[LINK] Building the Nation in a Soviet Context

[rfmcdonald]

The Moscow Times has an review of a recent academic study of nation-building in the Soviet Union.

For most Marxists, nation and nationalism were impediments to the building of a classless, socialist society. But Lenin, almost alone of the leading Bolsheviks, believed that small-nation nationalism could aid in the struggle against Western imperialism. Russia could prove to oppressed peoples everywhere that a large socialist state was an ally, not a threat, to their cultural and political development. Lenin's policy granted territory, education and limited political rights to non-Russians but stopped short of real sovereignty or complete freedom of expression. As Hirsch shows, the state's efforts led to a "double assimilation": the coalescing of unstructured populations into nationalities and the further assimilation of these nationalities into a Sovietized society.

The entire article is worth reading.