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(It's easy to ask, and I'm a nice guy.)
Jeremy Antley
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Liberalism's Mobility: An Exploration of Nationalism in Eastern Europe and Russia, 19th-20th centuries
In his 1978-79 term at the College de France, Michel Foucault delivered a series
of lectures devoted to furthering study on the art of government by way of examining the
question 'liberalism' asks of governing practice; namely, what is the self-limitation of
governmental reason?1 When raised in conjunction with the rise of 'population' as an
increasing concern of the state during the 18th century, the question of what constitutes
the defined boundaries of governmental reason and how to accurately measure both
reason and boundary becomes paramount when pursuing various 'systems' designed to
provide an answer to the above. According to Foucault, 'liberalism' is a practice, a means
of rationalization on the exercise of government. It places 'society', instead of the 'state',
at the center of governance, allowing one to ask what necessity and what ends must be
pursued to justify existence. It is a tool for use in criticizing reality, thus becoming "one
constant dimension of recent European phenomena of 'political life'."2 This shift from
'state' to 'society' that liberalism proposed brought into question the difference between
the two and the terms of their coexistence. In this space between 'society' and the 'state'
we find the creation of a new schematization, nationalism, capable of acting as an
interlocutor binding, indeed interweaving, the two elements. While Foucault focused on
the role of the market in the ‘liberalism’ question as an intrinsic arbiter of governmental
reason from the 18th century to the present, my inquiry attempts to show how 'liberalism'
also demanded a redefinition of the relation between 'state' and 'society' and brought
about differing configurations of nationalism in the multi-ethnic lands of Eastern Europe
1 Foucault Birth of Biopolitics 20.2 Ibid, 321.
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and Russia/Soviet Union during the 19th-20th centuries.
How were these configurations of nationalism assembled? The answer lies in the
'mobility' of liberalism, which I define as the inherent capacity of ideas to circulate and
be filtered by 'certified agents of knowledge'. Through the process of circulation,
filtration and then transmission, ideas undergo mutation, producing capacity for a wide
variety of configurations on various technologies of government. As 'liberalism'
circulated through Europe, existing states with absolutist regimes (in our case the
Hapsburg and Romanov dynasties) sought to come to terms with questions on self-
limitation of governmental reason by devising solutions that mimicked liberal form, but
not content. If Foucault is correct, that 'liberalism' questioned the justification and
limitation of governmental action, then formulation of nationalism policy by the
Hapsburgs and the Romanovs (later Bolsheviks) in reaction to this question exemplifies
the imperial solution's novel amalgamation of 'liberal' form with absolutist content, albeit
with differing degrees of success. These ‘nationalistic’ schemas, in turn, impacted the
path ethnic minorities followed in the configuration of their own 'national forms', both in
the 19th and 20th centuries. The evolution of these configurations, the construction of a
nation-state, demonstrates the wide ranging 'mobility' of liberalism.
While both Hapsburg and Romanov empires faced the same 'nationalist' dilemma,
their novel configurations of liberal and absolutist content, an attempt to preserve
authority among elites as well as subdue separatist movements, provide opportunity to
study the flexibility of 'liberalism' in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Hapsburg rulers
recognized their largest minority, the Magyars, as an almost equal governing partner, yet
they refused to address other minority group concerns and create an empire wide
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federation. Romanov rulers only tinkered with piecemeal reform, pursuing a
Russification effort that occasionally experimented with liberal forms in pockets of
imperial space. After World War I these novel configurations fell apart, yet their
influence persisted. New nation-states created in Eastern Europe pursued policies similar
to the Austrian and Hungarian rulers before them, instituting national language
requirements and generally limiting access of minority groups to centers of power.
Bolshevik rule, secured after the conclusion of the Russian Civil War (1917-1921),
initially endorsed a nationalities policy that favored ethnic recognition and semi-
autonomous rule yet ultimately sought to preserve Romanov territorial integrity while
instilling a larger Soviet 'umbrella' identity. In both examples, ruling regimes across two
centuries did not outright reject the question of liberalism; they instead used the inherent
'mobility' of liberalism to craft forms of nationalism suited to their larger ideological
goals.
To begin, this essay will establish and define concepts central to my
understanding of ‘mobility’. The process mentioned above, Circulation, Filtration,
Transmission and pursuant Mutation, are terms I draw from the work of Kapil Raj, and
my conception on the applicability of mobility to the realm of ideas draws upon two other
scholars, Philip Deloria and Laura Engelstein. Their works give guidance to what
Foucault identified as, “the way in which specific problems of life and population have
been posed within a technology of government which…since the end of the eighteenth
century has been constantly haunted by the question of liberalism.”3 Next, I will look at
how the Hapsburg and Romanov rulers dealt with the question of ‘liberalism’ in terms of
3 Ibid, 323-324.
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nationalism policy in the period leading up to World War I. Focus then shifts towards the
interwar period, as successor powers in former imperial lands used the same ‘liberalism’
question to create new nationality content based, in part, on previous forms elaborated by
the dynastic empires. My ultimate goal is to show the ‘mobility’ of liberalism by
outlining its flexibility across both time and governmental norms.
Elaboration of Mobility
Liberalism’s mobility, its adaptability across a wide spectrum of governmental
configurations, I believe is best illuminated by the works of three scholars; Kapil Raj,
Laura Engelstein, and Philip Deloria. While Raj and Deloria do not specifically focus on
the idea of liberalism, their works flesh out the principles and application of mobility to
ideas in general. Engelstein’s work sheds light on the active reshaping of the liberal
discourse by the Russian/Soviet state, in effect bringing focus to larger themes of this
essay regarding configurations of nationalism policy. Each scholar’s work bears
elaboration, and I’ll begin my brief examination with Kapil Raj.
A scholar of Southeast Asian Studies, Kapil Raj work deals with colonial
knowledge making interaction between European powers and indigenous peoples.
Focusing on the circulation aspect of knowledge, Raj demonstrated that while the subject
of knowledge may be desired, its validity could face acceptance or rejection solely on the
certification of the transmitting agent involved. This is because the circulation through
locality and metropole alike create mutations, each side appropriating and assimilating
new concepts or ideas into their own milieu as the knowledge filters through. Thus, an
empire may desire knowledge of local plants for medicinal purposes, a particular use for
explorers and colonists alike, yet may reject this knowledge if it comes from an
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‘uncertified’ source, i.e. the ‘savage’. However, if that same knowledge is first collected
by a ‘field agent’ and then passed on to an ‘experienced’ European, who in turn codifies
that knowledge in a Latin text4, there is greater chance of acceptance of that knowledge at
the metropole simply because of the path of transmission filtered through a certified
agent. As we shall see below, models of nationalism deemed appropriate for absolutist
regimes in the 19th and 20th centuries depended heavily upon 'certified' acceptance.
Philip J. Deloria’s collection of essays, Indians in Unexpected Places, provides a
case study on the mutability of ideas, the change undergone via transmission between
Indians and Whites.5 In his essay on ‘Violence’, Deloria traces the evolution of white
vocabulary over the course of two decades regarding the changing forms of perceived
Indian violence-potential. Before the Civil War, terms such as surround and last stand
exemplified White fears of the mobile Indian, capable of enclosure and able to resist
influence from White culture. After the Civil War, forced movement of Indians onto
reservations made old terms/fears less applicable in context and, as a result, new
conceptions arose. Focusing on the term ‘outbreak’, Deloria convincingly argues that
this conception helped Whites negotiate a period in which Indians were not totally
pacified/contained on reservations. It implied partial containment and near completion of
the ‘civilizing mission’, interpreting forms of Indian violence as incapable of becoming
autonomous and limited to ‘pockets’ of the American empire. Wounded Knee, according
to Deloria, represented both the apex and obsolescence of ‘outbreak’, the point at which a
new conception was needed, that being ‘passivity’ and later ‘invisibility’. Vocabulary
4This example is drawn from Ch. 1 of Raj’s work ?????
5 Philip Deloria. Indians in Unexpected Places. University of Kansas Press. Date ???
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shifts, a result of idea circulation involving both real and perceived threats to White
ideals, represented the “developing trajectory of meanings that defined the possibilities of
Indian violence”.6 Development of these ‘trajectory of meanings’ echoes similar efforts
by Hapsburg/Romanov/Bolshevik rulers used to shape the ‘liberalism’ question to suit
their absolutist or ideological needs.
The last work briefly reviewed, Laura Engelstein’s collection of essays Slavophile
Empire, deals precisely with the mobility and mutation of ‘liberal’ ideals in Russian
governance.7 Engelstein’s first essay considers how the experience of Russia, an empire
that combined liberal, anti-liberal and absolutist governing models, reconciled with
Foucault's conception of how the liberalist 'rule of law' changed, for Western Europe at
least, the apparatus of domination from compulsion to discipline as exercised by the
newly empowered bourgeoisie. Engelstein interprets the contribution of liberalism to
Western thought as one that replaced the, "alliance between discipline and the
administrative state with a configuration that frames the operation of discipline within the
confines of the law." However, in the Russian experience, the Tsarist and later Soviet
rulers took this conception in a new direction. Instead of invoking a "disciplinary society
limited and controlled by the authority of the law", Russian rulers created a governing
framework that eschewed the validity of 'legality' and sought control of various
disciplines for their own use.
Across these varied scholars works lies a central theme that I hope to use in
exploring the development of 'nationalism' in both Russia and Eastern Europe, that being
the notion that knowledge is perfectly capable of being transmitted across different
6 Ibid, 21.7 Laura Engelstein. Slavophile Empire: Imperial Russia's Illiberal Path.
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cultures who, upon encountering the transmitting knowledge, have an equal capacity to
assimilate then transform the knowledge to suit their own particular needs. Equally, this
reconfiguration of knowledge is then re-transmitted across the social and cultural fields,
producing an endless cycle whereby old ideas or configurations of knowledge inspire
new forms that, in turn, will produce further iterations. When analyzing how
'nationalism' developed, it is important to recognize that this notion is intimately tied to
the transmission process undergone by the ideal of liberalism. For greater depth to this
argument, we now turn to examining the Hapsburg and Romanov responses to the
question of liberalism.
Hapsburg/Romanov Empires and the Question of ‘liberalism’ in the pre-WWII
Period
Despite their shared characteristics of rule and diversity of those ruled, the
Hapsburg and Romanov empires addressed the question of liberalism's nationalistic
impact with different methods. Both possessed significant numbers of minority
populations who, combined, easily outnumbered the total of Great Russians and
Austrians in their own states. While they might have liked to sidestep answering the
question of liberalism and its pursuant demand for a reconfiguration of the state/society
relationship, tumultuous events in the 19th century forced each empire to devise a solution
that satisfied unique problems faced. The central issue lay in the need for both dynasties
to create a unifying national myth that, while preserving power in the hands of the
traditional elites as much as possible also sought to stem any separatist feeling emanating
from dissatisfied minorities.8 For both, this required an elaboration on the interaction
8 Engelstein and others
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between state and society through limited acknowledgement of liberal ideals, albeit in
forms ensconced with the methods and means of absolutism.
For the Hapsburgs, the Spring of Nations in 1848 as well as increasing pressure
from the unification of Germany under Bismarck resulted in a series of political/military
maneuvers over the course of the 19th century that ultimately culminated in national
disgrace in the military defeat at Koniggratz on 3 July 1866. It was then, facing
exclusion and then outright ejection from the growing German seat of power, that
Hapsburg rulers came to realize the growing fragility of their own power structure. In an
unprecedented move for multi-ethnic empires of the 19 th century, Austrian rulers
contemplated and then offered the largest minority group, the Magyars, a nigh-equal
position in what would come to be called the Dual-Monarchy of Austria-Hungary.
Hungary, which only two decades previous sustained the longest independence
movement of 1848, suddenly found itself accomplishing national goals only dreamed
about by previous generations of Magyar aspirants. Yet other minority groups, just as
vociferous and similar in their quest to achieve autonomy and national sovereignty,
continued to be relegated to the background, in some cases finding previously oppressed
Magyars as new masters promoting assimilation policies once solely attributed, with
disgust, to Hapsburg rule. This imbalance between Hungarian ascendency and other
minorities similar ambitions informs, in greater detail, the methods Hapsburg and Magyar
rulers pursued in answering the liberalism question, demonstrating what Lazlo Kontler
called, “a network of regimes that…represented new types of authoritarianism.”9 Both the
9Lazlo Kontler, 261.
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Angshelus of 1867 and Hungarian national pursuits prior and post its implementation
comprise the ways in which these new types of authoritarianism took hold.
The Angshelus of 1867
At the beginning of the 19th century, Hapsburg rulers could look across their lands
and see the development of empire over several centuries. At the beginning of the 20 th
century, those same rulers, gifted with inhuman longevity for the duration of this
sentence, would see the same lands albeit in a new political contrast. Pressures both
external and internal brought on a legitimacy crisis for the Austrian state; no longer
needed as a bulwark against an increasingly impotent Ottoman threat and forced out of
control of German speaking peoples via the rise of Germany, Hapsburg rulers found
themselves in need of a stabilizing force in order to preserve their lands and capacity to
rule. Events of 1848 demonstrated not only the desire and willingness of minority
populations to rebel against Austrian rule but also that the potential loss of the largest
group, the Hungarians, would be detrimental to maintaining Hapsburg great power status.
It also heralded the emergence of the liberalism question and new possible configurations
of governance based upon the interweaving of state and society. Yet the perceived threat
of 1848, the potential for collapse of Hapsburg rule and subsequent relegation to the
background of European politics, did little to convince Austrian governing elites the
necessity for outright liberal reform in terms of their nationalist policy towards
minorities. Instead 1848 set the Austrian ruling elite towards a policy of, first, repression
and assimilation of minority groups through elimination of territorial distinction in
conjunction with standardization efforts in civil governance and language use, and
second, the de jure acknowledgement of the Magyars as a nigh-equal governing partner
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over other significant minority groups. Both policies exemplify the means by which
Austrian, and later Hungarian, ruling elites crafted state/society configurations that
attempted to satisfy the liberalist question with absolutist forms.
The shift of governing policy from 1848 to 1867 in Hapsburg rule bear closer
examination, as this period defined the political and ideological shape of the empire until
its dissolution at the conclusion of World War I. Take, for example, the initial attempts
by Austrian rulers to, in effect, delegitimize historic territorial claims by Hungarians
through elimination of intra-state boundaries in favor of re-districting that emphasized
dilution of concentrated Magyar populations with large groups of non-Magyar subjects.
Kontler called this pre-1867 period the Bach period, or the emergence of a neo-absolutist
style of governance that included redoubled efforts at Germananization and
standardization across the empire. Tariffs were abolished, weights and measures became
uniform and mandatory use of German in schools and governance all marked efforts by
the Hapsburgs in the post-1848 era to create a ‘unitary’ state. Croatian and Serbian
subjects found their limited autonomy revoked as well, replaced with a strict surveillance
program that fully embodied the ideal of the polizeistaat. Combined, these policies
sought to bring the interaction between state and society under the aegis of Hapsburg
imperial identity by literally ‘erasing’ distinction in favor of Germanized uniformity. In
effect, Hapsburg rulers answered the question of liberalism by rejecting limitation on
governmental rule in favor of a unitary state that sought liberal reforms10 injected with
absolutist content.
10 Abolition of Serfdom in 1848
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When these efforts failed to significantly strengthen the ‘unifying myth’ of
imperial rule, the Hapsburgs decided to further tinker with their governmental apparatus,
opting for a dualist configuration with the Magyars instead of the more liberal federation
option that would have provided autonomous rule to significant minority populations.
The Angshelus, or Compromise of 1867, represents a break with other absolutist
governing models then in use in Europe in that it offered generous terms of self-
government and quasi-sovereignty to a minority that possessed a ‘certified’ historical
claim in exchange for loyal patronage and support of the imperial regime. The Hungarian
minority fit this new state/society configuration for several reasons. Dual-Monarchial
rule with the Magyars suited Hapsburg desires to transform the empire by dividing the
land into two parts, with the western portion to become a new Austrian state and the
eastern portion to come under the management of a minority capable of providing both a
historical claim to rule and the capacity to do so. By granting the Magyars quasi-
sovereignty the Hapsburgs quelled a major source of separatist sentiment then beginning
to grow in strength among many of the non-Austrian minorities. Recognition of Hungary
as a ‘certified’ agent worthy of statehood also satisfied limited demands of the liberalist
question on the state/society configuration. As such, the Dual-Monarchy preserved
absolutist content within liberal forms while at the same time rejecting the ideal of a civic
nationalism policy in favor of an ethnic conception that, for a time, preserved the ancient
regime.
The Magyar elites, ever suspicious of Hapsburg intent, nonetheless accepted the
terms of Dualism because they, in turn, recognized the offer as affirmation of their efforts
to develop a Hungarian national consciousness in previous decades. Of course, the
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Dualist configuration, being only liberal in form, contained several ‘absolutist’ strings
that restricted full Hungarian autonomy. The Austrian emperor retained rights as supreme
warlord and also possessed the ability to ‘presanction’ laws, thus keeping undesired bills
from entering the floor of debate in Parliament. Despite these limitations, Hungarian
rulers were largely given a free hand in managing their own territory and the various
minorities living within. Taking cue from their Austrian counterparts, Hungarian rulers
instituted strict Magyarization policies designed to assimilate minority populations
through both forced language instruction and exclusion from centers of power.
Here, again, the concept of ‘certified’ agent comes to the fore, as only the Croats
achieved limited recognition by the Hungarians as a ‘political entity’ due to their
‘historic’ claims to self-rule, a title denied to the Slovaks who never held a recognized
‘historic’ claim and were seen only as subjects of the Hungarian crown.11 By granting the
Croats rights based solely upon historic claims of previous existence, Hungarian rulers
not only extended articulations of the state/society configuration used by the Austrians in
the Angshelus of 1867, they also similarly precluded the possibility of pursuing civic
nationalistic solutions in favor of ethnic nationalistic conceptions that preserved Magyar
power and excluded those minorities not deemed ‘certified’ from the sovereignty process.
However, the choices made in supporting this configuration of state/society continued to
haunt the newly created Austro-Hungarian Empire until its dissolution in the aftermath of
World War I. Then, the Entende powers, aware of the potential fractious nature ethnic
nationalization polices, pressured the newly created nation-states of Eastern Europe to
11 Kontler, 281-282, Bidelux and Jefferies, 142.
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adhere to minority protection policies that, in truth, were never enforced and thus hardly
effective in diffusing ethnic tensions in the region.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To summarize the points elaborated in this exploration of the Hapsburg
experience, we see that the response to the question of liberalism on the art of
government, as proposed by Foucault, resulted in a conception of the state/society
relationship in terms that could be called ‘autocratic ethnic liberalism’ predicated on the
‘certification’ of the agent in question. Unwilling to surrender land or share power, the
Austrian elites at first attempted to eliminate distinction in favor of a unitary state, a
rough attempt at imperial civic nationalism that ultimately collapsed with defeat at
Konnigratz and subsequent exclusion from the German confederation. Robbed of their
German ascendency and facing the prospect of becoming a ruling minority in a multi-
ethnic state, the Austrians eschewed forms of civic nationalism for ethnic conceptions
that based legitimacy on ‘certified’ historic claims. In this way, the Hapsburgs could split
the empire into two pieces, with power shared between the Austrian west and the
Hungarian east. In doing so both the Austrians and the Hungarians rejected civic
nationalistic forms in favor of ethnic configurations that at once cemented their power
and doomed it to eventual failure. After the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian empire at
the end of World War I, newly minted nation-states comprised largely of former minority
groups would pursue similar ethnic conceptions of the state/society relationship,
demonstrating the influence Austrian governing models continued to hold over the region
even after the empires demise. Yet before we examine this phenomena in greater detail,
the focus of the essay turns to the Russian lands ruled by the Romanov dynasty.
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The Romanov Example
Much like the Hapsburgs, the Romanovs also faced problems in the 19th and early
20th centuries regarding how to configure state/society relationships in the wake of
liberalism's question on governmental reason. Unlike the Hapsburgs, the Romanovs
never experimented with granting minorities equal governing status. Instead the regime
focused on projecting a nationalism configuration that aimed for civic identity yet did so
under increasingly very specific ethnic terms. However, while the 19 th century saw the
emergence of the Russian identity formula, “Nationality, Autocracy, Orthodoxy”, only
two of those terms, Autocracy and Orthodoxy, were clearly defined and understood.12
Nationality would remain difficult for the Russian empire to define as several distinct
groups muddled the formula stated above by calling into question applicability of using
ethnic definitions to create an imperial civil identity. Due to these concerns, Romanov
elites made issues of ‘certification’ paramount in their quest. In turn, ‘certification’
depended heavily upon interpretation by diverse populations of information ‘circulating’
through the empire. While the Romanovs never shared power, a la the Hapsburgs, with
other distinct minority groups, this did not preclude experimentation of ‘liberalist’
reforms in pockets of Empire space- indeed, this combination of ‘circulation’,
experimental reforms, and definition of identity better explains the tsarist attempts to
formulate an answer to the question of liberalism.
This portion of the essay will examine Romanov difficulties with establishing a
Great Russian centered ‘civic’ nationality in the face of ‘certification’ challenges used by
12Acknowledge idea of schism in orthodoxy and the differentiation between old believers and others. Generally state saw these groups as non-orthodox, but had deeper and more complicated relationship.
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subjects and predicated on mutation of knowledge circulating through the empire. Much
has been written on the debate within the intelligentsia on the Slavophile vs. Westernizer
issue and, while I do not want to revisit their arguments in total, I would like to point out
the inherent contradiction in trying to enforce an ambiguous identity upon a diverse
population. Combined with the often hap-hazard implementation of reforms in small
sections of the empire, the efforts by Romanov elites to answer liberalism’s question and
create a reconfiguration of the state/society relationship resulted, much like the
experience of the Hapsburgs, in the further elaboration of absolutist methods of rule
encased within liberal forms.
To begin, I will look at the work of Laura Engelstein and her essay on the
implications of a weak commitment to the rule of law on larger Russian society. Then,
looking at the Caucasus region of Romanov territory, issues on the permeability of
identity and the risk of going native come to the fore. In conclusion, the focus shifts to
the 1897 Census where issues surrounding the difficulty encountered by Romanov
authorities in enforcing universal ‘civic’ identity formed within a Great Russian ethnic
conception. Combined, these explorations into Russian configurations of state/society
relationships provide a mosaic look at the larger problems facing the multi-ethnic empire,
problems that would later shape the formulation of nationalism policy under Bolshevik
rule.
Tsarist Commitment to Rule of Law
One of the central themes of this essay, that multi-ethnic empires addressed
liberalist influences in differing manners, forms a part of the core argument in Laura
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Engelstein’s collection of essays, Slavophile Empire.13 The first essay, ‘Combined
Underdevelopment’, specifically addressed Russian Imperial, and later Soviet, rulers’
suspicion of liberalist claims that reconfigured the relation between discipline and state
and placed them both under the rule of law. The illiberal tradition within Russian
development questioned the egalitarian nature such a reconfiguration promised, pointing
out that the rule of law merely shifted the operation of power from the autocrat to the
bourgeoisie and that any promise of a more liberal government as a result only clouded
the true operation of coercion upon the population.
One consequence of rejecting the rule of law in favor of illiberal governing
methods for Russian rulers was that the state never fully surrendered authority to the,
then, growing prominence of ‘specialists’ amongst the intelligentsia in exchange for an
increased presence in regulation of their behavior. Instead, the regime sought cultivation
of talent from within, drawing upon an ever-meager supply of statisticians, rural doctors,
and land surveyors14 (to name a few) to carry out desired directives from above. This
reliance on internal structures to fulfill initiatives made the regime especially concerned
with issues of ‘certification’ in terms of knowledge circulation within the empire.
Examining two different areas of the central bureaucratic mission in the 19 th century, the
military efforts in the Caucasus and the Imperial Census of 1897, one can see the
ambiguity and shifting conceptions of Russian imperial identity that occurred during this
period. In this regard Romanov rulers, much like their Hapsburg counterparts, instituted
13Laura Engelstein, Slavophile Empire
14See several articles on this subject- cross dressing professionals, priests, rural doctors
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forms of the state/society relationship that, later, helped establish norms for 20 th century
nationalism policy in that region.
“Going Native”
As the Russian empire expanded, slowly, in the east its domain came to
incorporate several distinct ethnic minority groups. This Russian ‘frontier’ presented
challenges to establishing an inclusive imperial identity, as the cultural exchange between
diverse groups and the ruling authorities was by no means unidirectional and often
produced intermixing of norms best explained by the ‘going native’ phenomena in the
Caucasus’ region over the course of the 18th through mid 19th centuries. Mikail Mamedov
explained this ‘native’ effect on both Russian civil and military personnel stationed in the
Caucasus.15 As more and more Russians (a term Mamedov explains could encompass
Ukrainians, Baltic Germans, or Lithuanians) spent time serving the state in this eastern
region, their habits and customs adjusted to incorporate local norms of dress and horse
riding in addition to other cultural trends with regards to conducting warfare and seeking
a bride. This process of ‘going native’ only exemplifies the problems Russian rulers had
in articulating a civic identity rooted in ethnic conceptions.
One of the reasons ‘Russians’ went ‘native’ was that Caucasus clothes and
horsemanship better suited the climate and terrain, especially in conducting warfare
maneuvers, and assumption of local cultural norms allowed Russian servicemen to
continue, in form, previous methods of Cossack rule. Instead of fighting this trend and
becoming preoccupied with the mixing of cultural identities, the ruling authorities instead
15 Mikail Mamedov Going Native article
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demonstrated what Mamedov called the “flexibility of Russian imperial consciousness”16
and made Georgian/Caucasus dress the standard uniform of stationed troops in 1866.
Even Russification policies exemplified this flexibility, as their abandonment in the
Caucasus region in 1845 revealed a relative ease with which Russian elites incorporated
native traditions into their own practices. Unlike their Western European brethren, who
over the course of the 19th century develop an increasing sense of separateness vis a vis
their colonial subjects, Russian rulers, while ultimately conceiving of imperial identity in
ethnic terms, tended to regard their relationship with the numerous ethnic minorities in
what Mamedov calls “cosmopolitan European terms.”17
While Russian authorities certainly held an intermixing cultural relationship with
ethnic minorities, evidenced by Mamedov and others18, I believe this practice was less
influenced by a desire to espouse ‘cosmopolitan European’ ideals than by an acceptance
of the common situation between Russian bureaucratic desire and means; with few actual
central agents as compared to the native population size and area of imperial territory
they lived on, many Russian policies towards minorities in the east possessed a surprising
degree of flexibility. As a result, while the authorities desired to assimilate native
populations and were not afraid of cross-cultural mixing, over the course of the 19 th
century increasing frustrations with the bureaucracy’s inability to achieve the goals of
imperial civic identity gave rise to a desire to simplify the identity question by placing its
terms in ethnic conceptions, causing the previous goals of assimilation to mutate into one
16 Ibid, ???
17 Ibid, ???
18 Ibid & other articles on minority interaction
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of similarity.19 Under this framework, minorities could never supplant the ethnic Russian
in terms of central identity, but they could mimic those forms around which this
unattainable central identity built itself upon, like Orthodox worship or primary use of the
Russian language, in order to make invisible those qualities that differed in their
ethnic/religious/political character or beliefs. Russians could feel less threatened by so-
called ‘cultural contamination’ occurring with its servicemen in the Caucasus’ because,
ultimately, ethnic Russians would remain ethnically distinct from the native population
that could only hope for acceptance as a ‘similar’ being and not as a ‘civic’ equal. This
‘similarity’ discourse became a tsarist legacy the Bolsheviks drew upon in formulating
their nationalism policy, a process described in more detail below, and the terms of its
existence crystallized over the interpretation of the 1897 imperial census results.
1897 Imperial Census
Perhaps one of the best sources for establishing, then understood, conceptions of
identity in multi-ethnic empires are census records. During the storied history of
Romanov rule, only one census managed to be taken of the complete imperial lands in
1897. A relatively simple form, the census exemplified attitudes towards the rising
nationality question while also acting as an impetus for internal debate on issues related
to ethnic identity and the potential for assimilation. Statisticians working on the project
represented, both, the 'internal' specialist used and preferred by tsarist authorities as well
as a potential source for more 'liberal' reforms in the area of 'civil nationalism'. Taken
together, the multifaceted nature of the 1897 census reveals the contradictory nature of
the Romanov configuration of state/society that, on one level, attempted to foster an
19 Deloria, ???
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imperial identity intended to unite disparate populations, and, on another level,
pronounced non-ethnic Russians as capable of similarity but not assimilation.
This paradoxical pursuit of an inclusive civic, yet exclusive ethnic, formulation of
identity is best seen through the debates on the implementation and interpretation of the
census results. To begin, census takers were primarily concerned with only with the
elaboration of three questions pertaining to language, estate and religion. Language
claims, generally accurate, did little to help statisticians understand the 'national' content
of the Russian Empire. Estate classifications also proved problematic, as respondents,
knowing full well the potential benefits of being classified as a 'peasant' or other official
'estate' identity, often provided answers that did not truly reflect their situation. The
estate system, once held as the defining feature of the Russian state/society configuration,
suddenly found itself incapable of accounting for the increasing diversity and concern of
the authorities with regards to minority populations. Reviewing the results, Romanov
rulers became alarmed at the seeming fluidity the estate category provided in terms of
identity and responded by defining 'Russian-ness' as an ethnic category instead of a more
wide-ranging civic definition. This move de facto ended the quest in multi-ethnic
Imperial Russia to create a 'unifying myth' among the disparate populations and
ultimately affirmed the notion that nationality was singularly and irrevocably linked to
ethnicity.
************
Having quickly surveyed the impact Liberalism's question on the state/society
configuration wrought upon the the Hapsburg and Romanov empires, lets take a moment
to pause and summarize the points made above. Essentially, the problem of redefining
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the relationship between state and society in a multi-ethnic empire centered on the
question of identity. As Liberalist ideals spread through the Western European nations,
highlighting the role of the individual and establishing the idea of a 'civil society', states
such as Britain and France coalesced around a shared history and created a nation-state
predicated on civic identity. Even relatively new players on the scene, like Germany,
embraced a civic identity in the creation of their nation-states. However, in such diverse
multi-ethnic empires as governed by the Hapsburgs and Romanovs, building an inclusive
civic identity contrasted sharply with absolutist governing models that depended on
exclusivity and, increasingly over the 19th century, 'ethnic' conceptions of identity that
promoted 'similarity' over 'assimilation'. These absolutist regimes, because of their
relative minority 'majority' status in their own lands, sought to address the question of
Liberalism and its pursuant reconfiguration of the state/society by integrating limited
portions of the Liberal program into their illiberal governing methods.
In the early 19th century, for both Hapsburg and Romanov, this amounted to
limited attempts at instilling a unified 'civic' identity based largely on the positivist theme
and promise of assimilation. When these initial efforts failed to achieve spectacular
results, evidenced by the creation of the 'Dual-Monarchy' in Austrian lands and the
endorsement of 'Orthodoxy, Nationalism, Autocracy' in Russian domains, policies and
hopes for assimilation found replacement with more muted ambitions of simple
similarity. As the late 19th and early 20th centuries demonstrated, this shift to a doctrine
that precluded ethnic minorities ascension to the level of citizens, instead of subjects,
heralded the basic rejection of liberalistic value even while the forms of liberal
governance were slowly expanded. At the conclusion of the First World War, when both
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Romanov and Hapsburg empires faced disintegration, this illiberal legacy left models
both the newly emerging Eastern Europe nation-states and the civil-war torn Bolshevik
cadres would use in the articulation of state/society relationships expressed in the
formulation and practice of nationalism policy. It is this early 20 th century period, in
which new actors take stage, that the second portion of this essay turns to and evaluates.
*************************************
Aftermaths often prove deceptive, especially at the conclusion of war-time, in
helping the historian interpret a pivotal moment. The aftermath of World War I in the
lands of the rapidly defunct Austro-Hungarian empire proved no different. The Entente
powers, weary and war-torn, saw in the dissolution of the multi-ethnic Hapsburg empire
an opportunity to not only implement Western Liberal ideas on legitimate expressions of
nationalism, evidenced by use of 'self-determination' as a certified process, but also create
a 'cordon sanitare', a buffer zone between Western Europe and the newly emerged
Bolshevik state taking root in the corpse of Romanov rule. It was the Entente's wish to
create out of Eastern Europe a new bastion of Western Liberalism, one that would avoid
the mistakes of the past Austro-Hungarian and Romanov rulers by enshrining at the core
minority rights for the disparate ethnic populations, many of whom found themselves
citizens of new nation-states that never before existed. Yet these policies were far from
benevolent, as minority rights were believed not to be a means for preserving the
integrity of ethnic distinctiveness but instead as a guarantor against disruptive separatists
feeling that could occur before the ethnic populations fully assimilated into their new
nation-state's culture.
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The Bolsheviks, on the other hand, isolated from the West by ideological fervor
and belief in the 'future war'20, themselves had to contend with how to appropriately deal
with ethnic minority populations who, traditionally, held either weak or disruptive ties to
the former Imperial government. Recent historical research strongly suggests that the
Bolshevik regime lifted Imperial forms of governance and organization and re-purposed
them to fit their needs. In the realm of nationalist policy, the Soviet government, just like
the Entente, recognized the danger of unchecked separatist feeling and sought to define
this potential disruption through the implementation of korenizatsiia, or indigiousness,
program.
In this second portion of the essay, both the Western created nation-states of
Eastern Europe and the Bolshevik korenizatsiia represent the endurance of state/society
configurations created in the 19th century. A brief survey of both systems reveals that
previous 'certification' methods employed by the multi-ethnic empires in Austria-Hungary
and Imperial Russia thrived in the more modern conception of the nation-state in the
West, and the nation in the Soviet Union. Far from being new state/society
configurations, these 20th century nations brought continuity to old forms through
continuation of the circulation process described in the beginning of the essay. For newly
minted nation-states, this involved ethnic demarcations of citizens and those not yet
'assimilated', prompting irridentist claims, as in the case of Hungary, and 'dualist' modes
of power sharing, in the case of Yugoslavia, which nonetheless yielded more authority to
one ethnicity over the other. With the Bolsheviks, initial forays into a far more 'liberal'
nationality policy eventually yielded to an imperial conception of the 'Great Russian' as
20 Discuss how Bolshevik leaders had fixation on this future war, impacted choices of governance and development. Stone, “Hammer and Rifle” Others too.
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being the only ethnicity worthy of promotion and emulation among the other Soviet
Republics. Briefly examining the initial developments in both Eastern Europe and the
Soviet Union in the 20th century reveals that so-called 'new configurations' of Liberalism,
expressed in nationality policy, were little more than extensions of illiberal models
conjured by the previous rulers of empire.
The New States of Eastern Europe
Woodrow Wilson, in his surprise declaration of the Fourteen Points, ushered in
one of the grandest reconfigurations of political reality Europe had seen in the past 300
years. The specific point establishing self-determination as a means of legitimizing
formulation of new states at once eschewed the old 'Concert of Europe' in favor of a far
more liberal conception of the state/society relationship, while also shoehorning new
states into minority protection policies designed not to facilitate tolerance but
assimilation of smaller populations into the larger, 'certified', nation-states.21 In this
manner, self-determination became an extension of the certification process by which
certain minority groups deemed worthy by the Western powers received the ultimate
prize of a nation-state, while those groups deemed unworthy were forced to settle with
either ethnic amalgamations of nation-states or outright rejection of their identity in favor
of assimilationist policies. To be certain, the increased presence and ability of once
minority populations, such as the Czechs and the Poles, to form their own nation state
marked an increased presence of liberalism in the region, those populations not deemed
21 Of course 'certification' meant many things to the Allied powers- on one hand, they desired to implement a Western European style nation-state network on top of the populations of Eastern Europe, while on the other, they were bound by secret treaties and promises made to various factions in exchange for support against the Central Powers. The peace settlement also revealed a preference for those nations deemed 'successors' of the Western ideal, with other minority populations, such as the Slovenes or Slovaks, essentially denied a seat at the negotiation table. See Bidelux and Jefferies, 410.
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worthy or those in isolated pockets of minorities located in the territories of created
nations found little consolation with the new liberal order.
Perhaps most striking about the new nation-states was the use of old state/society
models in establishing their own nationality policies. One of the key differences between
the formation of nation-state in Eastern Europe and the rest of Western Europe was the
substitution of ethnic qualifiers for membership in place of civic conceptions that would
have allowed non-homogenous populations the ability to transform from subject to
citizens. This, essentially, was the same process followed by both Austrian and
Hungarian rulers in their previous decades of rule and when ethnic populations were
given the opportunity to escape their own forced assimilation experience and allowed to
develop their own sense of culture and shared history they, in turn, instituted
assimilationist policies that oppressed the smaller group of minorities in their new
territory.22
It should also be noted that the formulation of post-war Eastern Europe was
highly influenced by the various secret agreements made by representatives of the
Entende powers with the minority populations of the Austro-Hungarian empire that
promised land spoils in exchange for support against the Central powers. Hence the
curious situation of Romania, who managed to secure and win large territorial gains
simply entering the war, very late, on the side of the West. Eastern European
representatives that possessed credibility with the powers of Britain and France, like
those from the Serbian exile government and Czech emigres like Thomas Masaryk, were
able to both secure their 'place at the table' during the Paris peace negotiations and deny
22 Ibid, 395.
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other minorities, such as the Croats, Slovenes and Slovaks, any chance to argue their case
for separate nation-states.
The result was an Eastern Europe that, on face, fulfilled the forms of Western
Liberalism but failed to mimic the essential content. The following decades after the
First World War would see nation-states of Eastern Europe quarrel with each other over
territorial disputes, economic disputes (exacerbated by both French and American
abandonment of the region, politically and financially, at the conclusion of the Paris
Peace talks), and ethnic disputes, as the redrawing of Eastern Europe, already a hodge-
podge of peoples, left several pockets of minority ethnic enclaves in larger ethnically-
different 'host' states. As Joseph Rothschild and Nancy Wingfield noted in their work,
Return to Diversity,
“But in the so-called nation-states of the interwar era, an ethnic minority seemed fated, short of war and a redrawing of frontiers, to remain disadvantaged forever, not simply in the neutral statistical sense, but also in terms of political, economic, cultural, and sometimes even civic and legal deprivations. Hence it tended to seek succor from its ethnic and cultural 'mother country' against the pressures of the 'host' state, and thus the dispute was internationalized.”23
While some states, such as Poland, envisioned giving their non-homogenous ethnic
pockets greater autonomy rights, conflicts with the Soviet Union and larger border
disputes eventually pushed authorities to embrace a vision of restoring pre-partion
borders and an emphasis of 'nationalizing' state structures and peoples. Contested ethnic
areas were settled with 'loyal' Polish citizens, a colonization attempt reminiscent of
similar tactics used by both the Hapsburg and Romanov dynasties in establishing, then,
23 Joseph Rothschild and Nancy Wingfield, Return to Diversity 8.
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'loyal' imperial subjects in border areas in order to speed along assimilation and
integration of the disparate populations.24
Thus, the new nation-states of Eastern Europe found themselves implementing
nationalism policies that mimicked the ethnic-centered definitions of citizenship
embraced by the illiberal, absolutist empires of the 19 th century. However, unlike the
Romanovs and Hapsburgs, the nation-states of Eastern Europe found some measure of
legitimacy in pursuit of this old program as their content and form, on face, espoused the
same liberal ideals then being advocated by the victorious Western powers. As shall be
seen in the following section, the Soviet Union also attempted to embrace portions of the
liberal program for legitimacy among the ethnically diverse peoples of the former
Russian empire, yet they, too, failed to eschew the illiberal tendencies of the former
Tsarist regime when defining the core characteristics of Soviet identity.
Soviet Korenizatsiia
Unlike the newly created nation-states of Eastern Europe, the Bolshevik forces
had to first fight and endure four years of civil war (1917-1921) before they could
address pressing nationality claims. However, once their power consolidated, the
Bolsheviks could implement programs that, on face, were far more liberal with regards to
minority populations. Knowing full well the failures of the Imperial regime to quell
nationalist sentiment, the Bolsheviks introduced the policy of koreinizatsiia, or
'indigiousness', in an attempt to provide a state/society configuration that would prove
capable of both satisfying local demands for a more autonomous role in their governance
and facilitating the implementation of ambitious social consciousness identity
24 Nick Baron and Peter Gatrell, “Population Displacement, State Building, and Social Identity” 77-79.
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construction, i.e. creation of the new 'Soviet Citizen'. Over time, the implementation of
korenizatsiia produced a schematic dichotomy that divided the USSR into West/East
categories, much like those that existed during tsarist rule, and the initial desire to
promote distinctiveness whilst codifying Soviet uniformity gave way to prioritization of
the Great Russian identity over others.
By tracing the development of 'korenizatsiia' and evaluating its ideals and goals
against the that of national programs implemented in Eastern Europe and Africa, I argue
that policy solutions devised by the Bolsheviks, despite its initial supra-liberal approach,
relied upon tsarist conceptions of the state/society configuration- ultimately producing
similar governance instabilities as experienced by the Romanov dynasty. By looking the
specific example of korenizatsiia implementation in Soviet Turkmenistan, one can clearly
see that the Bolshevik ideological goals did not match the reality on the ground. Much
like their European counterparts, the Bolsheviks, upon realization of the disconnect
between expectation and implementation, reverted to familiar patterns of behavior first
expressed by the previous illiberal regimes of the 19th century.
Soviet Turkmenistan and the African Colonial Comparison
One of the primary goals of korenizatsiia, according to Bolshevik ideology, was
to promote class consciousness and development of Soviet identity in an attempt to
defuse tribal conflicts and dismantle land holding establishments. The Turkmen, a
nomadic group that used extensive kinship ties to reinforce their social system,
represented for the Bolsheviks a group not suitable for autonomous rule but capable of
being reshaped by social policies. The idea was to categorize the Turkmen people, who
by nature did not define themselves in terms of class or nation, into western Russian
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defined groups of poor, middle, and rich (the infamous kulak). Once sifted into the
various categories, the Bolsheviks could then target the 'poor' and promote them to
leadership positions in an attempt to inculcate proletarian values amongst a group
believed to be held down by tribal inequalities. While this plan looked impressive on
paper and in discussion, implementation of the policy among the Turkmen proved the
error of ideological assumptions held by the Soviet leadership, producing effects in the
nomadic society contradictory to the stated goals.
Take, for example, Soviet efforts at instituting new land holding practices among
Turkmen tribes. The real issue behind land use in the traditional society centered on
water rights and previous to the incursion in this area by Bolshevik agents there existed a
complex sharing system along the Turkmen tied to kinship groupings and behaviors of
social reciprocity. As the central authorities sought to extend and regulate the irrigation
system they inadvertently exacerbated social divides among kinship groups, as some
Turkmen deemed 'poor' or 'kulak' were either given more access or less access,
respectively, to the water supply. The new arrangement, while inline with stated
Bolshevik goals of promoting Soviet identity, blithely trampled on previously established
networks and relationships held by the Turkmen which, in turn, promoted conflict
between tribes instead of defusing previously assumed tensions.25
Of course, one of the primary reasons the korenizatsiia policy for the Turkmen
promoted more conflict than it resolved was that is defined tribal people as incapable of
autonomous rule, thus necessitating direct influence by Bolshevik authorities in order to
25 There is also the example of using Turkmen to staff local, Soviet administrative offices. By assigning positions of power to those deemed class appropriate, i.e. the 'poor' Turkmen, Soviet policies ignored established lines of power and created yet another source of inter-tribal conflict. See Adriene Edgar ???
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bring about the desired societal change. This 'top-down' reform for populations deemed
incapable of developing the proper identity harkens back to attitudes held by Imperial
authorities with regards to non-Russian populations. While the Bolsheviks assumed that
implementing land reform and affirmative action reforms would spur the Turkmen to
adopt new characteristics of Soviet identity, when such developments failed to occur in a
timely manner the Bolsheviks could do little more than begin to implement reforms and
changes by instituting, in the Turkmen lands, ethnic-Russian agents. Whereas the
Imperial regime satisfied itself with only minimal contact in the Turkmen lands in
exchange for law and order, Soviet authorities sought direct engagement in shaping the
content and identity of the minority population. As Adeeb Khalid states in his article on
Early Soviet Central Asia, the Bolsheviks sought to integrate Central Asia into Soviet
hegemonic orbit by waging a conquering war on difference.26
The quest for 'similarity', another holdout from tsarist times, thus reemerged in the
korenizatsiia program implemented in the 'backwards' Eastern lands. Indeed, many
aspects of the Bolsheviks program among the Turkmen echoed similar motivations and
ultimate failures encountered by the previous tsarist government in attempting to instill a
'civic' identity. Initial failure in the attempt to fabricate new social consciousness and
sense of Soviet identity in the traditionally tribal Turkmen peoples resulted in direct rule
via ethnic Russian agents of the Soviet government. Terry Martin states that the dilemma
of the Soviet nationality policy lie in its embrace of both an extra-territorial personal
definition of nationality and established definitions of territory linked with governing
power tied to ethnicity of the inhabitants. Hoping to avoid the assimilationist pressures
26 Adeeb Khalid- article???
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encountered by 'minority rights' policies found in the West and the new nation-states of
Eastern Europe, the Soviets korenizatsiia program actually exacerbated ethnic tensions
and did little to build towards the utopian future desired by Bolshevik leaders.27 The
failure to inculcate a strong, universalist identity among the varied peoples of the Soviet
Union in the 20's and 30's led to embracing of the ethnic-Russian as the desired archetype
smaller groups or nations should aspire to be. This shift would, in effect, provide the
backdrop to the crushing of 'alternative paths to socialism' expressed by various Eastern
European nations and derided by nervous leaders in the central Soviet bureaucracy.
Yet beyond portending the future, the failure of korenizatsiia to produce the
desired results among minority populations found some measure of congruence with
similar policies pursued by the new nation-states of Eastern Europe and the colonial
powers of Africa.28 As stated above, the Western powers who dictated the terms of peace
after the Second World War predicated establishment of new Eastern European nation-
states upon acceptance of 'minority protection' policies. While this seemed, on face,
similar to the desires expressed by the Soviet policy of korenizatsiia, namely a way to
ease separatist ethnic tensions, in actual practice the two methods diverged wildly as the
new masters of Eastern Europe didn't want to carve out a special space for minorities as
much as they wanted to pressure the smaller populations into assimilation. Soviet
27 Terry Martin noted how korenizatsiia policies implemented, first, in the Ukraine produced debates over the role of Russian population concentrations in participation of governing now ethnically defined territorial units. While korenizatsiia was meant to defuse tensions, its reliance upon stipulating local ethnic control of government actually promoted 'us vs. them' mentalities as the establishment of a larger supra-national Soviet identity failed to take hold. National Soviets, “established a crucial connection between ethnic identity and administrative control of territory.” Affirmative Action Empire, 42.
28 Information for this portion of the essay comes from Peter Blitstein “Cultural Diversity and the Interwar Conjecture: Soviet Nationality Policy in its Comparative Context” Slavic Review vol. 65 no. 2 (Summer 2006)
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authorities, on the other hand, sought to create a minority space but one that ultimately
required guidance from the Communist Party.
In the case of African colonial policy, the European nations desired to implement
gradual change that would produce a cadre of low-level workers (peasants, petty clerks,
and laborers) suitable for work in administrative support for the West. They did not
embrace ideals of self-determination or minority protection, as were espoused for the new
nations of Eastern Europe, fearing the consequences transformation of Africans into
'model Europeans' would bring to the concept of European rule. Western powers also
viewed African wage-laborers and other proletariat as 'detribalized' and free from
traditional networks of influence (which the colonial powers co-opted to a great degree),
providing both another source of paranoia and reason to avoid implementing
modernization or nationalization policies in colonial territories.29 The Soviets sought
almost the exact opposite, with their korenizatsiia policy dedicated to producing a model
and modern 'European' citizen, albeit one with a universalist identity couched in Soviet
terms. Viewing the creation of autonomous republics, on one level, as a construct that
would help 'vent' separatist/nationalist pressure and, on another level, a temporary hold-
over sustaining traditional cultures until proper inculcation produced a new Soviet
identity, Bolshevik leaders hoped to avoid the mistakes of the tsarist past by vigorously
embracing some liberalist norms in the pursuit of building a supranational identity. Yet,
as the above demonstrates, the initial failures to secure this supranational ideal led the
Soviet government to embrace a Russian-centered program of preferential treatment.
Conclusions
29 Peter Blitstein, “Cultural Diversity and the Interwar Conjecture: Soviet Nationality Policy in its Comparative Context” Slavic Review 65(2): 283-288
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The rise of Nationalism, tied to but behind the rise of Liberalism, commanded
attention by both Western and Eastern European powers as the very foundation of the
social contract between ruler and ruled came into question. A new focus on society,
instead of the state, prompted ruling powers of the day to come up with configurations of
the state-society relationship that would satisfy their local needs and produce, perceived,
benefits liberal economic and governmental doctrines promised. At the center of the
change was the question of population, specifically who constituted a citizen of the newly
established entity of the nation. While previous medieval regimes focused more on
elaborations of central power as the defining aspect of identity, modern states began to
see the benefits defining population as the main aspect of identity. Napoleon recognized
this benefit in his pithy statement, regarding how a man will not give his life for small
amounts of money or distinction, “You must speak to the soul in order to electrify him.”
Nationalism was the soul of the population expressed.
Whereas both France and Britain, with their large concentration of homogenous
populations, adopted more civic forms of national identity (albeit in terms that were still
largely ethnically defined, and, of course, not across their entire empire's holdings) the
Hapsburg and Romanov rulers, governing territories of distinctly non-homogenous
populations, came to embrace exclusive ethnic definitions of citizenship over inclusive
civic ones due mainly to early failures in attempting to instill an 'imperial identity' that
surmounted ethnic loyalties. Austria's failed bid for German ascendency, exemplified in
the military loss at Konnigratz, led to the creation of an Austro-Hungarian dualist
configuration of power that increasingly pursued ethnic-centered assimilationist policies
amongst minority groups living in each section of the 'new' empire. Imperial Russia, too,
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made initial attempts at pursuing a more civic-centered definition of citizen, yet
ultimately found the potential empowerment of disparate minorities to be a threat to
established institutions of Imperial power. The result in both empires was an
assimilationist policy that favored 'similarity' yet denied equality, all the while seeking to
obliterate distinctiveness of the targeted 'foreign' populations.
World War I changed the political boundaries of the empires in question, but
failed to enact similar change on the models of governance handed down from the
defunct ruling regimes. In both the new nation-states of Eastern Europe and the
autonomous republics of the Bolshevik Soviet Union, supposedly new implementations
of the liberal quest for nationalism embraced familiar illiberal configurations of the state-
society relationship.