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A Neglected Source of Lenin's Nationality Policy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Isabelle Kreindler
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Lenin's crucial role in formulating and laying the foundations of Soviet nationality policy is acknowledged by all. His nationality program—whether one views it as opportunist and pseudo-Marxist or as “the outstanding contribution to the treasure trove of creative Marxism”—is considered to be his most original and perhaps most successful policy. Lenin's lasting impact on the nationalities themselves is attested by the fact that national dissidents in the Soviet Union often call for a return to “Leninist” policy. One dissident writes, “It is difficult to find today anything more useful, noble and imperative than the restoration of Lenin's nationalities policy.”

According to most biographers, Lenin became involved with the nationality question only on the eve of World War I while living in exile in the multinational Austrian Empire. It was there that he recognized nationalism as a powerful force and began to devise a program that would harness it for the revolution. Opposing both the cultural autonomy scheme of the Austrian Marxists and the total scorn of nationalism by Rosa Luxemburg, Lenin, in debates with fellow Marxists, formulated his own program.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , March 1977 , pp. 86 - 100
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1977

References

1. P. N. Pospelov et al., V. I. Lenin, biografiia, 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1963), p. 238.

2. Ivan, Dzyuba, Internationalism or Russification ? : A Study in the Soviet Nationalities Problem (London, 1968), p. 8 Google Scholar. Though the call for a return to Lenin may be the most effective method of protest in the Soviet Union today, there seems to be more than mere political calculation involved. Nationalists in the West also favorably compare Lenin's program with Soviet reality.

3. Lenin, V. I., Kriticheskie sametki po natsional'nomu voprosu (Moscow, 1970), pp. 41 and 55Google Scholar; Richard Pipes, Formation of the Soviet Union (New York, 1968), p. 43.

4. “The specific character of a national culture is first of all determined by the language in which the given culture is being created; namely, the language is the form of national culture” ( Karpov, G. G., O sovetskoi kul'turnoi revoliutsii v SSSR [Moscow, 1954], p. 70Google Scholar).

5. I feel that M. Holdsworth's verb is well chosen, for it implies the presence of a basic block of material (“Lenin and the Nationality Question,” in Schapiro, L. and Reddaway, P., eds., Lenin, the Man, the Theorist, the Leader : A Reappraisal [New York, 1967], p. 265Google Scholar).

6. Lenin, V. I., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, 5th ed., 55 vols. (Moscow, 1958-65), 24 : 225Google Scholar. Hereafter, unless otherwise noted, all references to Lenin's Sochineniia are to the fifth edition.

7. Ministerstvo Narodnogo Prosveshcheniia, Trudy osobogo soveshchaniia po voprosam obrazovaniia vostochnykh inorodtsev, ed. A. S. Budilovich (St. Petersburg, 1905), p. xi.

8. N. I. Il'minskii, Vospominaniia ob Altynsarine (Kazan1, 1891), pp. 191-92.

9. The term “system” is somewhat misleading, for Il'minskii stressed no set curriculum or administrative techniques and generally frowned on rules and regulations; nevertheless it was used.

10. “O merakh k obrazovaniiu naseliaiushchikh Rossiiu inorodtsev,” Sbornik postanovlenii Ministerstva Narodnogo Prosveshcheniia, vol. 4 (St. Petersburg, 1871), pp. 1555—66

11. Leonard, Schapiro, “The Political Thought of the First Provisional Government in Revolutionary Russia : A Symposium, ed. Richard Pipes (New York, 1969), p. 1969 Google Scholar.

12. Archbishop Nikolai (the founder of the Japanese Russian Orthodox Mission that by 1912 comprised a community of 32, 000 Orthodox Japanese served by a native clergy, a network of primary schools, and a theological seminary with Japanese as the language of instruction throughout) considered Il'minskii's counsels “the foundation of my missionary convictions and activities” (“Arkhiepiskop Nikolai Iaponskii i Kazanskaia Dukhovnaia Akademiia,” Pravoslavnyi sobesednik, February 1912, p. 172; Nikolai Iaponskii, “Otvet na privetstvie Akademii ko dniu 30go iubileia ego sluzheniia,” ibid., July-August 1912, pp. 203-4). U'minskii also had an impact on the Muslims. According to Bennigsen, his activity was “one of the immediate causes of the great [Muslim] Reformist Movement.” Gasprinskii was well acquainted with Il'minskii's system and, according to Zenkovsky, U'minskii had a major influence on the Muslim reformer ( Bennigsen, A. and Lemercier-Quelquejay, C., Islam, in the Soviet Union [New York, 1967], p. 13 Google Scholar; N. P., Ostroumov, “K istorii musul'manskogo obrazovatel'nogo dvizheniia v Rossii v 19 i 20 stoletiiakh,” Mir Islama, 2, no. 5 [1913] : 316 Google Scholar; Zenkovsky, S, “Rossiia i Tiurki,” Novyi shurnal, 47 [1956] : 183 Google Scholar).

13. New York Times, June 18, 1975, p. 36. In Africa, in spite of sporadic missionary efforts to use native languages, European languages continued to be dominant in education. Welmers reports the case of an indigenous minister who, once ordained, preached in English through an interpreter ( Welmers, W. E., “Christian Missions and Language Policies in Africa in Advances in Language Planning, ed. J. A. Fishman [The Hague and Paris, 1974], p. 194 Google Scholar).

14. See, for example, a report about a Catholic priest holding services in the Cree language for American Indians (New York Times, August 23, 1972), or reports about an American Evangelist group which runs a special Summer Institute of Linguistics (New York Times, July 27, 1967; June 21, 1969). The Institute sends students to South America to learn tribal languages, then publishes primers that are used in literacy programs, health booklets (U'minskii also had issued some on cholera and other diseases), and, of course, the Bible in the various languages.

15. Ul'ianova, Mariia, in Vospominaniia o Lenine, vol. 1 (Moscow, 1969), p. 182.Google Scholar

16. Nazar'ev, V., “Sovremennaia glush',” Vestnik Evropy, March 1876, p. 296 Google Scholar.

17. N. K. Krupskaia, Pedagogicheskie sochineniia, vol. 2 (Moscow, 1958), p. 685.

18. Mariia Ul'ianova, in Vospominaniia o Lenine, p. 183.

19. Dmitrii Ul'ianov, Vospominaniia o Vladimire Il'iche, 4th ed. (Moscow, 1971), p. 124.

20. Ibid.

21. L. Trotsky, The Young Lenin (New York, 1972), p. 19.

22. N. O. Lerner, “Otets Lenina,” Minuvshie dni, no. 3 (February 1928), p. 12.

23. Quoted in A. I. Ivanskii, Il'ia Nikolaevich Ul'ianov : Po vospominaniiam sovremennikov i dokumentam (Moscow, 1963), p. 228.

24. Alston, P. L., Education and the State in Tsarist Russia (Stanford, 1969), p. 104 Google Scholar; Kondakov, A. I., Direktor narodnykh uchilishch, I. N. Ul'ianov (Moscow-Leningrad, 1948), pp. 50–59Google Scholar.

25. Vasil'ev's memoir in Domozhakov, N. G., ed., Katanov : Materialy i soobshcheniia (Abakan, 1958), p. 107 Google Scholar; Nazar'ev, N., “Iz vospominanii vstrech i perepiski 70kh godov,” Vestnik Evropy, April 1898, pp. 683–84, 712Google Scholar; Trofimov, Zh, “Prikaz o skoroi otstavke,” Nauka i religiia, no. 4 (1976), pp. 6–9Google Scholar.

26. Anna Ul'ianova, Vospominaniia o Lenine, p. 18.

27. N. K. Krupskaia, O Lenine (Moscow, 1960), p. 28.

28. P. N. Pospelov et al., Lenin, p. 7.

29. A. I. Ivanskii, I . N. Ul'ianov, p. 259; A. I. Ul'ianova, Detskie i shkol'nye gody Il'icha (Ogiz, 1931), p. 28.

30. Medynskii, E. N., Istoriia russkoi pedagogiki do Velikoi Oktiabr1 skoi Revoliutsii, 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1938), p. 356 Google Scholar. For references to Iakovlev as a frequent visitor, see the memoirs of Kashkadamova, V. V., in Karamyshev, A., ed., Ul'ianov v vospotninaniiakh sovremennikov (Saratov, 1968), p. 98 Google Scholar; or Ul'ianova, M. I., in Sirotkin, M. la., ed., Iakovlev, I. la. (Cheboksary, 1959), p. 59 Google Scholar.

31. N. G. Krasnov et al., eds., I . la. lakovlev v vospominaniiakh sovremennikov (Cheboksary, 1968), pp. 26 and 39.

32. Sirotkin, I . la. lakovlev, p. 52.

33. Kondakov, I . N. Ul'ianov, p. 51.

34. Ivanskii, I . N. Ul'ianov, p. 235; Karamyshev, Ul'ianov, pp. 94 and 98. A teacher of Russian in Iakovlev's school was the Ul'ianov family tutor. Accustomed to teaching non- Russians, he spoke in a halting manner and was sometimes ridiculed by Lenin (Trotsky, The Young Lenin, p. 75).

35. lakovlev and his wife were the last people other than family members to see Ul'ianov alive on January 12, 1886. And it was “a pale Vladimir,” in the evening of the same day, who broke the news of his father's death when he came to the lakovlevs to pick up his younger brother (lakovlev to Il'minskii, January 13, 1886, in Ivanskii, I . JV. Ul'ianov, p. 248; A. I. lakovlev, “Chetyre vstrechi s V. I. Leninym,” Istoricheskii zhurnal, nos. 1-2 [1942], p. 160).

36. N. G. Krasnov, “Sem'ia Ul'ianovykh i prosveshchenie Chuvashei,” Sovetskaia pedagogika, April 1965, p. 83.

37. Lenin, Sochineniia, vol. 50, pp. 61 and 573; vol. 51, pp. 39 and 533; Krasnov, lakovlev v vospominaniiakh, pp. 20, 21, 122-23; Lavrov, R. A. et al., eds., Narody Rossii o Lenine (Moscow, 1969), pp. 135–39, 265Google Scholar.

38. A. F., Efirov, “Pedagogicheskaia deiatel'nost’ Chuvashskogo pedagoga I. la. Iakovleva,” Sovetskaia pedagogika, July 1946, ’ p. 78 Google Scholar; Sidorov, F. and Markov, A., “Uchitel’ uchitelei Chuvashskogo naroda,” Narodnoe obrasovanie, January 1969, p. 92Google Scholar.

39. Korbut, M. K., Kasanskii Gosudarstvennyi Vniversitet imeni V. I. Ul'ianova-Lenina za 125 let, vol. 1 (Kazan, 1930), p. 135 Google Scholar; Petrov, D. P., Chuvashiia (Moscow-Leningrad, 1926), p. 40 Google Scholar.

40. Khypar, no. 1, January 8, 1906, quoted in Danilov, D. D., ed., Sovetskaia Chuvashiia : Sbornik (Moscow, 1933), p. 108 Google Scholar.

41. In his own schools, lakovlev stressed the Russian language much more than Il'minskii because he felt that it alone could open a path to a broader horizon for the Chuvash.

42. Quoted in Danilov, Sovetskaia Chuvashiia, p. 23; Materialy po istorii Tatarii vtoroi poloviny 19 v. : Agrarnyi vopros i krest'ianskoe dvishenie, vol. 1 (Moscow-Leningrad, 1936), p. 468.

43. For fürther biographical details see Isabelle Kreindler, “Educational Policies Toward the Eastern Nationalities in Tsarist Russia : A Study of Il'minskii's System” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1969).

44. N. I. H'minskii, “Ob obrazovanii inorodtsev posredstvom knig perevedennykh na ikh iazyk,” Pravoslavnoc obosrenie, March 1863, p. 139.

45. H'minskii, N. I., “Zapiska po voprosu ob otpadeniiakh kreshchenykh Tatar,” Pravoslavnyi sobesednik, 2 (1895) : 272 Google Scholar; H'minskii, N. I., ’ Pis'tna k ober-Prokuroru Sv. Sinoda, K. P. Pobedonostsevu (Kazan, 1895), p. 399 Google Scholar.

46. Lenin, Sochineniia, vol. 45, p. 389; vol. 40, p. 43; vol. 24, p. 295; E., Dobin, Lenin i iskusstvo : Memuary (Leningrad, 1934), p. 229 Google Scholar. Even in the heady days of October, Lenin cautioned Lunacharskii (they had met by chance in the corridors of Smolny) “to be very careful with any reforms” ( A., Lunacharskii, Rasskasy o Lenine, 4th ed. [Moscow, 1971], P. 31 Google Scholar).

47. N. I. Il'minskii, “O perevode Pravoslavnykh knig na tatarskii iazyk,” Zhurnal Ministerstva Narodnogo Prosveshcheniia, 152 (November 1870) : 14-15.

48. Il'minskii, Pis'ma k Pobedonostsevu, p. 152. In his own translations, Il'minskii stubbornly opposed all changes “in the direction of Russification.” He attacked Tungus trans*, lations for their Russian construction, which made them “most obscure for the Tungus,” and the Trans-Baikal Mission's Buriat translations for their “Russicisms.” Il'minskii also defended the work of a Zyrian linguist against censors’ demands to substitute Russian expressions for Zyrian (ibid., pp. 110, 182, 46; Il'minskii, N. I., “Po povodu otcheta Zabaikal'skoi dukhovnoi missii,” Pravoslavnoe obozrenie, November 1870, p. 377 Google Scholar).

49. Krupskaia, Pedagogicheskie sochineniia, vol. 3, p. 670. Lenin's interest in language is also evident from his Notebooks on Imperialism (Lenin, Sochineniia, vol. 28, pp. 309-11, 513-16, 552 ff).

50. Lenin, Sochineniia, vol. 30, p. 190; vol. 24, p. 388; vol. 26, p. 365.

51. Lenin, Sochineniia, 4th ed., vol. 7, pp. 6 and 11.

52. KPSS v resoliutsiiakh i resheniiakh s“ezdov, konferentsii i plenumov, 7th ed., vol. 1 (Moscow, 1953), p. 40; Lenin, Sochineniia, vol. 7, p. 241; vol. 25, pp. 135-36; vol. 32, pp. 142 and 154; vol. 38, pp. I l l and 409; vol. 48, pp. 234-35, 291, 302-3.

53. Lenin, Sochineniia, vol. 23, pp. 317, 423-26; vol. 24, pp. 116, 293-95. Lenin's injunction against any privileges for Russian was not openly flaunted until 1938 when Russian was made a compulsory subject. By the School Law of 1958 it was made voluntary again. How ever, according to L. Tairov, Russian is taught from the first year “and the voluntary principle notwithstanding, there has not been a single case yet of unwillingness or refusal to study Russian” ( Tairov, L, “In the Language of Brotherhood,” Pravda, October 28, 1972 Google Scholar, as translated in the Current Digest of the Soviet Press, 24, no. 43 [1972] : 23).

54. Lenin, Sochineniia, vol. 39, p. 334.

55. Joshua Kunitz, Dawn over Samarkand (New York, 1935), p. 224.

56. Lenin, Kritichcskie zametki, p. 20; Lenin, Sochineniia, vol. 38, pp. 95 and 111. On Lenin's instructions, work on alphabets for small nationalities began in 1921 ( T. P., Bibanov, “Rastsvet national'noi kul'tury,” Nachal'naia shkola, 1972, no. 6, p. 8 Google Scholar).

57. Lenin, Sochineniia, vol. 39, p. 114.

58. KPSS v resoliutsiiakh, p. 559; Lavrov, Narody Rossii o Lenine, p. 227; Lenin, Sochineniia, vol. 45, p. 361..

59. Lenin, Sochineniia, vol. 24, p. 387.

60. Ibid., p. 295.

61. Lenin, Sochineniia, vol. 40, p. 49.

62. N. I. Il'minskii, Iz perepiski ob udostoenii inorodtsev sviashchennoslushitel'skikh dolshnostei (Kazan', 1885), p. 9.

63. N. I. Il'minskii, “Shkola dlia pervonachal'nogo obucheniia detei kreshchenykh Tatar v Kazani,” Zhurnal Ministerstva Narodnogo Prosveshcheniia, 134 (June 1867) : 327.

64. Il'minskii, N. I., “Prakticheskie zamechaniia o perevodakh i sochineniiakh na inorodcheskikh iazykakh,” Pravoslavnyi sobesednik, 1 (1871) : 160 Google Scholar; K. V., Kharlampovich, “Perepiska Veniamina Irkutskogo s N. I. Il'minskim,” Pravoslavnyi sobesednik, 2 (1905) : 29 Google Scholar; P., Znamenskii, Na pamiaf o N. I. Il'minskom (Kazan', 1892), p. 257 Google Scholar.

65. Lenin, Sochineniia, vol. 48, p. 162.

66. Mnatsakaniian, A. N., Lenin i rcshenie natsional'nogo voprosa v SSSR (Erevan, 1970), pp. 122 and 143Google Scholar; Lenin, Sochineniia, vol. 50, pp. 34-35.

67. Beloded, I. K., Leninskaia teoriia natsional'no-iasykovogo stroitel'stva v sotsialisticheskom obshchestve (Moscow, 1972), p. 19 Google Scholar. The article appears in Lenin, Sochineniia, vol. 48, pp. 277-78; the commentary in vol. 25, p. 360.

68. Mnatsakaniian, Lenin, p. 154. For example, when a group of Ukrainian Communists objected to the drafting of party and soviet workers from the Russian provinces for the Ukraine, Lenin demanded that each one of them be reprimanded (S. Gililov, V. I. Lenin— organizator Sovetskogo mnogonatsional'nogo gosudarstva [Moscow, 1960], p. 63).

69. N. I. Il'minskii, Pis'ma k kreshchenym Tataram, ed. and trans. A. Voskresenskii (Kazan', 1896), p. 22.

70. Pipes, Formation of the Soviet Union, p. 41; Lenin, Sochineniia, vol. 24, pp. 58 and 141.

71. In his student days Il'minskii lived with Muslim families and for a few months had a room in a medrese (a higher religious school). Later, however, his relations with Muslims grew cold and official, and, as adviser to the government, Il'minskii was personally responsible for many anti-Muslim measures. One of the delegates to the 1920 Baku Conference, who had joined the group that went on to Moscow to meet Lenin, writes : “Each of us felt that Lenin had lived a long time among us, that he was born and grew up there on the borderland a thousand versts from Moscow.” Non-Russians, or even Russians from the borderlands, were often received by Lenin and plied with questions, while important officials marked time in the waiting room (Lavrov, Narody Rossii o Lenine, pp. 303, 400-401).

72. See Schapiro and Reddaway, Lenin, A Reappraisal, pp. 276 and 290.

73. Il'minskii, N. I., 0 sisteme prosvcshcheniia inorodtsev, ed. A. Voskresenskii (Kazan, 1913), pp. 28–29Google Scholar; Il'minskii, Pis'ma k Pobedonostsevu, p. 399.

74. Pipes, Formation of the Soviet Union, p. 44.

75. Fotieva's letter to Kamenev, in L. Trotsky, The Stalin School of Falsification (New York, 1968), p. 70.

76. Moshe Lewin, Lenin's Last Struggle (New York, 1968), p. 69.

77. Lenin, Sochineniia, vol. 45, pp. 356-62.

78. Serkhii Mazlakh and Vasyl’ Shakhrai, On the Current Situation in the Ukraine, ed. P. J. Potichnyj (Ann Arbor, 1970), p. xxiii.