ABSTRACT
The sense of messianic mission granted by Providence began to take hold and grow rapidly. Messianic nationalism was stimulated by Russia's many talented poets and novelists. One of the principles announced by the Communist Manifesto in 1848 was internationalism. Two of the major problems which Joseph Stalin faced in his political career were closely connected with the development of nationalism in the Soviet Union. Stalin's purge of the nationalities was a major phase of his drift to centralized nationalism. Although Soviet propaganda continued to appeal to "proletarian internationalism", it revived messianic Great Russian nationalism. Historically, every great movement of modern times—the Commercial Revolution, the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Counter Reformation, the French Revolution, the Napoleonic Era, the Industrial Revolutions—contributed to the intensification of nationalism. The Communist revolutions that took place in Europe and Asia turned out to be more nation-conscious than class-conscious.
