ABSTRACT
In Russia, as in all belligerent countries, the people hoped that victory over the enemy would bring a new and better world. At the bottom of the Soviet social pyramid, the inmates of forced labour camps, who numbered some millions, fared worse than any citizen of Imperial Russia. In nationalities policy, two crimes were stressed—nationalism and cosmopolitanism. The Armenian and Georgian republics were managed by Armenians and Georgians. But the communists of these two republics did not enjoy greater security than their Russian comrades. Soviet historians argued that the Imperial Russian conquest of Kazahstan and the North Caucasus was 'progressive', and that the armed struggle of Kazahs and Caucasians against Russia was the work of reactionary beys and mullahs instigated by British or Turkish imperialists. The achievements of the Soviet regime, which were considerable, were the achievements of early capitalism in Western Europe and America.
