Before assuming power in 1917, the Bolshevik leadership had constantly rejected federalism as a viable system of state organization for post-revolutionary Russia. From their perspective, the federal arrangement of the state would have impeded the unity of the proletariat and amalgamation of different nationalities into a homogenous socialist society.1 Instead, the Bolsheviks advocated the formation of a centralized unitary state, offering limited regional autonomies to some minority nations within the framework of the Leninist concept of selfdetermination.2 Since this projected socialist state had to be based, in theory at least, on a voluntary union of peoples, Lenin, as discussed earlier, defended the right of minority nations in Russia to secede, though he was convinced that most of them would rather opt for integration than separation in the wake of a successful socialist takeover. However, as political developments in post-Tsarist Russia demonstrated, Lenin was largely wrong in his prediction. Following the October Revolution, former Tsarist provinces in Eastern Europe (Poland, Finland, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Belorussia) and Transcaucasia (Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan) soon began to successfully assert their independence from Russia. Separatist and autonomist tendencies were also increasing in Russian Far East, Siberia and Central Asia. Hence, the Bolsheviks’ endorsement of the right of national self-determination, which was a tactically winning political platform while in opposition, suddenly became an ideological burden on their government that threatened to fragment Russia into numerous political entities. In an attempt to deter such a possibility, Aspaturian notes, ‘federalism was eagerly seized upon as both salvation and solution; the Party was forced to adopt federation in order to stop separation’.3 Lenin tried to justify the Bolshevik Party’s drastic revision of policy on federalism by arguing that it was ‘merely a transitional step towards really democratic centralism’.4 The first Constitution of the RSFSR, adopted on 10 July 1918, formally introduced a federal system in Russia. Article 2 of Chapter I of the Constitution stipulated that ‘the Soviet Russian Republic is established on the basis of a free union of free nations, as a federation of Soviet national republics.’5 The 1918 Constitution, however, did not address the question of the right of national minorities to secede from the RSFSR. Rather, the Bolshevik leadership sought to deal with

the secessionist movements individually based on pragmatic political and military considerations. As Conquest puts it, Lenin was willing to recognize as independent states only those secessionist entities against which ‘the direct use of force was not immediately practical, owing to the strategic requirements of the Civil War’.6 Yet as soon as circumstances allowed it, the Kremlin vigorously attempted to reassert its control over them. For instance, by mid-1921, after their short-lived independences, Ukraine, Belorussia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia were all forcefully Sovietized by invading Red Army forces. In order to avoid accusations of committing aggression against the sovereign states, the Kremlin did not incorporate these newly Sovietized states into the RSFSR, but rather allowed them to retain their nominal independences (similar to those of the Bukharan and Khorezm Soviet republics) as allies of Soviet Russia. The rest of the non-Russian provinces of the former Tsarist Empire, where the Bolsheviks managed to extend their power, were directly annexed to the RSFSR, a number of them to be granted different levels of autonomy. For example, between 1918 and 1923, 17 administrative-territorial autonomous units were organized within the RSFSR, including the Turkestan and ‘Kazakh’ republics.7 For the Bolshevik leadership, the autonomization of the RSFSR did not mean a departure from or modification of the Party’s centralist policy. On the contrary, it was interpreted as a mechanism facilitating greater unity and cohesion among the Soviet republics. Stalin explicitly clarified the Kremlin’s position on this issue while addressing the Congress of the Peoples of the Terek region in November 1920: ‘Autonomy means not separation, but union between the selfgoverning . . . peoples and the peoples of Russia’.8 At the beginning of the 1920s, with the end of the Civil War approaching and further consolidation of the Bolshevik rule in Russia, it was decided to form a closer political union between the RSFSR and its allied Soviet republics of Ukraine, Belorussia, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bukhara, Khorezm and the Far East. For this purpose, in August 1922, Stalin was tasked to head a special commission that would work out suggestions on how to develop future relations between these republics. Within a couple of weeks, Stalin proposed a union project that envisaged the incorporation of the independent Soviet Socialist Republics (SSRs) of Ukraine, Belorussia, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan into the Russian federation as autonomous republics without the right of secession. As regards the integration of the Bukharan, Khorezm and Far Eastern PSRs into the RSFSR, it was recommended that this question should be left open for the time being, and meanwhile to continue cooperation with them in such areas as customs, trade, foreign and military affairs.9 Stalin’s ‘autonomization plan’ caused a huge controversy among the Bolshevik leadership both in Moscow and the regions. For example, a group of Georgian and Ukrainian communists (later denounced by the Stalinist regime as ‘national deviationists’) openly opposed the adoption of Stalin’s plan on the grounds that it would have undermined the sovereignty of their republics. Rather they proposed a loose union of independent SSRs and RSFSR based on confederative principles. The rivalry between these groups became so acute that Lenin

had to intervene and work out a middle ground model that became widely known as the federal compromise. In particular, Lenin harshly rejected Stalin’s ‘autonomization plan’ regarding it as contradictory to the Bolshevik doctrine of selfdetermination, accusing its supporters of Great Russian chauvinism.10 Instead, he suggested that since all these independent Soviet republics were equal in their legal status, they should have joined a new federal union on an equal rights basis, though they had to modify the degree of their sovereignty, in order to make a federation possible. As Lenin put it, ‘The important thing is not to provide material for the “pro-independence” people, not to destroy their independence, but to create another new storey, a federation of equal republics.’11 Lenin’s compromise proposal sought somewhat to combine his long-advocated principles of self-determination and democratic centralism. Consequently, Stalin was compelled to abandon his ‘autonomization plan’ and to present a new draft under which the RSFSR, Ukrainian SSR, Belorussian SSR and the Transcaucasian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (TSFSR), comprising Armenian, Azerbaijani and Georgian SSRs, would form the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, or the Soviet Union), each of them retaining the right to secede, while the existing autonomous republics would remain within their respective SSRs; the Far Eastern PSR would be abolished and its territory merged with the RSFSR; as for the Bukharan and Khorezm PSRs’ status, they would remain outside of the projected union until their transformation into socialist republics.12 On 30 December 1922, the Treaty of Union was ratified at the Tenth AllRussian (First All-Union) Congress of Soviets, which formally established the USSR.13 The Congress also appointed the commission to draft a constitution for the Soviet Union. Consequently, the first USSR Constitution came into force on 6 July 1923, though it was not formally ratified by the Second All-Union Congress of Soviets until 31 January 1924, ten days after the death of Lenin. The newly-formed USSR was not to limit its membership to its founding four republics, but rather was constitutionally open for admission to all other existing or future socialist republics.14 And already in May 1925, the Turkmen and Uzbek SSRs (formed out of the parts of the abolished Bukharan and Khorezm SSRs and the Turkestan ASSR in 1924) were accepted into the USSR as the fifth and sixth Union-republics. In 1929, the Tajik ASSR, formed in 1924 within the Uzbek SSR, was elevated to SSR status and transformed into the seventh Unionrepublic. Another great administrative-territorial reshuffle was carried out in the USSR with the adoption of its second constitution in 1936, which dissolved the TSFSR and raised its former constituent republics of Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia as well as the Kazakh and Kyrgyz ASSRs of the RSFSR into the rank of Union-republics.15 In 1940, the number of Union-republics was gradually increased from 11 to 16: in March the former Karelian ASSR of the RSFSR, merged with the annexed Finnish territories, formed the Karelo-Finnish SSR; in August the Moldovan SSR was formed out of the occupied Romanian Bessarabia and parts of the former Moldavian ASSR of the Ukrainian SSR; and finally, the independent Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were forcefully

incorporated into the USSR as Union-republics. In 1956, with the reversion of the Karelo-Finnish SSR back to the status of the Karelian ASSR, the Unionrepublics’ total and final number was brought to 15.16

The ethnoterritorial federal system of the USSR, centrally administered by the all-Union government in Moscow, was divided into several levels of administrative hierarchy. At the top level of this structure were the 15 constituent Union-republics (RSFSR and 14 SSRs), each identified with a particular titular nationality after which they were named. In constitutional terms, the Unionrepublics were considered as sovereign nation-states,17 having the same equal legal rights, including the right to secede from the Soviet Union. These republics were also entitled to their own state organs and constitutions, modelled on the acting Constitution of the USSR. In addition, the Union-republics possessed a number of attributes of sovereign states, such as citizenship, demarcated borders, symbols (flags, coat of arms, and anthem), and a native-language (of titular nationality) education system. Each Union-republic also had representation within all-Union federal government structures.18 The necessary formal conditions for a particular ethnically-defined republic to acquire the status of SSR were set up by Stalin in 1936, namely: (i) the republic under consideration had to be a frontier republic of the USSR, in order to be able to exercise (if desired) its constitutional right to secession from the Union; (ii) its titular nationality had to be a solid majority within its borders; and (iii) the entire population of the republic had to be at least one million.19 In practice, however, these conditions were not always followed. For example, at the time of its formation in 1940, the population of the Karelo-Finnish SSR was less than one million; and irrespective of the fact that from the late 1930s ethnic Kazakhs became a minority titular nation in the Kazakh SSR, the status of the republic was never relegated to ASSR.20 Next in the Soviet federal hierarchy were the Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republics (ASSRs), which were established within some of the Union-republics. Generally, ASSR status was granted to those state-recognized indigenous nationalities, which within their national territories failed to meet Stalin’s aforementioned three criteria in order to qualify for the SSR status. The ASSRs enjoyed many of the rights (though in somewhat limited form) of the Union-republics, such as their own constitutions, administrations, territories and native language education systems. However, they were not viewed as sovereign entities and therefore had no right to secede either from their respective Union-republics or the USSR. Moreover, despite possessing internal self-rule, administratively they were subordinated to the Union-republic government.21 In Soviet Central Asia, after the adoption of the 1936 USSR Constitution, there was only one ASSR, the Karakalpak ASSR within the Uzbek SSR. At the bottom level of the Soviet federal hierarchy were two types of ethnoculturally defined units: autonomous provinces (oblasts) and autonomous districts (okrugs). Unlike ASSRs, they were not viewed as states but only as ethnoterritorial self-administrative units within the SSRs. Their major function was to promote the socio-economic and cultural development of the communities for

whom they were designed.22 In Central Asia, the only region given the status of an autonomous oblast (AO) was Gorno-Badakhshan in the Tajik SSR. However, it was not formally organized on cultural or linguistic lines, and its East-Iranianspeaking (Pamiri) population was regarded as part of the titular Tajik nationality.23 Finally, in terms of the local self-government proper, which was out of the Soviet federal system, the entire USSR was administratively divided into raions (counties), cities/towns and villages. The important aspect of the Soviet federal system was that it was organized and functioned strictly on the principles of ‘democratic centralism’, where all decision-making power laid with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU; the former RCP),24 the only legal party, the members of which occupied all the key positions in state organs at all levels. The organizational structure of the CPSU somewhat resembled the USSR’s federal system. In particular, the CPSU, performing the function of the all-Union Party, was hierarchically structured along territorial lines, corresponding to the administrative units within the USSR. For example, every Union-republic (apart from the RSFSR) had its own CP organization,25 headed by a First Secretary, generally chosen from among the titular nationality. The titular nationals were also privileged at lower levels of Party and government administration (for example, at oblast, raion and city levels) within their ‘own’ home (native) republics.26 However, unlike the Soviet federal system, the Union-republics’ CPs were not even nominally independent political organizations, but rather regional branches of the highly centralized CPSU. Accordingly, Union-republic First Secretaries, Tarr notes, ‘functioned as envoys from the central government rather than as representatives of regions in which they ruled’.27 In addition, the post of the Second Secretary, who was responsible for monitoring the local CP apparatus as well as law-enforcement organs, was generally held by a Moscow-appointed non-indigenous bureaucrat of Slavic (mainly Russian) origin.28 The CPSU’s central organ was the Central Committee (CC), which was elected at the Party congresses. In its turn, the CC elected a Politburo, a supreme administrative organ mostly staffed by ethnic Russians, which was headed by a General Secretary, the de facto head of the USSR. Regardless of the federal character of the USSR, the CPSU’s central organs could intervene in the work of lower levels of government and, if necessary, revise or revoke their decisions. A high degree of centralization of military, the security services (KGB), the police and economic administration ensured Moscow’s firm control over the Unionrepublics.29 Overall, as Chubarov writes, this meant that ‘the USSR was in fact a unitary state with a measure of administrative devolution. Genuine federalism was not viable where the ruling party wielded absolute power.’30