“Sovietization” or “Nationalization”: Once Again About the Essence of the Corenization Policy in the 1920s – Early 1930s

Abstract

The purpose of the article is to find an answer to the question of why the democratic revolution, which culminated in the overthrow of the autocracy, equally showed the potential to renew the rhythms of public life and the truly devastating destruction of democracy? And more broadly, why do modernization ideas, even in times of revolutionary shift, yield to the reincarnation of the archaic in its most primitive, “barbaric” forms?

Scientific approaches. The research uses methodological developments of intellectual history as a space for understanding the range of ideological influences on social development, scientific design and forecasting modeling are also involved. It is symptomatic that the ideology of nation-building and national selfdetermination, tested by the experience of dozens of countries on all continents, has become the object of increased attention of intellectual history.

Scientific novelty. Both terms – corenization and ukrainization – do not fully reflect the scale and nature of the turn in national policy, which is associated with the restoration of the priority of national values and traditions. It is reasonable to agree with the scholars who believe that the terms “national reform” or “national-cultural reform” could more accurately define its nature. The novelty of the author’s approaches is seen primarily in the disclosure of the possibilities of discursive (unconventional) analysis of identities as conscious constructs.

The main conclusion of the author. Only an in-depth study of the experience of state and legal regulation of linguistic and cultural processes can give a reasonable answer regarding the legitimacy of the use of the terms “ukrainization”, “corenization”, “national reform”. Only a balanced assessment of it will help to define what in this experience is acceptable for use in the context of the formation of an independent Ukrainian state. Understanding from a new perspective the causes, motivations, and consequences of the turning point in national policy made by the ruling party in the 1920s, which is established in historiography as the “policy of corenization”, gives the author reason to consider unproductive the merging of two different processes – national reform “from above” and the national rights movement “from below”.