ABSTRACT
The national question might be described as a ‘submerged’ dilemma. The foundations of the Soviet Union in late 1922 represented essentially a compromise between the large Soviet Russian republic and much smaller non-Russian entities – initially the Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Transcaucasian republics. In the 1920s, this compromise, created by Lenin, consisted of a policy that was termed ‘national in form, socialist in content.’ It began with an experiment in the development of non-Russian cultures, and a fairly permissive environment that saw a gradual ‘indigenization’ and development of national elites. In the non-Russian republics, this new development was particularly advanced in the Ukrainian and Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republics, the territories of which were also increased at the expense of Russia. By the late 1920s, the policy was reversed under Stalin, and a new policy of centralization, and attacks on what were perceived as ‘bourgeois nationalism’ in the republics was instituted. By the late 1930s, extensive purges destroyed national elites, while industrial development under the new Five-Year Plans – replacing Lenin’s more tolerant New Economic Policy that had given more scope to private farmers – brought the devastated rural population to the towns. By 1939, the Soviet Union had expanded from an original four to twelve republics, encompassing a huge area from the European heartland to the Caucasus and Central Asia.
