tasks of the Soviet Government' '', Collected Works, Vol. 27, 1965, p. 208.
206Chapter VII
1. Cou,ua.Mi3M u deMOKparua, M., 1976, crp. 156--157.
2. Hapodnoe xosxucreo CCCP e 1972 z. CraTucTuiecKuu eotceeodHUK, M., 1973, crp. 48--49.
3. Lewytzkyi B., ``Die Sowjetische Nationalitaten Politik'', in: Politische Studien, 1976, Jg. 27, N 230, S. 607--13.
4. KoMMynuCT, 1967, Ns 2, crp. 22.
5. Hpaeda, 5.XII.1975 r.
6. Rakowska-Harmstone T., Op. cit., p. 54.
7. TypneCaeB 3. A., Hod^eM BKOHOMUKU u paci^eeT Kyjibrypu KasaxcTana, Ajima-Ara, 1980, cxp. 7.
8. BOCC A., «B 6AHHOM HapOAHOXOSflfiCTBeHHOM KOMnJI6KCe», B:
KoMMynucr, 1978, Ns 14, crp. 63.
Chapter VIII
1. Brezhnev L. I., Following Lenin's Course, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1975, pp. 62--63.
2. UoAUTUHecKoe caM,oo6pa3oeanue, 1967, N» 9, cxp. 40.
3. Upaeda, 3 asrycra 1970 r.
4. IloMiTUHeCKOe caMoodpasoeanue, 1967, Ns 9, crp. 43.
5. Vcy6ajiHeB T. y., «JIeHHHCKaH TeopHH HeKanHTajiHCTimecKoro pa3BHTHfl», B: Bonpocbi ipuAococpuu, 1980, Ns 4, crp. 38.
6. Ibidem.
1. KupauacTUH 30. eodbt CoeercKou. BJIUCTU. K)6uAeuHbiu c6opnuK, <t>pyH3e, 1977, crp. 12.
8. ycy6ajiH6B T. y., y/caa. COH., crp. 42.
9. CajiHMOB X., Hacejienue Cpedned Asuu, TaiiiKeHT, 1975, cxp. 141.
10. MTOZU BcecoiO3Hoij. nepenucu HaceAemia 1970 a., M., 1973, crp. 393--404.
11. Hapodnoe xosudcreo CCCP 3a 60 ABT, M., 1977, crp. 591.
12. Acpanacbes B. T. HayiHO-TexHUHecK.au peeoAtoyux, ynpaejienue, odpasoeaHue, M., 1972, crp. 385.
13. nerpoB B. T., Teopiecicoe coTpydnunecTeo napodoe CCCP, M., 1979, crp. 43.
14. Ibid., ctp. 47.
15. Ibid., crp. 50.
16. Ibid., crp. 53.
17. Ibid., crp. 72.
18. 3H6apea B. A., CoeercKoe crpouieJibCTeo y MUMIX napodoe Ceeepa, KpacHonpCK, 1965, cip. 308.
19. Hacejienue CCCP, M., 1980, cxp. 23.
20. Ibid., cxp. 27.
21. OnuT u npodjieMbi UHTepnai^uoHajibHoeo u areucTutecKoeo eocnuTanuH, M., 1976, cxp. 81.
22. KoMMynusM u KyAbrypa, M., 1966, cip. 350.
20723. SaKOHOMepHOCTu paseurua Ameparypntiix nsbiKoe Hapodoe CCCP e coeercKyio snoxy. HpaHCKutiuKaeKaacKuu HSUKU, M., 1969, ctp. 34.
24. Karl Marx, Capital, Vol. I, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1974, p. 20.
25. JIuTeparypa u wusHb, MaxaqKaJia, 1963, cxp. 18--19.
26. npaeda, 17 anpe-nn 1971 r.
27. Lenin V. I., ``Materials Relating to the Revision of the Party Programme'', Collected Works, Vol. 24, 1974, pp. 462, 472.
28. Lenin V. I., ``Is a Compulsory Official Language Needed?'', Collected Works, Vol. 20, 1977, p. 72.
29. Brezhnev L. I., Following Lenin's Course, p. 72.
30. The Nationality Question in Soviet Central Asia, ed. by E. Allworth Praeger Publishers, N. Y., Wash., Lnd., pp. 35, 40, 43, 97, 117.
31. Ibid., p. 40.
32. MexdyHapodnaH ycusHb, 1972, N° 5, ctp. 97.
33. Upaeda, 14 HKWIH 1980 r.
Chapter IX
1. KoMuynucT, 1980, N° 1, cxp. 62.
2. Hapodaoe o6pa3oeaHue, nayna u KyAbrypa e CCCP, M., 1977, crp. 15--16. Hapodnoe xosnucreo CCCP sa 60 ABT, M., 1977, cip. 57--58.
3. CoeercKoe zocydapcreo u npaeo, 1972, N° 11, c?p. 15.
4. Z/Cy CCCP. Hroau ececoio3Hou nepenucu nacejienua, 1970 r., crp. 4-5.
5. BcecoiosHUH nepenuct HaceAenun 1970 eoda. C6opnHK crareft M, 1976, ctp. 275.
6. Hapodnoe xo3nticT8o yadencKou CCP 30. 60 Jier CoeercKOu ejiacru, TamKCHT, 1977, crp. 9.
7. Lewis R., ``The Mixing of Russians and Soviet Nationalities'', in: Soviet Nationality Problems, ed. by E. Allworth, Columbia Univ. Press, N. V.-Lnd., 1971, pp. 152, 155--56.
8. Coi^uojtoeuHecKue uccjiedoeaHiin, 1976, N2 4, crp. 50.
9. Lewis R., Op. cit., p. 155.
10. HayKa Comsa CCP, 1972, crp. 72.
11. CM.: BarpaMOB 3., «HauHOHajibHbie OTHOtiieHHH H 6opb6a Hfleft», B: npaeda, 26 HKWIH 1979 r.
12. Lenin V. I., ``Preliminary Draft Theses on the National and the Colonial Questions'', Collected Works, Vol. 31, 1974, pp. 146, 147.
13. Bropoti. Kompecc KoMMyHucruiecKOio Hmepnau,uoHajia, M., 1934, cTp. 492.
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