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Ethnic and Racial Studies

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Korenizatsiia: Restructuring Soviet nationality policy in

the 1920s
a
George Liber
a
Assistant Professor of History , University of Alabama , UAB Station, Birmingham, AL,
35294, USA
Published online: 13 Sep 2010.

To cite this article: George Liber (1991) Korenizatsiia: Restructuring Soviet nationality policy in the 1920s, Ethnic and Racial
Studies, 14:1, 15-23, DOI: 10.1080/01419870.1991.9993696

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 Korenizatsiia: restructuring Soviet
nationality policy in the 1920s

George Liber

Abstract

In April 1923 the Russian Communist Party formalized the policy of koreniz-
atsiia (indigenization or nativization) in order to defuse the hostility it pro-
voked among the large non-Russian Soviet population during the Civil War.
By promoting non-Russians into leading positions in the party, the govern-
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ment, and the trade unions and by subsidizing the development of distinct
national cultures in the USSR, the party sought to legitimate a predominantly
Russian and urban-based revolution in an overwhelmingly agricultural, multi-
ethnic state. Shortly after introducing korenizatsiia, the party initiated a
full-scale industrialization programme. In the long run, the leaders of the
Communist Party expected that industrialization would successfully integrate
the diverse peoples of the Soviet Union into the socialist order. In practice,
however, the social changes jumpstarted by rapid economic development
strengthened ethnic assertiveness, even among party members. By the late
1920s the emergence of national communisms in the non-Russian republics
and regions threatened to delegitimate Soviet Russian control of the non-
Russian areas and to thwart the All-Union industrialization effort. Stalin,
not surprisingly, then emphasized order over legitimacy and redefined his
claim to legitimacy by giving precedence to the Russians in the USSR.

The Russian Revolution of 1917-1921 was not a single revolution, but

three different revolutions. The political and social upheavals in the
cities, in the countryside, and in the non-Russian regions erupted con-
currently, evolved independently, and developed an antagonistic
relationship to each other (Solodub 1926, p. 119). The Bolsheviks,
overwhelmingly urban, proletarian, and Russian, attained power in a
predominantly agricultural, multi-ethnic state by winning the support
of the Russian and Russified working class in the non-Russian areas.
Even in victory, Bolshevik success over the long term was precarious
unless the ruling party legitimated its power monopoly with the peasants
and the non-Russian nationalities, who constituted nearly half the popu-
lation of the newly formed Soviet state. Only a 'Great Compromise'

Ethnic and Racial Studies Volume 14 Number 1 January 1991

© Routledge 1991 0141-9870/91/1401-0015 $3/1
 16 George Liber
with these groups (as argued forcefully by Lenin) could pave the way
towards a stable Soviet government.
The 'Great Compromise' consisted of the New Economic Policy
directed towards the wary peasants, enacted in March 1921, and a set
of policies oriented towards the non-Russians. The establishment of
the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on 30 December 1922 and the
decisions at the Twelfth Congress of the Russian Communist Party
(Bolshevik) in April 1923 approved three interrelated policies towards
the non-Russians.
The first policy emphasized the national-territorial principle: the
Communist Party and the Soviet government would recognize each
national group's territorial base by creating the separate Ukrainian,
Belorussian, Transcaucasian republics and many autonomous regions
in the Russian republic within the federal structure of the Soviet Union
(Pipes 1968). The second policy was the creation of separate Communist
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Parties within these non-Russian republics. Although these parties were

completely subordinate to the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik)
(later to the All-Union Communist Party), their development re-
affirmed symbolically, if not in reality, the national-territorial principle.
The third policy was the korenizatsiia (indigenization or nativization)
programme. This programme advocated the equality of the non-Russian
languages and cultures vis-a-vis the Russian language and culture. Most
importantly, korenizatsiia sought to enhance the position of the non-
Russians by promoting them into leading positions in the party, the
government, and the trade unions. In short, this policy sought to legit-
imate an urban-based revolution in a predominantly agricultural, multi-
ethnic state by encouraging the development of distinct national cul-
tures.
Korenizatsiia sought to overcome the structural problems experi-
enced by the non-Russians in early Soviet society: the high illiteracy
rates, economic underdevelopment, cultural backwardness, and the
tense relationship between the Russified cities and the non-Russian
countryside. After a long, bitter Civil War, this indigenization policy
was especially conciliatory in the Muslim areas: 'much of the traditional
way of life was resumed, including land tenure, operation of religious
courts [Shariat], and free trade exchange' (Rakowska-Harmstone 1975,
p. 328). Korenizatsiia would be the political, and industrialization the
socio-economic, response of the Soviet government to the nationalities
problem. These responses were intertwined.
In the long run, the Bolsheviks expected that industrialization would
successfully integrate the ethnically diverse peoples of the Soviet Union
into the socialist order. Already in 1921 Stalin had predicted that with
industrialization the cities in the non-Russian regions would attract the
nationalities from the surrounding countryside (Stalin 1921, p. 43). But
the Communist Party and the Soviet government could not wait until
 Soviet nationality policy in the 1920s 17
this natural nativization would equalize the urban-rural ethnic imbal-
ance. Measures such as korenizatsiia had to be implemented immedi-
ately in order to defuse, if not reverse, the non-Russian hostility towards
the alien cities (Abezgauz et al. 1928, p. 330). In order to neutralize
non-Russian nationalism, the Soviet party introduced measures which
would outwardly placate the aroused national feelings of the non-Russi-
ans, but limit their true political content, as expressed in the slogan,
'national in form, socialist in content'.
As a result, the greatest success of korenizatsiia came not during
the period of the New Economic Policy (1921-1928), but during the
implementation of the First Five Year Plan, when the Soviet govern-
ment invested heavily in the non-Russian areas. During this period the
average growth of industrial capital throughout the USSR reached 289
per cent, the average growth of this capital in the less developed
national republics reached 350 per cent, and in some cases even 1000
per cent (Rysakov n.d., p. 25). Massive industrialization drew a great
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number of non-Russians into the factories of their own republics and

regions. From 1926-1932 the percentage of Tatars (in the Tatar Auton-
omous Soviet Socialist Republic) and Belorussians in their republic
increased by over 240 per cent of the labour force, and the percentage
of Uzbeks, Armenians, Georgians, Ukrainians, Jews, Kirghiz, and Bur-
yats increased over 100 per cent. By 1931, the Armenian, Georgian,
Ukrainian, and Belorussian proletariats constituted a majority in their
own republics (Rysakov n.d., p. 25; Zinger 1934, p. 11).
Industrialization overturned the cyclic peasant and nomadic worlds
and introduced them to the more dynamic urban universe and its attend-
ant attitudes and life-styles. By creating new opportunities and occu-
pations, industrialization widened the horizons of millions of peasants
and nomads and persuaded them that their future lay in the cities.
By drawing so many non-Russians into the cities at such a radical
pace in the late 1920s and early 1930s, the process of migration created
not only opportunities, but frustrations - especially in the ever-increas-
ing competition for employment, housing, and food - as well. The non*
Russian migrants also encountered not only an alien urban environ-
ment, but also an ethnically alien one. As a result of the migration,
these urban centres began to lose their Russian dominance or plurality.
Because of this migration's massive nature and because of korenizatsiia,
these migrants no longer assimilated to Russian culture. Peasant self-
perceptions concerning their identity, especially national identity, were
sharpened and heightened by their meeting urban Russians and Jews.
The newly arrived non-Russian peasants needed to define their national
affiliations and to establish their relationships with those they con-
sidered their compatriots and those they viewed foreign to them.
Coming from predominantly ethnically homogeneous countrysides,
these migrants were confronted with choices and many alternatives.
 18 George Liber
Thus, the social changes introduced by industrialization strengthened
the non-Russian identities. By emphasizing the non-Russian languages
and cultures and by promoting an ethnic affirmative action programme
in the party, the state and trade union apparatuses, korenizatsiia inad-
vertently politicized national differences in the cities.
The Soviet government and Communist Party promoted the develop-
ment of these non-Russian languages in the 1920s and early 1930s.
Language is a means of communication and the success of this tool
depends not only on the message in and of itself, but also on the level
of intimacy, a personal point of reference, of the tool. During one of
the discussions concerning the implementation of korenizatsiia in the
Ukraine, Volodymyr Zatons'kyi, one of the leaders of the Communist
Party of the Ukraine, rhetorically asked: 'Can we reach the Ukrainian
peasantry with the German language? Try to communicate with the
peasants from Tambov or Kaluga in Chinese, even though what you
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would tell them would be one hundred per cent Marxist and Leninist
in content' (Zatons'kyi 1928, p. 13).
Employing the native languages in the non-Russian regions would be
a modernizing society's most effective means of communicating to its
large, multilingual population. In addition to pragmatic considerations,
native-language use had a political purpose: to neutralize the hostility,
if not to win over the non-Russian peasants and elites by condemning
the social and political Russification of the tsarist past. This policy was
also a clear demonstration of respect for the languages and cultures of
the recently oppressed and nationally-aroused non-Russians.
Following these considerations, the Soviet government and Commu-
nist Party expanded the base of its modernization effort by investing
heavily in massive anti-illiteracy campaigns, teaching the non-Russians
to read and write in their own languages. By 1930, 71.3 per cent of the
people were literate in the Ukraine, 69 per cent in Belorussia, 52.1 per
cent in Transcaucasia, 24.5 per cent in Turkmenistan, and 19.4 per
cent in Uzbekistan (Rysakov n.d., p. 50). For many Central Asian
nationalities, the Soviet government Latinized the scripts of the Turkic
and Tadzhik languages. The government subsidized the standardization
and modernization of the non-Russian languages. It also expanded
primary, secondary, and higher education with instruction in the
indigenous languages. The number and circulation (tirazh) of native-
language newspapers, journals, and books expanded greatly, and in
some republics more appeared in the non-Russian languages than the
number of periodicals published in Russian or imported from the Rus-
sian republic. By emphasizing language and literacy, the Soviet govern-
ment in effect created and expanded the number of native-language
consumers within each non-Russian region. By establishing a heretofore
non-existent cultural infrastructure, the Soviet government and Com-
 Soviet nationality policy in the 1920s 19
munist Party created an independent cultural and intellectual universe
for these new language-consumers.
By emphasizing the official use of the non-Russian languages, stan-
dardizing them, and reforming their alphabets, these new communities
alienated, if not excluded, those who did not speak or read or write
the appropriate non-Russian language. By 1929, according to one critic,
even the Ukrainian language became incomprehensible to Russian-
language speakers (Hirchak 1930, pp. 78-79). In time korenizatsiia
must have excluded other ethnic communities whose members still
considered the non-Russian languages to be inferior to Russian. In some
republics and regions, bureaucrats and party officials were dismissed for
refusing to learn the indigenous languages.1
By emphasizing the non-Russian languages and cultures, the Soviet
government forged the non-Russian identities and raised the prestige
of the previously underdeveloped non-Russian languages and cultures
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to the point where these languages and cultures were juridically equal
to Russian. By employing, standardizing, and modernizing previously
low-status languages, by creating a cultural infrastructure, and by
creating a monopoly for its consumers, cultural entrepreneurs - to use
Crawford Young's phrase (Weinstein 1979, p. 359) - raised the prestige
of the non-Russian languages. Korenizatsiia encouraged the non-Russi-
ans to identify modernization with their non-Russian cultures and
values.
By raising the prestige of the non-Russian languages and cultures,
korenizatsiia clearly defined not only the cultural, but the political
boundaries as well. Responding to the non-Russian aspirations of
national self-determination, the All-Union Communist Party [VKP(b)]
sought to increase the number of non-Russians in the rank and file and
in the leadership of the party. In pursuing this course of action, the
VKP(b) was successful. By 1933, the local nationals constituted over
one-half of the Communist Parties of Uzbekistan, Tadzhikistan, Kirghi-
zia, the Ukraine, Belorussia, Georgia, Armenia, the Chuvash ASSR,
the Komi Autonomous Oblast, and the Kalmyk Autonomous Oblast.
The largest numerical increases during the 1920s were made by the
Belorussians and the Ukrainians (Rigby 1968, pp. 369, 372). With the
rise of non-Russians within the party, the Russian percentage of the
membership radically declined. By 1 July 1931, Russians constituted
only 52 per cent of the VKP(b), a drop from 72 per cent in 1922
(Rysakov n.d., p. 67; Rigby 1968, p. 366).
This new prestige for the non-Russian languages attracted the old
Russified natives. The most identifiable beneficiaries of korenizatsiia
consisted of two groups of non-Russians (Zatons'kyi 1928, p. 6):
(1) those who identified themselves as non-Russians, but did not speak
their native languages; and (2) bilinguals (those who could speak both
Russian and a non-Russian language fluently; most of these were non-
 20 George Liber
Russians). Although korenizatsiia was intended to appeal to all non-
Russians, both of these groups were favoured because they were non-
Russians and politically reliable.
The emergence of the first group was one of korenizatsiia's greatest
achievements because it slowed this group's ethnic re-identification.
And with the equality of the Russian and non-Russian languages,
bilinguals would have the decisive advantage in being promoted. Since
few Russians would master the non-Russian languages, the non-Russi-
ans established a clear monopoly for themselves in their own republics.
In addition, these native elites now had the opportunity of being pro-
moted to the central party organs. The native cadres, especially the
bilinguals, had the best of both worlds: protection in their own republics
and opportunities in the centre.
But the rise in the number of non-Russians in the regional communist
parties was not a passing of power to the non-Russians. The party was
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not a democratic institution and did not follow majority rule. The party,
moreover, in the course of the 1920s became an increasingly centralized
organization. Even though the number of non-Russian cadres
increased, constituting the majority of the most important regional
parties, they were symbols of power. In reality, power lay in Moscow
and in the Russian or Russified cadres in the non-Russian republics.
The central party never intended the native elites to represent their
nations.
In the course of the 1920s this changed. The native party leadership
in some of the republics stopped playing their assigned roles as symbols
and began to represent and to defend regional interests. To paraphrase
Andrew Janos, the All-Union Communist Party used nationalist sym-
bols 'to drum up support for a politically isolated leadership' in the
non-Russian republics. But in acting out their roles as the defenders of
the non-Russian cultural and historical heritages some groups within
the regional parties 'became absorbed by it'. The ultimate goal of the
regional communist parties was

still the building of socialism and a collectivistic welfare society, but

the idea of the constituency that the party was prepared to serve,
even in theory, moved from the broader concept of the international
proletariat to the narrower confines of the ethnic community (Janos
1971, p. 510).

By the late 1920s and early 1930s a major disagreement between the
central authorities and some members of the local elites arose over the
goals of korenizatsiia. According to the members of the indigenous
61ites, korenizatsiia should: (a) recognize and respect the social, eco-
nomic, national, and political peculiarities of the non-Russian republics;
(b) subsidize and help develop the formerly oppressed and Russified
 Soviet nationality policy in the 1920s 21
non-Russian cultures; (c) co-opt and promote non-Russian party cadres
and governmental bureaucrats; (d) raise the political consciousness of
the non-Russians in their native languages in order to build socialism;
and (e) dismantle Russian nationalist hegemony in the cities of the
non-Russian areas (Zatons'kyi 1928, pp. 73-74; Abezgauz et ah 1929,
p. 330; Skrypnyk 1929, pp. 33-34; Hirchak 1930, pp. 25, 43). These
goals emphasized differences rather than similarities and in the light of
the changing ethnic composition of the cities they signified the non-
Russian elites' attempts to gain control of their regions. This interpret-
ation emerged among communists in Armenia, Belorussia, the
Caucasus, the Ukraine, and in the Central Asian republics and auton-
omous regions.
Representatives of the centre, however, had a different view of ko-
renizatsiia. They interpreted this policy as primarily a means to appease
the hostile peasantry. Nativization was a policy that would be carried
out in institutions which reached the peasants and the countryside,
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staffed by people 'similar' to the peasant (Kaganovich 1925, p. 27).

This position emphasized unity, not differences.
Complaints from Russians living in the non-Russian republics con-
cerning 'forced de-Russification' were now taken seriously by the
centre. Vociferous attacks on the excesses of korenizatsiia, outbreaks
of alleged local chauvinism and nationalism also appeared by the end
of the decade. Important party leaders began to reinterpret Soviet
nationality policy. According to these revisionists, with the end of
hegemony of the old ruling-classes after the October Revolution, the
Russian language stopped being a tool of oppression of the non-Rus-
sians. After the October Revolution the Russian language became the
'means to introduce the non-Russian cultures to the highly developed
Russian culture, which has world importance' (Enukidze 1925, p. 4).
According to the logic of this thinking, if the Russian language now
emerged as a positive tool and a language superior to but not oppressive
of the non-Russian languages, there was no need for korenizatsiia.
Korenizatsiia and the social and psychological dislocation produced
by industrialization strengthened the national consciousness of the non-
Russians and allowed it to develop spontaneously, beyond the control
of the central authorities. The problem was not in the awakening of
ethnic consciousness, but the creation of an increasingly spontaneous
and uncontrollable national assertiveness. For the centre, the danger
of these 'non-Russian deviations' superseded the danger of 'Russian
great-power chauvinism', which had been the party's avowed enemy in
the 1920s.
 22 George Liber
Conclusion
Korenizatsiia set the stage for the Soviet Union's current crisis of
authority among the non-Russians. As an integrated linguistic, cultural,
and personnel policy it sought to legitimate multiculturalism in the
Soviet Union without creating multiple centres of power. The
implementation of this policy during the dislocation wrought by
industrialization raised the prestige of non-Russian languages and cul-
tures and created the social bases necessary for multiculturalism. The
establishment of multiple official languages and creation of social bases
of support for them guaranteed 'long-term or permanent linguistic div-
ision'. Korenizatsiia, in effect, 'institutionalized and legitimated linguis-
tic conflict and thus maintained it and perpetuated it' (Nagel 1986, p.
102).
Thus, the large-scale social processes of the 1920s and 1930s necessi-
tated accommodation to these trends or a shift in the party's legiti-
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mation strategy. If the party wished to maintain its political monopoly,

the transformation of the social bases of the non-Russian republics
(which up to now had been identified with the peasantry and the
nomads, in some cases) and the sharp decline in the percentage of
Russians within the VKP(b) required a change in the mooring of the
party's legitimation effort. Having painfully learned the lessons from
the Civil War, the party did not want to crystallize further the national-
isms of the non-Russians. Hence, the abandonment of korenizatsiia by
1933 and the extensive purges of the non-Russian cadres.
In place of korenizatsiia, the party turned to a legitimacy which
emphasized Russian primacy within the USSR. By the early 1930s, the
party realized that it could not legitimate a revolution by emphasizing
national cultures and economically transform that society at the same
time without causing social disorder and without encouraging those
forces which would challenge the Soviet state unity and the party's
political monopoly.

Note
1. In 1925-1926, sixty-three bureaucrats were fired in Kharkov for refusing to learn
Ukrainian (Zatons'kyi 1928, p. 4).

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GEORGE LIBER is Assistant Professor of History at the University of

Alabama at Birmingham.
ADDRESS: Department of History, University of Alabama at Bir-
mingham, UAB Station, Birmingham, AL 35294, USA.