Stalinism, the national
question and
separatism in the
USSR
THE STALINIST system has for half a century been politically oppressing the nations of the USSR, and the current policy of the Gorbachev leadership shows no sign of providing a lasting solution to the Soviet national question. A socialist outcome of the present crisis within the USSR depends upon whether the Russian left is capable of adopting and fighting victoriously for a democratic answer to the aspirations of the non-Russian nations of the Soviet Union. Marxism, internationalism and state boundaries Since 1917, Marxists have called for, and worked for, the defence of the Soviet Union against imperialism. But this never for one moment entailed a commitment to the existing boundaries of the Soviet state or a commitment to the territorial integrity of the USSR. To imagine that there was something sacred about those boundaries would be a gross militarist-bureaucratic deviation from Marxism. If in place of the USSR there were, say, 16 or more independent proletarian states with varying taxation, legal and military apparatuses, the result would be a quantitative decline in the militarybureaucratic strength of those societies by comparison with a single Soviet
78 International Marxist Review Union. But so what? This, in itself would be a trivial matter in comparison with the basic question of power: the strength of political solidarity between the working people of these nations.
Similarly, socialists work for the international economic integration of the workers' states, creating the most developed possible international division of labour among them. The existence of a dozen or more separate Soviet states in place of the USSR would quantitatively weaken the trend towards international economic integration. But so what? If the result of the separation into separate states was the laying down of the basis for a stronger political unity between the nations of the region the advance towards socialism and greater economic strength would be enormous.
Thus the Marxist criterion for tackling problems of relations between nationalities is always a political one as against either a military-bureaucratic or economic yardstick: what policy will strengthen the political unity of the international working class? And the answer to this question is always a democratic one: all the nations concerned must have the right to decide for themselves whether they wish to remain part of a multi-national state or whether they wish to establish some confederal intermediate solution. Marxists and the slogan for national independence This fundamental principle of 20th century Marxism is not, however, the end of the matter. Marxists are far from being always agnostic on the question of state boundaries. In many of the greatest class struggles of the 20th century Marxists have actively fought for the separation of a nation from its existing state order, most notably in the great colonial revolutions against imperialism. In such circumstances, Marxists have fought for national independence, national liberation from the colonial oppressor. We have entered that fight not because we worship the so-called national independence of, say, India or Algeria, but because our historical experience teaches us that this aspiration for independence must be the popular will of the nation: the people had been suffering national oppression and exploitation at the hands of the colonial power and any progress towards self-emancipation lay through national independence.
An example of a Marxist struggle to alter the state boundaries of the USSR arose at the end of the 1930s in the case of Ukraine. At that time, Ukraine was divided with the Western half of the country suffering terrible national oppression at the hands of the Polish satate while the Eastern Ukraine was bleeding under the barbaric consequences of forced collectivization. The
Stalinism, the national question and separatism in the USSR 79 Ukrainian people's national aspirations could not remotely be satisfied by an effort to integrate the Western Ukraine into the USSR. Only through the struggle for the creation of an independent Ukrainian state could Marxists offer any way forward for the self-emancipation of Ukrainian workers and peasants.
In this case, as in all others where Marxists struggle for national independence, they are doing so not because independent states are in themselves absolute values of any sort. They do so because historical experience teaches us that this must be the necessary will of the working people. Thus in the case of Ukraine, Trotsky sought in the 1930s to study the thinking of the Ukrainian people in order to elaborate a Ukrainian programme. He regarded it as very significant that the Communist Party of the Western Ukraine, which had been strong among the peasantry of Western Ukraine in the 1920s, had been displaced by petty bourgeois nationalist currents in the 1930s: a sign that the Western Ukrainian masses entirely repudiated any annexation by the USSR: a sign amply born out by the course of the struggle in Ukraine during the Second World War. And the consequences of the brutal annexation by Stalin of Western Ukraine were a massive weakening of the defences of the Soviet state in the struggle against Nazism.
We have an analogous experience in Afghanistan in the 1980s. Marxists did not respond a priori to the Soviet military intervention in AFghanistan: we sought to draw on our historical experience and on our study of the thinking of the Afghan people in developing our political position on the Soviet invasion. We saw the great popular demonstrations in all the main cities of Afghanistan agains tthe Soviet invasion, and we drew on our experience of previous occasions when invasions have toppled popular goverments in order to come to the conclusion that we must call for the unconditional withdrawai of Soviet troops from that country. Similarly, a study of the tragic events in Kosovo in Yugoslavia today demonstrates that the Serbian Communist Party is pursuing a policy of national oppression of the Albanian population there and that the Albanian people, united in resisting this policy, are being offered no solution to their oppression within the framework of the Yugoslav state. In these circumstances, Marxists may consider it is necessary to go beyond a fight for the self-determination of the Kosovar population and to fight for their secession from Yugoslavia. Russian colonialism or Stalinist oppression? There is not the slightest doubt that the non-Russian nationalities of the
80 International Marxist Review USSR have been politically oppressed and brutally denied their national political rights for 50 years under the Stalnist regime. The impact of this denial of national political rights on the various non-Russian nationalities is no doubt highly differentiated. There is, for example, a qualitative difference between the experience of the Crimean Tartars and the experience of the Georgians. But what is crucial for our understanidng of the national question in the USSR is to appreciate how the suppression of elementary democratic liberties necessarily involves national oppression in a multinational state. A Russian worker in Sverdlovsk has suffered from exactly the same bureaucratic oppressor and from exactly the same controls and restrictions as a Ukrainian worker in Lvov. But the meaning of their oppression is not the same, precisely because the centre of the repression lies in Moscow, the histori capital of Russia. The democratic rights of the Ukrainian worker involve him or her in being able to link up with all fellow Ukrainians and being able to flout whatever is decided by whatever type of regime exists in Moscow. The democratic rights of the Sverdlovsk worker do not at all include the right to flout whatever would be decided by a democratic, socialist regime in Moscow. And this is no matter of academic hairsplitting: it is a fundamental and obvious truth for a worker in the Western Ukraine. State boundaries are in themselves trivial issues for Marxists. But 20th century experience teaches us that national identities are anything but trivial matters. Any (for example, Luxemburgist) tendency to gloss over this issue in the USSR today and thus to ignore the principle of national self-determination will have catastrophic consequences.
And when the workers from a non-Russian nationality know, as those of the Baltic republics or Moldavia for example know, that their nation was forcibly and brutally annexed to the USSR, then their consciousness of national oppression must be enormously strengthened: they know that Moscow's oppressive rule has no shred of democratic historical legitimacy. Thus existence of national political oppression has been a reality quite independently of the cultural policies pursued by the Stalinist bureaucracy. But the drive for Russification on the part of the Soviet leadership has enormously intensified the consciousness of national oppression and humiliation on the part of many of the non-Russian nationalities. These realities of Stalinism in the USSR have led some on the left to characterize Stalinism as a regime of Russian colonialism. If that was the nature of Stalinism then our experience would lead us towards one conclusion: there is no possibility of the non-Russian nationalities of the USSR re-uniting with the Russian nation in fraternal solidarity until these nationalities have estab-
Stalinism, the national question and separatism in the USSR 81 lished their own independent states. And we should not flinch from calling for a struggle for national liberation in Ukraine as we have done in Algeria or Angola or India in relation to Western imperialism.
There is no doubt that Great Russian chauvinism has always existed within the CPSU and with the growing crisis of Stalinism in the late Brezhnev period such Russian chauvinist currents have grown more powerful. But it cannot be said that the policy of the Stalinist leadership has been one of exploiting the non-Russian republics in order to materially benefit the Russian masses and thereby bind the Russian masses to itself as a privileged nation. Stalinism has been an international phenomenon within the USSR and Eastern Europe, despite the fact that the Russian component of the Stalinist bureaucracy has been quantatively larger than any other national component. There is no basis whatever for the idea that Ukrainian Stalinism is any more simply the colonial administration of a Russian master than, for example, Romanian Stalinism.
And if this is the case, one very important consequence follows: the bureaucratic leaderships in the various non-Russian republics will not by any means necessarily wage a fight on behalf of alleged Russian masters: rather they will fight to maintain control of their own local apparatus against the sovereign democratic will of their peoples and may themselves seek to lead nationalist struggles against Moscow's control. In short, the nationalist banner — a characteristic banner of Stalinist leaderships beyond the borders of the USSR — may well be seized upon by the Stalinist bureaucracies of the non-Russian nationalities as a means of maintaining their bureaucratic stranglehold on the working people of their nation. And the consequence of such demagogy would be to enormously strenghten the position of the Great Russian chauvinist current within Russia itselt. Gorbachevite policy and a Marxist internationalist policy in the USSR today
The logic of Stalinism in the USSR today is precisely one which could transform a movement for socialist renewal into a vicious, bloody, internecine struggle between the various national components of the Soviet bureaucracy and Soviet nationalities. But this logic is by no means obvious to the observer of immediate events. Furthermore, the Russian left still has an historic opportunity to impose an alternative, emancipatory logic on the course of events.
The March election results and other available data on Soviet public opin-
ion demonstrate a number of strong currents of political thought among the a) there is a tremendously powerful demand for national sovereignty in the Baltic Republics, and a similarly powerful trend in Western Ukraine and
Moldavia and in the Transcaucasian republics. What is important is not the present quantitative intensity of this trend, but the fact that the non-Russian nations are overwhelmingly asserting their right to self-determination. And this means their right to decide for themselves whether or not they wish to b) in the main cities of Russia, the election results showed no strong impulse to rally around the Russian nationalist right in defence of some supposed anti-colonial threat from the non-Russian nationalities. On the contrary, the populations of Moscow, Leningrad and other main Russian cities showed in the elections that they are running parallel to the non-Russian nations in seeking their own democratic self-determination against the c) opinion surveys amongst the Russians show the Communist Party with roughly 40% support, Green and Social Democratic trends following, d) in parts of the Baltic Republics there is a serious political split along ethnic lines between Russians and the indigenous historic nations.
e) the overall message of the election results across the entire country is that the politically aware sections of the population are demanding radical, thoroughgoing democratic liberties and this means unfettered political pluralism. This demand is as strong among the Russians of the major cities as
This rough set of indicators points towards one central conclusion: there is the subjective basis at the present time for a genuine political alliance between the Russian socialist democratic left, symbolized by the popular base of Yeltsin and the progressive democratic trend which is the main current in the non-Russian nations, at least in the Western part of the USSR (1 exclude because of my own ignorance, consideration of the trends of political opinion in the Caucasus). But for this alliance to be established the Russian
1) The unequivocal right of-the non-Russian nationalities to decide
2) The right of all the peoples in the USSR including above all, of course, the Russians to complete freedom of political organisation, of the press and
82 International Marxist Review
Soviet pople:
secede from the USSR.
bureaucracy.
among the non-Russian nationalities.
whether or not they wish to secede from the USSR;
so on.
and the Nationalist Right with insignificant support.
left must proclaim and fight for the following platform:
Stalinism, the national question and separatism in the USSR 83
3) The end to bureaucratic privilege and an economic system under effective democratic control.
On the basis of such a programme, socialists in the non-Russian nations should campaign for the maintenance of the unity of the USSR. But the defeat of such a programme on an all-union level should not hold back its implementation in any national republic and the defence of that republic against any attempt by the Russian wing of the bureaucracy to crush such a democratic republic.
An alliance of the Russian and non-Russian left throughout the USSR on such a programme will unify the working people of the USSR on a firm path towards socialist renewal and will ensure maximum political support for any Soviet nation implementing such a programme on its own.
What will not unite the working people of the USSR will be two other programmes currently surfacing in Soviet politics: those of the Gorbachev leadership and those of some independentist currents in the non-Russian Republics:
a) unilateral independentists demanding secession now from the USSR advance a programme that will not be understood and will offer nothing to the Russian people. The Russian people will understand a genuine socialist democratic republic rejecting all measures directed at it by the Soviet military-bureaucratic machine, but will not understand nationalists with no social programme making a fight to separate before everything from the USSR. And without that support within the Russian people, they will at best have to throw themselves upon the NATO powers in the hope of defence (very likely a vain hope).
b) the Gorbachev leadership is trying to preserve the strength of the Communist Party leaderships in the non-Russian republics through a combination of nationalist rhetoric, petty but infuriating repression and a desperate effort to prevent genuine democratic pluralism. This formula of bureaucratic manoeuvre might possibly work in conditions where the Soviet economy was booming and peoples social grievances were not burning. But in the real, existing Soviet Union it is a formula for fostering national antagonisms as a diversion from anti-bureaucratic democratic and social struggle. Its logic is to drive the USSR down the road of a reactionary, nationalist antagonism between the Russian people and the non-Russian natoins of the USSR, with terrible consequences for the people of the Soviet Union, not to speak of world socialism.
The emergence of revolutionary Christianity and liberation theology in
Latin America opens a new chapter and poses exciting new questions which cannot be answered without a renewal of the Marxist analysis of religion.
Michael Löwy begins the process in this notebook which reviews traditional and recent Marxist views on the subject and focuses on the experiences of
Brazil, Nicaragua and El Salvador. Appendix by Frei Betto.
N°1 - The Place of Marxism in History, by Ernest Mandel. 20FF, £2, $3.50.
N°2 & 3 - The Chinese Revolution, by Pierre Rousser. Respectively 20FF, $2, $3.50 and 25FF, £2.50, $4.00. N°4 - Revolutionary Strategy Today, by Daniel Bensaid -
20FF, £2, $3.50. Nº5 - Class Struggle and Technological Change in Japan since
1945, by Muto Ichyio. 48 pp.., 25FF, £2.50, $4. N°6 - Populism in Latin America, by
Michael Lowy, Adolfo Gilly, et al. 40 pp. 20FF, £2, $3.50. N°7/8 - Plan, Market and
Democracy: The Experience of the So-Called Socialist Countries, by Catherine Samary. 64pp, 40FF, £3, SS. N°9 The Formative Years of the Fourth International
Five issues: 100FF, £10 $16; air mail add 20%. Please indicate with which issue subscription begins (you may include back issues). Payments to P. Rousset. Preferred: French francs payable in a bank located in France, postal giros to CCP Paris
11 541 97 T. Also: sterling payable in UK or dollars payable in US. Avoid Eurochecks. Mail to: CER/NSR, 2, rue Richard-Lenoir, 93108 Montreuil, France.
Notebooks for Study and Research
Number 10:
Marxism and
Liberation Theology by Michael Löwy
40 pages. £2, $3.50, 20 FF.
Also available:
1933-1938, by Daniel Bensaid. 48 pp. 25FF, £2.50, $4.
Subscribe to the Notebooks for Study and Research
ZBIGNIEW KOWALEWSKI