Lost Kingdom: The Quest for Empire and the Making of the Russian Nation

by Serhii Plokhy

Example of biased account of history driven by political tragedy/agenda.

secret government committee charged with bringing about unification.

of popular

status for Poland within the Russian Empire, Pogodin suggested that

groups

Essentially mid-19th century in Russia you had academics publishing histories on the different dialects of language, ethnographies, and identifying little white immigrate Russian die Alex is being different which essentially is suggesting a try party nation of Russia Belarus and Ukraine is a significant point because I guess he’s going to set the stage for this kind of conflict moving forward that is the national identity of Russia being divided into three and being some up for debate. Nikolai Nadezhdin, Pavol Jozef Šafárik, Osyp Bodiansky, and Michael Pogodin all contributed although it seems that Pogodin was is the most influential

Aleksandr Herzen, a writer and intellectual known today as the father of Russian populism and socialism, introduced the notion of Ukraine as an independent factor in the contest for the territories between Russia and Poland. In the January 1859 issue of his Russian-language journal, Kolokol (The Bell), which was

published in London, Herzen wrote: “Well, and what if, after all our considerations, Ukraine, remembering all the oppressions of the Muscovites, and the condition of serfdom, and the draft, and the lawlessness, and the pillage, and the knout on the one side, and not forgetting, on the other, how it fared under the Commonwealth with the soldiers, lords, and Crown officials, should not wish to be either Polish or Russian? As I see it, the question is to be decided very simply. In that case, Ukraine should be recognized as a free and independent country.”

people who identified as Polish living in Russia became discontent and wanted more liberties and independences back for the Polish nation that existed prior to the partitioning of Poland, it created a disarray in social and political discourse within Russia. At the same time as you had all these new ethnographic ideas of the tripartite nation and a difference between northern Russia or great Russia and southern Russia or Ukraine and so you had thought leaders like Aleksandr Herzen, and Mykola Kostomarov who began to introduce the idea of Ukraine potentially existing independently of both Poland and Russia and historically having a more democratic identity than the Russians, although they shared a similar dialect were different than the Russians. Kostomarov wrote an important article titled “The Two Rus’ Nationalities,” which appeared in print in St. Petersburg in 1861 in the journal Osnova

Ultimately growing cultural and linguistic differences in Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Russian areas of greater Russia brought into light by prominent thinkers and writers throughout these lands mandated the need for the Russian government to endorse all three dialects within greater Rus as being viable while identifying single written language to be used among all of Russia that would be a combination of the three. This was intended to align Belarus Russia and Ukraine in religious and dynastic ways but ultimately set the stage for the separation of the three.

The Ukrainian language began to evolve and Ukrainian intellectuals continued to promote the use of the language in even broader contexts, threatening a future where Ukraine separated from Russia. A similar problem was occurring in other countries in Europe where governments strategically invested in educational systems that promoted the primary dialect of their regions; however, Russia did not really do this, instead, focusing their efforts on repressing the Ukrainian language entirely- first restricting publishing and ultimately an all out systematic ban on Ukrainian publications as well as theatrical performances and the removal of Ukrainophile intellectuals from educational positions. This ban came to fruition when Tsar Alexander II signed the Edict of Ems in 1876

Russian

After the Habsburg empire was split up into Austria-Hungary the city of Austrian Galacia began to develop strong cohorts of Russophile and Ukrainophile supporters. Many Ukrainian intellectuals began to publish work in Austrian Galacia because it was banned in greater Russia. Ultimately the Russian supporters living in Galacia who had become dismayed by the Austrian government moved to greater Russia mostly to areas that were previously part of Poland and became members of the greater Russian nation. However the Russophiles and Russia were losing the political and intellectual battle occurring in the Austrian province of Galacia

At the turn of the 20th century you have working class revolutions and uprisings throughout Russia. Violent responses from the empire and tsar further propagated the conflict. One such instance was Bloody Sunday (1905) where workers going on strike at the Tsars winter palace were shot and killed. Ultimately the Tsar had to make agreements to introduce a parliamentary aspect to the Russian government in the form of the Duma. The Duma started off as an advisory Council and ultimately became a legislative council where members were elected by various electorates across Russia. Early on in the history of the Duma a large and influential Ukrainian caucus emerged with the objective of first obtaining Ukrainian cultural autonomy and then Ukrainian territorial autonomy. Eventually Tsar Nicolas the second got upset with the performance of the Duma and re-organized it to favor representatives from land holding backgrounds thus diminishing the influence of Ukrainians in the Duma. Also Russia was fighting the Russo-Japanese war. Ukraine now only able to influence the government through the constitutional democratic party which represented a portion of the Ukrainophile‘s interests.

By 1914, it looked as if the monarchy had successfully survived the revolution and adjusted itself to the new political and economic realities. The transition to constitutional monarchy had been made, a parliament established, and a way discovered to fill it with deputies generally loyal to the regime. The non-Russian nationalities were taken under control after receiving some cultural concessions, and Russian nationalism had created an unprecedented bond between the monarchy and most of its subjects. Fears that allowing the Ukrainians and Belarusians to publish in their languages would split the East Slavic core of the empire never materialized. Popular support for one indivisible Russian state and nation was as strong as ever and was gaining new ground in the traditionally troublesome western provinces. If anything, the outbreak of the Great War in August 1914 would strengthen the unity of that virtual nation and create conditions for its expansion beyond the borders of the empire.

The chapter TLDR is that at the turn of the 20th century the working class and generally non-Russians revolted causing a lot of political turmoil ultimately, Russia became a constitutional monarchy. Despite becoming a constitutional monarchy the monarchy found a way to infuse parliament with allies. You have a starker political system now, with a Russian nationalist party wildly lobbying a working class and peasantry electorate and evoking strong nationalistic emotions which were also anti-pole and anti-Jew. You had a constitutional democratic party that wanted to become more similar to Europe and also semi sympathized with the Ukrainian autonomy movement to obtain the Ukrainian electorate, however, didn’t really get the Ukrainophiles what they wanted. “The transition to constitutional monarchy had been made, a parliament established, and a way discovered to fill it with deputies generally loyal to the regime. The non-Russian nationalities were taken under control after receiving some cultural concessions, and Russian nationalism had created an unprecedented bond between the monarchy and most of its subjects.”

Early in world war one Russian nationalistic sentiment is high, and the war against Germany and Austria – Hungary proves to help distract from internal Russian turmoil. At the start of World War I Russia take back Galacia. At first the Russophiles living in the area are very happy but eventually come to realize it’s not as promising as it seems. The Russian government wants to post pone ratifying the newly acquired lands until after a peace treaty is made. Meanwhile, the Galacian Russophiles are treated as second class citizens, and many Jews in the area are conspired to be spies and are victims of plunder.

Pretty drastic transformation of the political landscape in a very short amount of time. World War I was going badly for Russia, they were losing a lot of Galacian territories, as well as a lot of territories that they had pre-War. While Tsar Nicholas the second was in control of the army and fighting, political and social turmoil back in Petrograd, what used to be Saint Petersburg, the military and political elite decide to Set up a constitutional monarchy and demand Nicholas’s resignation. Nicolas ultimately resigned and decided his brother would take his place, but it turns out the Russian people wanted representative government and didn’t want either Romanov Tsar. The Duma serves as a provisional government while the constitutional democracy was being organized. In a very short span of time Polish independence was recognized, although the Polish lands had already been lost to the Germans, and the fins, Ukrainians, and Belarusian‘s, demanded autonomy as well. The political system in Russia is now very new, experimental, and volatile. Leaders of different nationalist groups and political parties within Russia are clamoring for influence as a power vacuum remains following the departure of a monarchy.

Lenin and the Bolsheviks took power in a bloodless revolution over the provincial government in October 1917. The main ideology of the Russian Bolshevik party or the social democratic party was that the proletariat were going to ascend to power via revolution. Although the bolsheviks were primarily focused on class, the issue of nationality that had arisen during the early 20th century had to be addressed by their political platform. Lenin, in conjunction with his aid Stalin, elaborated that the Bolshevik party believed any nationality within the Russian empire had the right to autonomy up until and including secession, as long as that decision was made by the proletariat of that nationality. Immediately, however, the political elite in Kyiv declared Ukrainian statehood, and denounced the political authority of the bolsheviks.

autochthonous

concomitant

After the creation of the provincial government in Russia, but before the bolsheviks had taken power, Ukrainians had formed a central Rada, Their own form of government. The constitutional democratic party that made up the bulk of the Rado had mobilized Ukrainian soldiers and the working class to support the movement for Ukrainian autonomy, convincing them that that autonomy would lead to them owning their own land. Ultimately the provincial government in Russia had to somewhat recognize the Ukrainian Rada, due to the large support in Ukrainian lands and relatively little power and unity within the provincial government. The concessions made by the provincial government in recognizing the Ukrainian Rada angered many Russian nationalists who took it as a sign of weakness and a fracture in the Russian empire. The central Rahda of Ukraine and the Bolshevik party of Russia are both aligned against the provisional government.

The Kyiv Bolsheviks tried to gain a majority in the Ukrainian Congress of Soviets convened in Kyiv in December 1917 in order to repeat the Petrograd scenario and seize power in Ukraine in the name of the Soviets, but they found themselves in the minority. The Rada was no longer an ally but an enemy.

The central Rado in Ukraine was focused on Ukrainian territorial autonomy and Ukrainian independence, even claiming lands that were traditionally part of the Russian empire. After the October revolution, Russia nationalists in support of the provincial government who were ousted by the bolsheviks set up shop in the Don region. The bolsheviks, now technically in charge of Russia, faced counter revolutionary forces in the form of Russian nationalists. Lenin called upon the central Rada for assistance in defeating his opponents, but the central Rada remained neutral. Ultimately Lenin sent bolshevik military units led by members of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic into Kyiv, to violently oust the central Rada. What unfolded was very violent, and many Ukrainians were imprisoned or executed, even if the claims of aiding the counter revolutionary forces were weak. The entire population of Kyiv was subjected to weeks of arbitrary arrests and executions, the kind of “Red terror” that served as a template for subsequent Bolshevik atrocities. After entering the city, Muraviev demanded 5 million rubles to supply his army. He also ordered his troops “mercilessly to destroy all officers and cadets, haidamakas [members of Ukrainian military formations], monarchists, and enemies of the revolution in Kyiv.” According to some estimates, close to 5,000 people suspected of allegiance either to the old regime or to the Central Rada were killed by Muraviev’s thugs.

Austrian-German forces occupy large parts of Ukraine and western Russia during WW1. Stage a coup in Kyiv in favor of a new, More russian sympathetic leader who rallies nationalist Russians as well as Ukrainians against the bolsheviks. Ukraine becomes a refuge and homebase for the idea of restoring Russia to glory.

Bolsheviks force Volunteer army and the Whites out of Russia. Belarus develops stronger national identity during WWI thanks to tolerance of German occupants, Germany has strategic incentive to “nation build” imperial territories of former Russia to fragment the empire and reduce chances of the reunification and strengthening of Russia.

Under Lenin’s leadership up until the formation of the USSR, the bolsheviks took a very tactical and empathetic approach to the nationality question. They made the necessary changes to accommodate the Ukrainian peasantry who had prior been supportive primarily of the Ukrainian nationalists. The bolsheviks gave enough support to Ukrainian subjects to be an attractive movement for them to gain popularity yet shut down the notions of Ukrainian independence when appropriate. Lenin didn’t want any nationalism to dominate or overshadow the main goal of the bolsheviks and instead wanted equal soviet republics. The USSR officially formed on Dec 30 1922, Stalin couldn’t be at celebration because of stroke 8 days Prior

polemics

Although Stalin and Lenin both shared the primary Socialist ideologies, Lenin strongly believed that any semblance of great Russian nationalism needed to be eliminated, as it was the primary threat to the international success of communism. Meanwhile, Stalin still believed the great Russian identity should be superior to those of its neighbors, and great Russia should be a leader over its neighbors. Ultimately during the earliest days of the formation of the USSR, although in diminishing health, Lenin‘s writings served as a template for the formation of the Soviet Union. The union was ultimately made up of the Soviet Republic of Russia, the Soviet Republic of Ukraine, the Soviet republic of Belarus, and the Transcaucasian federation, which was made up of Georgia Azerbaijan, and Armenia. Stalin had successfully padded union Government positions with allies who held great Russian nationalistic sentiment, but the overall structure of the union can be mostly attributed to Lenin.

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Stolen strategy to strengthen the Soviet union and solve the nationality question was to support the autonomy of the Belarusian and Ukrainian nations by promoting independent cultural growth of each nation respectively via enhancing linguistic education as well as linguistic institutions such as newspapers. Additionally, Stalin insured more ethnic Ukrainians and ethnic Belarusian‘s were involved in politics, thus giving them skin in the game. Although the strategies saw great success on paper the language spoken among the working class in both Ukraine and Belarus were still primarily Russian. Part of the goal and nationalizing Belarus, was a foreign policy defense against Poland trying to take more Belarusian land, and trying to force pull in and the rest of the world to identify Belarus is an independent nation. It should also be noted that part of Stalin‘s motivation for indigenization was to win the loyalty and support of politically influential non-ethnic Russians to help Stalin beat out his political rivals within the Bolshevik party.

Stalin did a complete 180 on his indigenization policies. Because Western Europe became more of a threat to the communist project in the USSR, Stalin began to see Ukraine and Belarus as potential bridge heads that the west could use in a war to take down Soviet Russia. Stalin began to feel that the nationalization/indigenization of Belarus and Ukraine was counterproductive, and blamed the initiative gone wrong on foreign agents. Stolen now began to arrest and execute leaders of the indigenization experiment in Ukraine and Belarus. This was all happening in the late 1920s early 1930s, Stalin began to act more authoritarian. It was around this time that the Ukrainian famine also happene.

redolent

That rehabilitated notion was paired with another key Stalinist concept, treason. “Whoever raises his hand against the motherland, whoever betrays it must be annihilated,” thundered the party’s standard-bearing newspaper. This judgment ran counter to the ideas of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the theoreticians of the communist movement, who declared in their founding document, The Communist Manifesto (1848): “The working men have no country.”

vitriolic

coterminous

anathematized

Stalin regresses from policies of supporting national development of non-Russian nations even more, promoting return of Russian nationalism and glorification of Russian history. Begins to ban art and silence activists promoting other ideologies. USSR begins to champion Russian nation again, deviating from Marxist idea that proletariat should be stateless. Potential influence for strengthening the Russian identity is Hitlers ability to unify Germany under the guise of nationalism. All happening in late 1930s

By the late 1930s Soviet goals of communist internationalization have died, Stalin recognizes a reality in which the USSR will be on the defensive rather than an ideological offensive. Thus, in paranoia, Stalin begins to cleanse potential enemies of the state- ethnic Japanese, Finnish, Polish, German, Lithuanian, etc. peoples who he fears wouldn’t remain loyal to Russia in a war. The period of 1937-1938 is the Great Terror, where the Soviet government executed and imprisoned potential threats: “Altogether, between August 1937 and November 1938, the Soviet regime sentenced more than 335,000 people who had been arrested as part of the “nationality operations.” Close to 250,000 of those arrested, or 73 percent, were executed.l

RUSSIA’S RETURN TO PRIMACY IN THE 1930S CAME AT THE EXPENSE of many other Soviet nationalities. It was a zero-sum game that began in the wake of the war scare of 1927 with Poland and reached its peak in the months leading up to the outbreak of World War II in September 1939. That period was punctuated by a number of foreign-policy shifts caused, among other things,

by Hitler’s assumption of power in Germany in early 1933 and the signing of the Anti-Comintern Pact between Germany and Japan in the fall of 1936. Stalin had abandoned the communist dreams of the 1920s about a victorious world revolution and was preparing for a potential defensive war on two fronts, against Germany in the west and Japan in the east. The non-Russian peoples, earlier regarded as vanguard elements of a future revolutionary war, were now perceived as potential turncoats. Ensuring the loyalty of the Russians, the largest Soviet nationality, became crucial in the preparations for war.

The transformation of the Russians from a people guilty of imperial domination to the leading Soviet nation coincided with and was fueled by Stalin’s defeat of his opponents in the late 1920s and his rise to supreme power in the course of the 1930s. Accordingly, the revival of traditional notions of fatherland and patriotism went hand in hand with the Stalin regime’s emphasis on the paramount importance of the Russian state, and these positions were accompanied by a growing cult of strong rulers involving the rehabilitation of the Russian tsars, most notably Peter I and Ivan the Terrible. Although Russian nationalism often returned to the political scene in the garb of imperial Russia, the new understanding of Russianness was different from the one prevailing before 1917. The Russian nation of the late 1930s no longer included the Little or White Russians, who were now officially rec...

war would test the new boundaries, the strength of the new nation, and the commitment of its members to the sta...

World War II, which would begin on September 1, 1939,

The foreign and domestic policy of the USSR in the first half of the twentieth century seemed to be directly correlated with whether the Soviet Union was in a defensive position or offensive position in relation to foreign policy/war. In times of defense, policy skewed towards strengthening the core Russian nationality, and weakening demographics in the union that could be turncoats. In times of offense, it benefitted the Russians to embrace the other union nationalities, especially Ukrainians and Belarusians, in order to justify aggressive behavior or land expansion as the reunification of national peoples.

Policy during WW2 was very dynamic, trying to appease all parties. The Soviet Unions primary goal was maintaining internal peace, that is not falling victim to internal revolt in the case of an invasion by a foreign party, meanwhile promoting Russian nationalism, and justifying territorial expansion to the world stage as to not look like the aggressor. To accomplish all these things involved multiple changing policies.

plenipotentiary

Hitler, having failed to invade the British Isles in the fall of 1940, turned his armies eastward and attacked his former Soviet ally on June 22, 1941.

JOSEPH STALIN DIED ON MARCH 5, 1953.

start of the Cold War in 1948.

But few of his initiatives attracted more attention than his de-Stalinization campaign, which condemned Stalin’s crimes against the government and party elite (but not against the people), released most political prisoners from the Gulag—the state-run system of concentration camps—and launched public debate on economic, social, and cultural development. Khrushchev’s relaxation of ideological controls in the late 1950s produced a period in Soviet politics and culture that became known as the Khrushchev Thaw.