USSR: The Union of National Form and Socialist Content (Culture, Nation, Class)

ABSTRACT

The subject of this article is the conceptual core of early Soviet cultural policy in the field of nation-building, as indicated by the well-known Stalinist formulation “socialist in content, national in form.” In addition to being well recognizable, there are several reason to address this phrase: 1) an interest in the Soviet regime’s language of self-description, which not only “conceals” real social practices from us, but also gives us access to them; 2) the opportunity to extend its descriptive power not only to the culture of socialist realism but also to the nature of production in the multinational socialist space; and 3) the formulation is not as vague and empty as it may seem, despite the manipulativeness so characteristic of the language of ideology that allows one to avoid any meaningful definition through multi-stage rhetorical moves.

This article describes both the logical-rhetorical effects produced by the phrase and the sociocultural problems it was attempting to respond to. The main material for the present analysis is the work of Bolshevik leaders on the nationalities question and on issues of cultural construction. Its theoretical framework is contemporary research focused on the specific features of the Soviet multinational political project.

KEYWORDS:

• national form
• socialist content
• cultural policy
• empire
• nation
• class

Notes

1. The End of Empire? The Transformation of the USSR in Comparative Perspective, eds. K. Davisha and B. Parrot (Armonk, NY: Sharp, 1997); After Empire. Multiethnic Societies and Nation-Building, eds. K. Barkey and M. Von Hagen (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1997).

2. For a critical reconstruction of this logic, see M. Beissinger, “The Persisting Ambiguity of Empire,” Post-Soviet Affairs, 1995, no. 11, pp. 149–151.

3. A State Of Nations. Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin, eds. R.G. Suny and T. Martin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001); T. Martin, The Affirmative Action Empire: Nations and Nationalism in the Soviet Union, 1923—1939 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001); Soviet and Post-Soviet Identities, eds. M. Bassin and C. Kelly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). See also two recent works that reach completely opposite conclusions about the relationship between the imperial and (anti)colonial vectors in the history of the socialist “second world”: R. Djagoalov, From Internationalism to Postcolonialism: Literature and Cinema between the Second and Third Worlds (Montreal: McGill-Queen University Press, 2020), and M. Popescu, At Penpoint: African Literatures, Postcolonial Studies, and the Cold War (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020).

4. T. Martin, “An Affirmative Action Empire: The Soviet Union as the Highest Form of Imperialism,” in A State of Nations. Empire and Nation-Making in the Age of Lenin and Stalin, eds. R.G. Suny and T. Martin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 74.

5. D. Northrop, “Languages of Loyalty: Gender, Politics, and Party Supervision in Uzbekistan, 1927–41,” Russian Review, 2000, vol. 59, no. 2, p. 192.

6. Y. Slezkine, “Imperialism as the Highest Stage of Socialism,” Russian Review, vol. 59, no. 2, p. 227.

7. R. Brubaker, “Myths and Misconceptions in the Study of Nationalism,” in The State of the Nation. Ernest Gellner and the Theory of Nationalism, ed. J. Hall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 287.

8. “Principal vision and division,” to use Bourdieu’s terminology. See P. Bourdieu, “Social Space and Symbolic Power,” Sociological Theory, 1989, vol. 7, no. 1, p. 19.

9. Martin, “An Affirmative Action Empire,” p. 79.

10. For a discussion of this issue, see D. Chioni Moore, “Is the Post in Postcolonial the Post in Post-Soviet? Notes toward a Global Postcolonial Critique,” Publication of the Modern Languages Association, 2001, vol. 116, no. 1, pp. 111–128; V. Chernetsky, N. Condee, H. Ram, and G. Spivak, “Are We Postcolonial? Post-Soviet Space,” Publication of the Modern Languages Association, 2006, vol. 121, no. 3, pp. 819–836; L. Adams, “Can We Apply a Postcolonial Theory to Central Asia?,” Central Eurasia Studies Review, 2008, vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 2–8.

11. P. Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).

12. This assessment was developed at the Twelfth Congress in April 1923, consolidating the party position in regard to the principles of the new Soviet Union’s existence. See “Iz istorii obrazovaniia SSSR: Stenogramma zasedaniia sektsii XII s”ezda RKP(b) po natsional’nomu voprosu, 24.04.23,” Izvestiia TsK KPSS, 1991, no. 3.

13. V.I. Lenin, “K voprosu o natsional’nostiakh ili ob ‘avtonomizatsii’” (1922), in V.I. Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 45 (Moscow: Izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1970), p. 359.

14. Martin, “An Affirmative Action Empire,” p. 82.

15. I.V. Stalin, “O politicheskikh zadachakh universiteta narodov Vostoka. Rech’ na sobranii studentkov KUTV. 18 maia 1925 g.,” in I.V. Stalin, Sochineniia (Moscow: Gustodarstvennoe izdatel’stvo politicheskoi literatury, 1952), vol. 24, p. 122.

16. V.I. Lenin, “Kriticheskie zametki po natsional’nomu voprosu” (1913), in Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 24, p. 122.

17. Y. Selzkine, “The USSR as a Communal Apartment, or How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic Particularism,” Slavic Review, 1994, vol. 53, no. 2, p. 414.

18. I. Stalin, “Marksizm i natsional’nyi vopros” (1913), in I. Stalin, Marksizm i natsional’no-kolonial’nyi vopros. Sbornik izbrannykh statei i rechei (Moscow: Partizdat TK VKR(b), 1937), pp. 4–19; V.I. Lenin, “O prave natsii na samoopredelenie” (1914), in Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 25 (Moscow, 1969), pp. 255–272.

19. I. Stalin, “Politicheskii otchet Tsentral’nogo komiteta XVI s”ezdu VKP(b), 27 iiunia 1930 goda,” Pravda, 1930, June 29, no. 177.

20. S. Dimanshtein, “Sovetskaia vlast’ i melkie natsional’nosti,” Zhizn’ natsional’nostei, 1919, December 7, no. 46(54). (“Votyak” is obsolete name for the people now referred to as “Udmurt.”—Trans.)

21. E. Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University, 1983), p. 129.

22. On this issue, see R. Szporluk, Communism and Nationalism. Karl Marx versus Friedrich List (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988).

23. Slezkine, “The USSR as a Communal Apartment,” p. 418.

24. V.I. Lenin, “O nashei revoliutsii” (1923), in Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 45 (Moscow, 1970), p. 381.

25. V.I. Lenin, “Vserossiiskii s”ezd politprosvetov” (1921), in Lenin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vol. 44 (Moscow, 1970), p. 175.

26. See, above all, A State of Nations, eds. R.G. Suny and T. Martin.

27. I. Kalinin, “Ugnetennye dolzhny govorit’ (massovyi prizyv v literatury i formirovanie sovetskogo sub”ekta, 1920-e–nachalo 1930kh godov),” Tam, vnutri. Praktiki vnutrennei kolonizatsii v kul’turnoi istorii Rossii, eds. A. Etkind, D. Ufel’man, and I. Kukukin (Moscow: Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie, 2012), pp. 587–664.