From Labor's Champion
June 1-15, 1990
By Jim Rosenbaum
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This is the second article in a series on the national question in the Soviet Union. The first article, which appeared in the May 15-30 issue, dealt with the Baltic States. Additional articles will appear in future issues.
The three republics of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan are located in the Caucasus in the south of the Soviet Union. In the last few years, they have been the scene of national rebellion and fights between nationalities. In April of 1989, a massive demonstration in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, demanding respect of their national rights was brutally attacked by government troops. Some 20 demonstrators were brutally clubbed or gassed to death.
For several years now, there have been repeated clashes between Armenians and Azerbaijanis, partly over control of Nagorno-Karabakh, a predominantly Armenian territory located within Azerbaijan. These clashes have led to scores of deaths, including at least 31 people in riots in March of 1988 in Sumgait, Azerbaijan. These are not just "age-old ethnic hatreds" which have broken out with the new "freedom" under Gorbachev, as the bourgeois press would have us believe. Gorbachev himself puts forward the same lie as the Western capitalists do, that these problems are inevitable. He said: "Show me a country without nationalist problems, and I will move there right away."
The stirring up of national strife has always been a favorite means of the ruling classes to prevent the unity of the working people. It is part of the old "divide and rule" policy of the imperialists. The czars of old Russia constantly turned the various peoples of the Caucasus and elsewhere against one another to preserve their empire. Gorbachev has also used this as an excuse to send in troops to "preserve order" and impose emergency rule in Azerbaijan. However, it was government officials in the republic who apparently encouraged the attacks against Armenians in the first place.
The policy of turning one nationality against another was successfully combated by the Bolshevik Party under Lenin and Stalin. They fought for the unity of the workers of all nationalities against the czar and the capitalists, and for the construction of socialism after the revolution in November of 1917. It was Stalin himself who led the Bolsheviks in the Caucasus. Baku, the center of the oil industry and the capital of Azerbaijan, was from early on a center of Bolshevik strength. The city included people of all nationalities. In November, 1917, the workers in Baku, together with the workers in the rest of the Russian empire, seized power. They established the Baku Commune, whose leaders included Stepan Shaumian, an Armenian, Mashad Azizbekov, an Azerbaijani, and A. S. Djaparadze, a Georgian. These three, together with 23 other People's Commissars, were executed when the Commune was overthrown in July of 1918 by the British and internal reactionaries.
In less than three years, the workers in the three republics in the Caucasus had again taken power and set up socialist republics. Lenin said of these republics, in a letter of April 14, 1921: "I permit myself to express the hope that their close alliance will serve as a model of national peace, unprecedented under the bourgeoisie and impossible under the bourgeois system."
The Soviet Union itself was established as a voluntary union of socialist republics. The policy of voluntary union was the flip-side of the right of nations to self-determination, which has always been a fundamental principle of all genuine Marxist-Leninists. After the victory of the Bolsheviks in the Civil War and against imperialist intervention, in 1920, there were several independent Soviet Republics - Russia, the Ukraine, Byelorussia, and Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. In December of 1922, these republics decided to join together into the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, as they determined that such unity was most beneficial for building socialism. They retained their right to secede. Smaller nationalities within each republic formed autonomous regions, with control over their own schools, cultural institutions, etc. Such was also the origin of the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region, formed in 1923 as a predominantly Armenian area lying within Azerbaijan.
The respect for the national rights of all peoples has always been a hallmark of Bolshevik practice. As G. N. Doidjashvili states in his article "Soviet Georgia - A Living Example of the Lenin-Stalin National Policy": "all the nationalities enjoy the same conditions of life. The conditions enjoyed by Armenians living in Georgia, or in Azerbaijan, say, are equally as good as those they would enjoy in their own Republic. Under the Soviet regime, Armenians in Georgia, or Georgians in Armenia, have opportunities of receiving their education in their native languages. They have their own national theatres. They can conduct any business they need in government offices in their own languages. They have the right to vote and be elected to all legislative, administrative, public and political organizations. They have their own newspapers, pamphlets and books printed in their own language. They can freely follow their religious customs, etc., etc." The same facts have been noted by honest bourgeois scholars as well. Thus, William Henry Chamberlin wrote, in an article entitled "Soviet Race and Nationality Policies" (The Russian Review, 1945): "The native language is used in schools, courts, and public business, and the development of national culture is encouraged in literature, the theatre, public festivals, and musical performances. As a general rule the higher officials in these nationality republics are drawn from the dominant nationality. The multi-national character of the Soviet Union also finds recognition in the second chamber of the Soviet Parliament, the Council of Nationalities, where each constituent republic, despite the great discrepancies in population, is represented by twenty-five delegates, with smaller representation for the minor autonomous units.
"This policy of granting full cultural autonomy and placing administration (within the strict limits of Communist rule, of course) in the hands of natives of the various national republics has tended to diminish friction and to create a sense of genuine solidarity among the peoples of the Soviet Union."
The unity of the nationalities inhabiting the Soviet Union was not only reflected in their right to secession, to equality of languages and cultures. A positive program of assisting the development of the more economically backward nationalities was carried out. Russia and other more industrial republics sent materials and technicians to help set up industries in other regions, which would allow them to become more self sufficient. Under the czars, Central Asia in particular was treated as a colony. Uzbekistan, for example, was restricted to growing cotton for export to Russia and abroad. But already by 1940, 1300 major industrial enterprises had been built all over Central Asia, while Azerbaijan's industrial output had expanded 18 times over. This policy was given a further impetus during World War II, when as many people and factories as possible were evacuated from the European areas being overrun by the Nazi invaders and sent to the Urals and Central Asia.
The Tadjiks, before the revolution, were divided into tribes oppressed by czarism and the local officials. Less than 1% of the population was literate. Modern industry was non-existent. The revolution brought large-scale industry, including a machine factory, canning plants, etc. The number of students rose from 400 in 1914 to 328,000 in 1939. The disconnected tribes were united into an independent Tadjik nation, which formed the Tadjik Soviet Socialist Republic in 1929. The people of Turkmenistan went through a similar development. These peoples and others had no literature published in their native languages before the revolution. Afterwards, many books and newspapers were published, and libraries were set-up, in these republics as well as throughout the Soviet Union. (See E. A. Dunayeva, The Collaboration of Nations in the U.S.S.R.) The peoples in the North of Russia, such as the Evenks and the Chukchi, did not even have a written language under czarism, and illiteracy was universal. It was the socialist revolution that freed them from ignorance. New literature and cultures, national in form and socialist in content, bloomed throughout the Soviet Union.
The liberation of women, particularly in Central Asia, moved rapidly ahead. Before the revolution, women in this region had no political or social rights. Illiteracy, extremely high in general, was nearly universal among women. Women had to appear in public veiled. The Bolsheviks helped the women organize against the remnants of feudalism for their full rights. They established compulsory schooling for women as well as men. Huge demonstrations were organized to burn the veils.
These were the policies of genuine socialism under Lenin and Stalin that led to the firm unity of the working people of all nationalities in the Soviet Union. Stalin explained the crucial nature of this. He said, in Foundations of Leninism: "The revolution would not have been victorious in Russia,... had not the Russian proletariat enjoyed the sympathy and support of the oppressed peoples of the former Russian Empire. But to win the sympathy and support of these peoples it had first of all to break the fetters of Russian imperialism and free these peoples from the yoke of national oppression."
The revisionist rulers of the Soviet Union, from Khrushchev to Brezhnev to Gorbachev, have reversed these policies. The Caucasus and Central Asia, and other areas, have again become oppressed nations dominated by the new Russian bureaucratic capitalists and their local agents. While formally the republics still have the right to use their own languages, in practice one must speak Russian to be able to advance economically. In 1986, an uprising broke out in Kazakhstan after the leader of the local revisionist party, a Kazakh, was charged with corruption and replaced by an ethnic Russian. Once again, the government in Moscow has geared economic development to producing what is needed by the center. For example, Uzbekistan is again a region for cotton export controlled locally by a new "cotton mafia." Central Asia and the Caucasus have the highest levels of unemployment, reaching 23% in Uzbekistan and 28% in Azerbaijan. It is such policies of capitalist restoration, not of socialism, which have led to the growing national movements and the national strife in the Soviet Union.
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