Stalin and After: The Interplay of Modernization and Russification

Abstract

The ‘great change’ of 1929, the move to policies of rapid industrialization and collectivization, was intended to embrace the whole of Soviet life and not to be limited to the economic sphere. It was therefore accompanied by a ‘cultural revolution’ intended to destroy the old bourgeois intelligentsia and culture and to put in their place a new culture, socialist and proletarian. This culture would be in large part created by newly educated workers and peasants who had risen from the ranks. There was no reason why non-Russians could not take part in this process.¹ Accordingly, the cultural revolution of the early 1930s was presented as, not the reverse of the policy of indigenization which prevailed in the 1920s, but its more effective continuation. To some extent this was true: the big campaign against illiteracy mounted after 1929 generally had the result of strengthening the position of the local languages in the union republics, and the published statistics show that the indigenization of the party and state apparatus continued for several more years.² But the ultimate consequence of the ‘great change’ was to worsen the situation of the non-Russians, if we examine the actual impact of the new policies. As far as the periphery was concerned the move towards rapid industrialization was also a move towards greater intervention by the centre.