Who Created the "Soviet Nations"? (Theoretical and Historiographical Notes)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15407/uhj2020.02.169Keywords:
Ukraine, USSR, indigenization, national policyAbstract
The subject of Soviet national policy and the problem of nation-building in the USSR are relatively well researched. However, until recently, Ukrainian historiography of the problem, for various reasons, existed in isolation from the main conceptual trends that dominate Western, especially English-language publications.
The purpose of the article is to study the current state of Western historiography of the Soviet national politics in Ukraine. The main research tasks put forward by the author are to identify the main theoretical schemes underlying the research activity in this field in the Western scholarship, as well as to evaluate the possibilities of their implementation on the Ukrainian source material. The author tries to demonstrate that the mechanical application of theoretical concepts developed in one historical material cannot always be productive on another. No less problematic is the situation when the theoretical scheme begins to dominate over the facts. Thematically, the review focuses on the idea of the decisive role of Bolshevik national politics in the formation of "Soviet nations" including the Ukrainian one, widespread in the Western historiography. This idea is not only historiographically relevant but is also actively present in political discourse. Accordingly, the article can be of interest not only for the professional community of researchers but also for the general public.
Conclusions. The author argues that the constructivist theories of nation-building dominating contemporary Western historiography of Soviet national politics can be applied to the analysis of processes of national consolidation on the territory of the former Russian Empire, but their implementation requires a more thorough regional contextualization. It is obvious that the Soviet political discourse, as well as the political and administrative practices of the Soviet state, ultimately contributed to the consolidation of some national communities, made the existing ethnic differences more visible. In many cases, it was only under Soviet rule that the very idea of nationality began to play a significant role for representatives of certain ethnic communities. But it is also obvious that this was by no means a Ukrainian case. The author notes that the question of whether the Bolshevik national policy contributed to the national consolidation of Ukrainians, or on the contrary restrained it, remains open and requires further comparative studies. At the same time, the author demonstrates that the use of such theories for the explaining of the motives and goals of Soviet national policy in Ukraine sounds rather like a historical anachronism. The very idea that a nation is first and foremost a discursive construct, that it can be constructed, and therefore deconstructed discursively, is fundamentally at odds with those understanding of nation that at that time dominated the world. Therefore, the understanding the motives behind the decision of the Bolshevik leadership is impossible from this perspective.
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