Stalin: Russophile or Russophobe?
Indeed, this sharp contradiction between the two leaders began to take shape immediately after the October Bolshevik coup 1917, reached its apogee at the end of 1922 in the process of forming a new state in the former Russian Empire - the Soviet Union, and then it became sharper, then faded until the death of Stalin.
This contradiction first appeared on 2 (15) in November 1917, when Lenin, in the name of the government of the Russian Republic created by him, personally wrote the "Declaration of the Rights of the Peoples of Russia", where it was actually announced that as a result of the October Revolution in the former Russian Empire it ended the old state, based on the will of the Russian people, and in its place "there remain only the peoples of Russia, enduring and suffering oppression and arbitrariness, to the emancipation of which should be started immediately, liberated ix which should be held firmly and irrevocably. "
The Lenin document left no doubt that from now on, with such a category as the Russian nation, which, by virtue of its objective position, had previously united all segments of the population of Russian society, was finished forever, and now there is only a class of workers and peasants in the country opposed to the class of the world bourgeoisie. This epoch-making novelty of historical significance was enshrined in the following words: the former Russia "must now be replaced by the policy of a voluntary and honest union of the peoples of Russia ... Only as a result of such a union," this epoch-making document emphasized, "workers and peasants of the peoples of Russia can be welded one revolutionary force capable of resisting any attempts on the part of the imperialist-annexationist bourgeoisie. "
In pursuance of the will of the first and second congresses of the Soviets, the Council of People’s Commissars, stated in the Declaration, decided to base its work on the issue of the nationalities of Russia with the following principles:
1) Equality and sovereignty of the peoples of Russia.
2) The right of the peoples of Russia to free self-determination, up to the separation and formation of independent states.
3) Cancellation of all and any national and national-religious privileges and restrictions.
4) Free development of national minorities and ethnographic groups inhabiting the territory of Russia "(highlighted by Lenin).
The document was signed as follows:
"In the name of the Republic of
People's Commissar for National Affairs
Joseph Dzhugashvili-Stalin.
Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars
V. Ulyanov (Lenin) ".
As follows from the text of this hastily, as they say, on the knee of the document written personally by Lenin (a week after the coup), his main goal was to translate Ulyanov-Lenin’s long-time dream of ending the Russian state’s role as the Russian nation people, with this, as he believed, "great-power trash."
Ulyanov-Lenin allowed himself to use this strong emotional-irritable expression only at the end of the 1922 year, just before his death, when the body destroyed by the disease no longer had the strength to restrain his emotions.
But in the critical conditions of a political upheaval, Lenin fully realized that at that moment he could not do it only on his own behalf, could not express his dislike for the Russian people only on his own behalf, and therefore when signing the Declaration Ilyich "hid" behind Dzhugashvili-Stalin, putting his signature first.
Later, the people's commissar for national affairs, his position reflected in the Declaration’s joint text with Lenin, would change more than once, but in principle, Stalin remained a Bolshevik, that is, a true Leninist, throughout his conscious life, and he always played the role of the Russian people in the USSR there will be a restrained, and for the most part, a negative attitude: after all, it was not by chance that the Russians lived no worse than others in their own country before October, but really worse (poorer), compared to others, began to live only after October.
Lenin, as is well known, proceeded from the fact that the Russian people in all centuries in the territory of the Russian Empire was engaged only in oppressing all other peoples, and therefore, during the formation of the Soviet Union, it demanded that the Central Committee of the RCP (b) should guarantees of deliverance from the supposedly "centuries-old oppression" of other nations by the Russians in the form of:
- firstly, the formation within the USSR of the state organization of nations in the form of republics. Including Ukraine, although the Ukrainians have never any statehood in stories did not have.
- secondly, in the right officially set forth in the Constitution of the exit from the USSR of any national union republic.
Stalin, as we know, did not think so and proposed a completely different model of national relations in the USSR created under the vigilant Lenin control: a single and indivisible Russia should remain further in the form of the RSFSR, and its composition as cultural autonomies includes all other nationally organized entities .
By the enormous power of Lenin’s onslaught, Stalin’s idea was not only rejected, but destroyed and destroyed, and the Soviet Union was formed the way Lenin imposed it. And this is despite the fact that even the loyal followers of Lenin recognized that the Union republics within the USSR were constituted from peoples and nations that had never had their own statehood in their history.
In 1920-ies, Stalin was forced to accept all the conditions dictated to him by Lenin regarding the diminishing of the political role of the Russian people in the formation of the Russian national state and at the same time to be tied up to the 1930 year, that "decisive struggle against the remnants of Great-Russian chauvinism is the primary task of our party "because" Great-Russian chauvinism reflects the desire of the obsolete classes of the predominantly Great-Russian nation to regain their lost privileges "(political report of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) Party Congress).
In historical science, the main ideologue in the matter of the materialization of the Leninist position in relation to the historical role of the Russian people in these years was academician M.N. Pokrovsky, whom Lenin himself blessed for this role. It was worth Pokrovsky in 1920 to publish the book "Russian history in the most concise essay," as Lenin immediately read it and 5 of December 1920 sent the academician a short letter:
“Comrade. M.N. Pokrovsky.
Tov. M.N. I congratulate you on your success very much: I greatly liked your new book “Rus [s] and [history] in [o] s [atom] och [Yerke]”. Original structure and presentation. Read with great interest. It will be necessary, in my opinion, to translate into Hebrew [Opeic] languages ... ”.
The works of Pokrovsky were not appealing to Stalin, to put it mildly, but knowing about the active support of the founder of the post-October Russian historical school from Lenin, he until the death of Pokrovsky clearly and unequivocally supported his position, for example, the position of the historian that in the USSR not a national state is built, but a state of the world proletariat. So, when German writer Emil Ludwig 13 of December 1931 asked Stalin if he allowed a parallel between himself and Peter the Great, the Secretary General explained without hesitation: no, he does not identify himself with Peter, primarily because Peter the Great created and strengthened the national the state of landowners and merchants, and he, Stalin, sets himself the task "not to strengthen any" national "state, but to strengthen the socialist state, which means international, and any strengthening of this state contributes to the whole of the international working class. "
He did not object to Pokrovsky, at least publicly, also on the question of the historical role of the Russian people.
Pokrovsky clearly proceeded from the fact that the Russian people did not carry in themselves any unifying role in relation to other nations, but was, as Lenin pointed out, a “Russian state” that oppressed all the other nations attached to the Russian state.
So, when the chairman of the CEC of the Georgian SSR, Philip Makharadze (1868 – 1941), known for the conflict with Stalin in 1922 on a question about the federal structure of the USSR, in 1931, had the imprudence to speak about the positive historical relationship between Georgia and Russia, it so aroused Pokrovsky, that he at the All-Union Conference of Marxist Historians immediately took the floor and said: “Great Russian chauvinism is a much greater danger than some representatives of national minorities can imagine. I repeat once again, I think that Comrade Makharadze treats us Russians too indulgently. In the past, we, Russians, - and I am the most purebred Great Russian, which can only be - in the past, we, Russians, are the greatest robbers that you can imagine. ”
Moreover, Pokrovsky laid down the thesis on the basis of the scheme of historical science created by him after the October period that all Russian pre-revolutionary historical science based on the works of B. Chicherin, S. Solovyov or V. Klyuchevsky, who defended the decisive role of the Russian people in the formation and development The Russian national state is the landowner-bourgeois science, which means it is counter-revolutionary.
First of all, Pokrovsky argued, it is such because it lays the foundation of the history of the Russian nation and the Russian national state. Until the end of his days, Pokrovsky struggled to replace the old history of Russia with a new one - the history of the peoples of the USSR. A typical example in this regard: in August 1928, when Pokrovsky planned to convene an All-Union conference of Marxist historians, he included the section "History of Russia" in the conference structure. But after three months, he recollected himself and re-named the section - “The History of the Peoples of the USSR”, explaining this in the following words: “Communist shame saved us from one of the outdated headings. We understood - a little late - that the term "Russian history" is a counter-revolutionary term, one edition with a tricolor flag and "one indivisible". "
Andrei Lvovich Yurganov, a professor at the RSUH, rightly notes on this point: Pokrovsky tabooed a whole field of knowledge about the stages of the development of the Russian nation.
But Stalin was tormented not by “communist shame”, but by something else: he was increasingly worried that the building of the Soviet Union, based on the Leninist principle of erosion of the state-forming role of the Russian people, was accompanied by a frantic political campaign in the press of the Union republics calling for an end to the Great Russian great-power chauvinism and the requirements of a hot iron to burn out the colonialist legacy of Russian tsarism, which is still tenaciously present in the behavior of Russian communists.
But by the beginning of the 1930's. The General Secretary of the Central Committee of the RCP (B.) Began to feel that the entire political organization of Soviet society had begun to spread at the national seams.
The communist party apparatus, tightly controlled from Moscow, with its political and ideological activities, of course, rigidly fastened the Soviet political organism throughout the country, but it still did not provide sufficient social solidity.
Here and there, hotbeds of political dissatisfaction with the party’s policies constantly arose. Secretary General is very worried. The existence of Lenin’s own creation, the Soviet Union, was called into question.
It should also be taken into account that during these years Stalin lived under the yoke of complete confidence that the imperialist West was nurturing the idea of an early attack on "the first socialist state in the world of workers and peasants." It was possible to repel such an attack only if the strong social unity of Soviet society was maintained. And what kind of power could provide such unity? Only the Russian national element, whose share in the total composition of the population of the USSR was about 70%. But in order for the Russians to assume such a role consciously, they needed to be told that it was they who were the leading social force of Soviet society.
And the General Secretary began to deploy the ideological boat.
Outwardly, this turn initially looked pretty harmless. 27 December 1929 Mr. Stalin speaks at a conference of agricultural Marxists and raises the question of the "gap between practical success and the development of theoretical thought." This accusation against the historical school of Pokrovsky, which consists in the fact that the theory he proposed no longer meets the needs of the practical construction of a socialist state, was not noticed by anyone, including Pokrovsky himself. In October, 1931, Mr. Stalin wrote a letter "On some questions of the history of Bolshevism," which is published by all Moscow party ideological journals (Bolshevik, Proletarian Revolution, Communist Enlightenment, Fighting Classes).
Having chosen the addressee of his critical remarks a completely third-rate figure - historian A.G. Slutsky (1894 – 1979, from 1937 to 1957 - a Gulag prisoner), which no one had ever heard of in a historical environment before, Stalin actually hit the historians of the Pokrovsky school (and other official historians at that time in the USSR was not), accusing them that they build their works on "paper documents", and not on real deeds and the practice of Bolshevism. The article ended up where a clear conclusion in this regard: "... Even some of our historians - I speak about historians without quotes, about the Bolshevik historians of our party - are not free from mistakes pouring water on the mill of Slutskys and Volosevich [the Course history of the CPSU (b)]. Unfortunately, Comrade Yaroslavsky, whose books on the history of the CPSU (B.), Despite their merits, contain a number of fundamental and historical errors, does not make an exception here. "
It is noteworthy that the Secretary General made an emphasis in these speeches on the thesis that it was the Russian people in the whole history of Russia-Russia who always acted as a unifying force in the formation of the Russian (Russian) state.
Therefore, the general secretary did not target Yemelyan Yaroslavsky (Moses Gubelman) in his articles, but in the Lenin favorite - M.N. Pokrovsky. The latter, however, did not understand this (or did not want to understand). Up to his death (1932), he continued to argue that he faithfully followed Lenin's instructions in the development of Soviet historical science. And his main thesis concerned the assertion that in the history of Russia, since ancient times, the Russian people never carried any unifying mission in relation to other nationalities (peoples).
In the last for 1930 issue of the Marxist Historian magazine, Pokrovsky, in the article "The emergence of the Muscovy state and the Great Russian people," even denied the existence of the "Great Russians": "And who are these" Great Russians ", ... there were no Great Russians at all - Finnish tribes lived in this territory, autochthons, which ... finished their enslavers. "" Already the Moscow Grand Duchy, not only the Moscow kingdom, was the "prison of nations". Great Russia is built on the bones of "aliens", and the latter are hardly comforted by the fact that 80% of their blood flows in the veins of Great Russians. Only the final overthrow of Great-Russian oppression by the force that fought and fights against all and all oppression could serve as a payment for all the suffering that this oppression caused to them. "
Stalin was simply jarred by all this Russophobian orgy inspired by Lenin.
After all, he wrote in black and white in 1913 in his work “Marxism and the National Question”: “In Russia, Great Russians, who had a strong organized noble bureaucracy at the head, took on the role of a unifier of nationalities.”
However, at the beginning of 1930-x directly to fight with the historical school of Pokrovsky, the General Secretary could not yet. And not only because Pokrovsky and his numerous students relied on the direct support of Lenin and held all historical science in their hands until the death of Pokrovsky. And also because Stalin during these years was forced to fight on several fronts at once:
- to ensure personal political survival in a fight with people from the former inner circle of Lenin. And it was not only Trotsky, Zinoviev, Kamenev, but also those who personally knew Lenin I.N. Smirnov (“Kolchak winner”, arrested in 1933, shot in August 1936, after a few months his wife and daughter were arrested and shot, although it was under the guarantees of the investigation that they would save their lives counterrevolutionary activity), who threw the phrase “Stalin thinks that no bullet can be found on him” in a narrow circle of like-minded people in 1932;
- to strengthen the social basis of the political system of the USSR and to carry out industrialization, preparing the Soviet Union for the inevitable war with Europe and Japan;
- to substantiate the concept of the possibility of the victory of socialism in one single country under the conditions of a hostile imperialist encirclement and much more, about which no one even had any idea about 1917 in October.
But, nevertheless, as the well-known literary critic and great publicist Vadim Kozhinov (1990 – 1930) noted in 2001-s in his work, “a radical turn has already begun in the country” in the field of ideology.
5 March 1934. The Politburo's decision on this issue appeared, 20 March, the head of the culture and propaganda department of the Central Committee of the CPSU (b) A.I. Stetsky and A.S. Bubnov was assigned to prepare a proposal on the composition of the authors of textbooks. On March 29, by the decision of the Politburo, the groups of authors were approved. On the same day, the Politburo adopted a resolution on the introduction of historical faculties as part of universities. To work out a final document, Bubnov was asked to call E.V. Tarle. The two resolutions of the Politburo of March 29 were united and formed the basis of the resolution of the Politburo (and SNK of the USSR) of 15 of May “On the teaching of civic history in schools of the USSR”, the text of which was edited by Stalin himself.
The testimony of a meeting of the Politburo of the Central Committee 29 of March was retained by historian S.A. Piontkovsky. Practically, only the Secretary General spoke at the meeting, he writes in his diary, since the others simply were not ready for such an ideological turn. “History,” the Secretary General said, “should be history. We need textbooks of the ancient world, the Middle Ages, the new time, the history of the USSR, the history of colonial and oppressed peoples. Bubnov said, maybe not the USSR, but the history of the peoples of Russia? Stalin says no , the history of the USSR, the Russian people in the past gathered other nations, he started the same gathering now, and then, by the way, he said that the Pokrovsky scheme was not a Marxist scheme, and all the trouble went from the times of Pokrovsky influence. " As the publisher of archival documents of that period, M.V. Zelenov, Stalin was preparing for war and understood that it was necessary to prepare for her and the mass historical consciousness, for which it was necessary to form a new historical ideology, covering the population of the country of draft age, i.e. students and high school students. It was more convenient to do this through school textbooks and university history departments. The figure of Pokrovsky was not replaced by any other authoritative historian; it was replaced by the figure of Stalin. The result of the reform was justified in the war years: the authorities were able to form such an ideology, such an understanding of patriotism, which united all peoples and nationalities in the struggle against fascism. With a change in the mass historical consciousness through cinema and literature, the measures taken gave the desired effect.
As always, reforms were accompanied by a change of carriers of old ideas to carriers of new ideas. If in 1929 – 1930 the old professorship was repressed, then in 1934 – 1936. Representatives of the Pokrovsky School were repressed. Course change in 1938 – 1939 also led to new repressions, because Stalin thought personalistic: a new ideology should be carried out by new people.
At the same time, it is necessary to make one remark: Stalin's position should not be idealized in this regard. It would be wrong to consider Stalin a Russophile or Russophobe. He was what he himself called himself a natsmen for a long time.
It should be borne in mind that the concept of autonomization expressed by Stalin during the formation of the USSR (a single and politically indivisible Russia) should be interpreted least of all as russcentrism, and even more so as Russophilism.
No, of course, Stalin was never a Russophile (although a Russophobe, too). The Secretary General has always been guided by political expediency in his behavior. He has always been, and at the same time, felt himself to be a representative of a small people, who joined (joined) to a great nation and to a great country.
That is, Joseph Dzhugashvili with his mother’s milk perceived as given from above that Russia is a great world power, and the Russian people is a state-forming ethnic substance that for many centuries managed to organize a state with a culture (spiritual, material, intellectual, household) of world importance, and on the basis of this culture, this people (Russian) united dozens of other peoples and their cultures around themselves, without destroying and destroying these past, but, as far as possible, saving them.
As natsmen, Joseph Dzhugashvili keenly felt his Georgian identity, loved his people, which was manifested in his youthful poems, but at the same time he did not reject either the Russian people or the Russian culture. Moreover, already in a revolutionary environment, differing from his inner circle with a deep mind and clear consciousness, he understood that the only (and main) factor ensuring the existence of this enormous education - the Russian Empire - was always the Russian people playing a state-forming role. Unlike Lenin, he understood this very well and therefore advocated the preservation of this people themselves and the form of their natural existence - the Russian state in its unity and indivisibility.
In the newest Russian historiography, there are lovers to assert that Lenin’s Russophobic view of the historical role of the Russian people is not at all Leninist, and this, they say, Trotsky misled him and even it was Trotsky who allegedly tampered with the latest accusations against the “Russians” bullie. "
But the point, of course, is not in speculative attempts to "rehabilitate" the leader of the world proletariat in his Russophobic positions at any cost. You need to analyze facts and only facts. And the latter show that the Stalinist concept of “autonomization” was overthrown by Lenin with a well-defined intention, and the Soviet Union was deliberately created with a colossal power of a mine embedded in its organizational and political foundation, a mine that sooner or later should have torn off, and Russia as a single whole state of the Russian nation to destroy. This mine exploded through 67 years after the death of Ulyanov-Lenin.
But Stalin in politics has always remained a cold pragmatist. When in order to achieve one political goal, which he himself formulated for himself, it was necessary to increase the role of the Russian people — he did it. When it seemed to him that the time had come to do the opposite - he did.
So, in May 1944, Stalin unexpectedly for all gathers in the Kremlin leading historians, sets them the task of developing a new history textbook of the USSR and keeps all this fraternity in Moscow until September. It would seem, why is it all of a sudden? There is a war, the country is choking in the grip of hunger and over-tension from the need to build up all types of weapons, the hardest negotiations with the Anglo-American allies are about opening a second front in Europe, and the leader was suddenly interested in the problems of teaching history. This closed (and it would be more correct to say secret) months-long meeting of historians in the Kremlin, in which all the main ideologists of the CPSU (b) took part, is still covered with an aura of mystery and mystery.
To directly supervise this secret meeting, Stalin on the night of July 12, 1944, suddenly summoned A. Zhdanov from Leningrad. Judging by the archival documents now open, not only Zhdanov, but also none of the staff ideologists of the Central Committee, who led this meeting, could not understand what the leader wanted from them. Stalin himself did not reveal his cards. Apparently, I didn’t want to say openly that we just need to change the accents in covering Soviet history and put at the forefront in the development and strengthening of the Soviet Union, the collective and unifying role of non-Russian, as it was in the official ideology from 1934 of the year, but of the Soviet people. Directly the leader will say about it later, after the war. And especially he will actively begin to implement this thesis after 1948, when the Leningrad Affair begins to unfold.
He will need this in order to introduce another thesis into the minds of citizens of the USSR: in 1941 – 1945, the Red Army soldiers defended not “Mother Russia”, as he told Churchill in 1942, but the Soviet system, that is, he created , Stalin, the political regime.
Zhdanov, in 1944, if he understood something, nevertheless, judging by his behavior, he was unable to reverse himself and write directly in the meeting’s draft resolution that all merits in the development of the USSR belong not to the Russian, but to the Soviet person ...
As you can see, it was not by chance that one of the Stalinist people's commissars, Vyacheslav Molotov, was already deeply post factum; in 1980, he was forced to admit: "The Communist Party could not solve the Russian question, that is, what should be the status of the RSFSR and the Russian nation in the USSR."
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