Did the Soviet Union Russify Other Nationalities? - Cold War DOCUMENTARY

patriotism is when love of your own people comes first nationalism when hate for people other than your own comes first well this is a quote attributed to a frenchman charles de gaulle it becomes quite interesting to consider this in the context of the soviet union the ussr was a multi-ethnic country some would say empire that had to balance a diverse multitude of ethnicities within a changing framework of what it meant to be soviet i'm your host david and today we are going to talk about the soviet union and its relationship to nationalism this is the cold war and like the cold war the news we get is often sensationalized or partisan with news outlets driven by financial need to get clicks on a headline echo chambers are being created where neighbors don't see the same information on the same news story creating divisions thankfully ground news is attempting to solve this issue ground news is a first of its kind website and app that lets you compare how any news story is being covered across the political spectrum and it's not just a news aggregator it's a tool with a ton of easy to use features to help you be more confident you're getting the full picture follow the issues and places you care about most and use the bias distribution chart to show you which media outlets are reporting on an issue and where these outlets fall on the political spectrum our favorite feature is the blind spot feed where you can see stories that are under-reported by either side of the political spectrum essentially giving you a behind-the-scenes peek into how the media really shapes history if you're looking to escape the endless partisan media cycle then check out ground news by visiting ground.news coldwar or click the link in the description to download the free app nationalism can be defined as an ideology that emphasizes loyalty devotion or allegiance to a nation or nation-state and holds that such obligations outweigh other individual or group interests marxism however rejects nationalism characterizing it as a bourgeois ideology in marx's theory nations are expected to disappear as communism becomes ascendant but marxism also recognizes that was going to take quite some time to occur so the soviet government needed to strike a balance to create a framework that could accommodate both the advancement of the new soviet citizen as well as persistent nationalist sentiment the founder of the ussr vladimir lenin once called the russian empire the prison of the peoples following the collapse of the empire those prisoners from poland and finland and europe to the peoples across central asia to the pacific and everywhere in between looked for ways to assert their independence or at least autonomy as the civil war raged across russia and the former empire the approach that the whites took was quite different than that employed by the reds the white guard continued to see russia as united and indivisible and had no plans to tolerate the independence of nations they saw as being part of russia as many had been for centuries the bolsheviks on the other hand saw this nationalism as a tool that could be used to advance the revolutionary cause and their aims in the civil war to help win over non-russians to the red army the bolsheviks endorsed support for self-determination for those non-russians they were taking advantage of great russian chauvinism that had been endemic in the empire great russian chauvinism was an early soviet concept promoted by men like lenin and stalin that held that the dominant exploiting classes of the nation holding a dominant sovereign position in the state declaring their nation as the superior nation that definition is from the great soviet encyclopedia by the way basically it was the idea that in the empire ethnic russians were dominant and would remain so over other ethnic groups on the 21st of november 1917 the soviet government adopted the declaration of the rights of the peoples of russia recognizing the equality and sovereignty of the peoples of the russian empire recognizing their right to self-determination and pledged to abolish all ethnic and religious based privileges now as most of you are fully aware despite this declaration after the bolsheviks won the civil war they went on to destroy nascent independent republics across the caucasus belarus and ukraine occupying them and much of the former territory of the russian empire including parts of poland and finland now the soviet union was formally established in december 1922 with the largest national territories joining the union as de jour independent republics each of which had the right to secede smaller national territories became autonomous units within the union republics in the early years the soviet government pursued a policy of accelerating the social economic political and cultural development of what it considered to be backward ethnic groups it also stated its rejection of the assimilation of the peoples of the soviet union it was a policy that envisaged support towards the education of local party and professional cadres of mass schooling and literacy campaigns the creation of written alphabets for ethnic groups and languages that did not have one as well as other policies designed to push different nations towards faster modernization so what did this include well for example turkic nations were encouraged to switch to the latin alphabet seen as more modern but not linked to cyrillic and its association to russification in other areas ethnic quotas for both university admissions and state workplaces were set these policies were widely known as correnezazia or nativization although the historian dr terry martin has dubbed it the affirmative action empire gorden izzatia aimed to provide legitimacy and support for the soviet government in the peripheral regions of the fledgling country demonstrating its advantages over the now defunct russian empire it also hoped to show higher standards of living and greater representation and opportunity in regions that were so-called divided nations ethnic nations like azerbaijan ukraine and belarus had significant populations living across borders outside of the soviet union it was hoped that kore nazarzia would help to encourage these populations to move across the border into the soviet union there was an acute need from soviet leadership to rapidly modernize the country there was a tremendous gap in the level of development between major urban centers like moscow and leningrad and the rural areas of the union republics which were almost entirely agrarian this lack of development combined with the size of the soviet union meant that there were entire regions especially in the early days of the soviet union which were hardly impacted at all by policies directed from the center but despite this not insignificant obstacle the goal of modernization and the building of communism required the mobilization of the entire state as a starting point educating the populace to provide everyone with at least a basic level of literacy became a primary goal not only was it required to spread the teachings of the new state and its associated policies but a literate populace was a more mobile and productive one able to shift their resources to where they were needed in the state okay so you'll recall i mentioned a few minutes ago about how soviet policy during and after the civil war was to recognize and support the development of both national and ethnic groups across the new country well tied to this was the creation of national elites who were not only leaders in their ethnic and national communities but were also deeply loyal to the state during the 1920s the bolsheviks made the decision to recognize each of the 169 recognized nationalities each with their own official language and alphabet in some cases these were languages that were already widely accepted as national languages well in other cases it was the most popular spoken dialect of an ethnic group that was chosen now the mass education that was undertaken was conducted in both the national language of the region as well as in russian in order to ensure a lingua franca across the country cultural programming including novels poems and films were created in these languages as were newspapers writers filmmakers poets scholars and artists working in these languages became members of the national elite histories were written taking revolutionary heroes of past eras especially progressives and reformers and not only glorifying them but transforming them into the cornerstone of national histories in the words of historian dr ronald sunni the modern myth makers were no longer the priests and scribes of the old demonic ethni their place was taken by the purveyors of language the poets and philologists lexicographers and grammarians historians and novelists academics and journalists and lawyers whose resoldetra derived from a capacity for critical discourse and for linguistic meanings so gordon azazio was the active government policy in the 1920s and into the 1930s but then things began to change as stalin tightened his centralized control over the soviet union it meant a shift in strategy as the purges began correlation although still officially law began to be ignored at the same time non-russian leaders across the republics were targeted on the grounds of repressing russians and other minorities this turn towards russification was meant to ensure the loyalty of the russian people in the government's industrialization and collectivization campaigns the concept of great russia began to appear under the slogan brotherhood of the people with russia playing the role of the big brother in the soviet family of nations 1937 sapravda the newspaper of the communist party published the following russian culture enshrines the culture of other people the russian language has become the language of world revolution lenin wrote in russian stalin writes in russian russian culture has become international where it is the most advanced the most human so much for equality of all peoples has had been decreed in 1917 russian became a mandatory subject in non-russian schools the soviet anthem exclusively mentioned russia dr martin notes that quote russians became the first among equals sorrows like ivan the terrible and peter the great russian military leaders like suvarov kutuzov and alexander nevsky writers such as pushkin and tolstoy all figures who used to be vilified as the remnants of a past era started to be glorified once again almost all written languages were forced to shift to cyrillic script russification became a policy that persisted through the great patriotic war and beyond okay so that was the change in policy from the center good for russians not so good for non-russians and how was all this received you probably don't need three guesses to figure it out the gradual russification the injustices accompanying both industrialization and collectivization which included what many see as famines targeted at specific ethnic communities the purges which resulted in the murder of thousands of national elites and intelligentsias from both the pre-soviet and soviet generations all of these increased anti-soviet resentment but although this resentment manifested itself in things like ukrainian nationalists organizing themselves into military units to fight against the soviets during the second world war the majority of soviet citizens remained loyal to the state and to comrade stalin for many however this loyalty was misplaced as waves of repressions took place during the war 61 nations and ethnic groups found themselves subjected to deportations of varying scales accused of unreliability treason and even collaboration with the fascists millions of crimean tatars chechens english kalmuks balkars and others were deported to central asia dumped into unfamiliar settings with little provision for their well-being up to 46 of all deported crimean tatars died in the first year and a half after deportation even crimean tatar soldiers returning from the front at the end of the war found themselves being deported to the east in the lands that had been emptied ethnic russians were relocated to repopulate those territories it took until khrushchev's ascension to power for these nationalities to be rehabilitated but even then many nations took years to win the right of return to their original homelands including the crimean tatars and meshetian turks for the jews and the volga germans they struggled for decades for the ability to leave the soviet union altogether to permanently relocate to israel and to germany these nationalist movements began a process over the coming decades that would put so much strain on the very fabric of the soviet union that it would eventually rip it apart the crimean tatars were among the first to mobilize creating mass petitions holding meetings with soviet officials and even staging public protests all as a means to put pressure on the government but they were not alone in the wake of the great patriotic war small or marginalized groups began to organize ukraine became a hotbed of nationalist movements with the ultra-nationalist ukrainian insurgent army the upa carrying out an armed insurgency in the western portion of the republic into the 1950s in addition to the upa were dozens of smaller organizations demanding ukrainian independence and for the soviet government to respect their national aspirations may 22nd the anniversary of the transfer of the ashes of the great ukrainian poet taras shevchenko from russia to ukraine became a day of commemoration and gathering for ukrainian patriots these gatherings included public demonstrations at the statue of shevchenko in kiev despite the efforts of the authorities to disperse them in the baltic republics annexed by the soviet union in 1940 a drawn-out and bloody resistance was carried out against the soviet regime known as the forest brothers their resistance would carry on throughout the 1940s and into the 1950s in lithuania alone the casualty estimates ranged anywhere between fifty thousand and two hundred and seventy thousand people with an additional three hundred and fifty thousand lithuanians being deported to the east the story of lithuanian resistance is well embodied by the story of petrus paulides starting in 1941 pylitis took up arms against the red army occupiers until the next year when he joined the resistance against the german occupation in 1944 politis renewed his struggle against the reoccupying red army even editing the newspaper of the resistance for freedom in 1946 he was caught and sentenced to 25 years for his crimes against the soviet union but was amnestied and released in 1957. it only took until 1958 for him to be re-arrested for anti-soviet activities and he was once again sentenced to 25 years he was released in 1983 at the age of 79 having spent 35 years in prison for six years of working towards an independent lithuania lithuania and the baltics in general really continued to be a thorn in the side of the communist regime even after the suppression of the forest brothers cases of anti-soviet and pro-lithuanian activities cropped up november 2nd 1956 saw students in vilnius and countess openly protest the soviet invasion of hungary in 1972 thousands gathered in countess to protest not being allowed to attend the funeral of nineteen-year-old romas kalanta who himself had burned himself alive in protest of the soviet occupation of lithuania a few days after that event many lithuanians refused to stand for the soviet anthem played at a volleyball tournament being hosted in vilnius staying in the baltics but moving north into estonia a region renowned for beer brewing and a baffling grammatical structure nationalism created some challenges that would come to the forefront after the collapse of the soviet union estonia had been heavily hit by both deportations and repressions following the collapse of the forest brothers movement many estonians chose to emigrate actually causing a net population loss between 1956 and 1982 but this shrinking population was resolved by relocating ethnic russians into the major cities of the republic by 1979 ethnic estonians made up only 64.7 of the population with ethnic russians composing much of the rest how to manage this large minority has been a quandary since estonian independence other regions and republics saw similar nationalist-driven protests at various times protests in yerevan demanded soviet recognition of the armenian genocide attempts by moscow to modify the official status of georgian as the republic's official language where it met with hundreds of thousands of georgians taking to the streets to object between 1956 and 1982 over 8 000 people were arrested for anti-soviet activity almost all of it driven by nationalist objectives but none of them were successful it wasn't until the reforms introduced in the 1980s under perestroika that would allow brewing nationalist sentiments to blossom and then explode in the soviet union but we'll come back to that now the period of the thaw khrushchev's destalinization saw an end to the blanket persecutions of ethnic minorities many of the deported nations were rehabilitated and allowed to return to their homes even the compulsory learning of russian was revoked we will point out that khrushchev did oversee the last major labor migration of ethnic russians to the union republics in the virgin lands campaign but will also point out that it was driven not by ethnic values but in an attempt to increase food production the period of the thaw also saw a return of these strategies employed in the 1920s the promotion of the various cultures of the various nations and the provision for better opportunities for minorities the upward social mobility of local cadres was encouraged this manifested itself in an unwritten rule where a member of the local cadre would be appointed first secretary of the communist party with an ethic russian appointed as second secretary even the politburo saw more members joining from the peripheries but and here is the but while this was going on there was also a slow form of rustification occurring under the surface while education was available in local languages knowledge of russian was considered essential for any meaningful professional success knowing this parents sent their children to russian language schools the result was that the emerging political and social elites in the union republics spoke russian as a first language so where did that leave the question of nationalism in the soviet union during the cold war period well clearly nationalist sentiments were always present and often heavily linked to anti-soviet and anti-russian sentiments but any meaningful attempts at pro-independence movements at the time were quickly thwarted by the government the soviet state was still too strong and the people not unhappy enough to risk overt political action after all living standards continued to rise and the system continued to work for those who played by its rules in 1972 leonard brezhnev even declared that quote the national question as we inherited from the past has been fully definitely and irreversibly resolved end quote but by the late 1980s as the system failed more and more often pro-independence and patriotic feelings began to gain momentum and grow in strength and prominence soviet policy had inadvertently planted the seeds of their own destruction by allowing the development of national identities they paved the way for ideas of independence and freedom once the various nations no longer gained benefit from the imperial center to return to dr ronald sunni quote when empires which justified their rule as agents of modernity and modernization as instruments of development and progress achieved their stated task too well supplied their subordinated populations with a language of aspiration and resistance and indeed created subjects who no longer required empire in the way the colonizers claimed these growing national movements would grow in prominence and strength throughout the 1980s eventually causing enough strain on the rotten structure of the soviet union to cause its collapse but more on all of this in later episodes we hope you've enjoyed today's episode and to make sure you don't miss all of our future episodes please make sure you subscribe to our channel and have granted the bell button independent rights only to then take them away and then have them restored at a later time but by then too much anger and resentment is built up and the bell button really doesn't want anything to do with you anymore press the bell button anyway i'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of our patrons since without your help none of this would be possible week after week if you aren't a patron please consider supporting us at 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Channel: The Cold War

Views: 123,940

Keywords: soviet, nationalism, how, dealt, Soviet, myths, tv, kaliningrad, russian, expulsion, education, system, Khrushchev, social, reforms, clothed, people, world, war, american, china, famine, chairman, Stalin, Cold War, soviet union, stalin documentary, kings and generals, operation unthinkable, the cold war, world war II, USSR, US, America, capitalism, us, reconstruction, marshal plan, stalin, france, nato, united states, khrushchev, eisenhower, warsaw pact, maclean, spy, cia, 1956, tito, yugoslavia, italy, union, tourism

Id: ynA-8oW3b3g

Length: 22min 42sec (1362 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 29 2022