Hennadii Yefimenko. Harvard Ukrainian Studies. Volume 35, Annual 2017.
The language policy in Soviet Ukraine has been subjected to considerable scholarly scrutiny. As a rule, the starting point of such studies is the resolution on the national question adopted at the Twelfth Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik), which took place in 1923. The formal launch of indigenization, even though it was caused by objective circumstances, is regarded as a genuine change in the Bolshevik leadership’s attitude to the nationality question. The preceding years are generally viewed as a period when the preconditions for a turning point in the nationality policy were formed.
A comprehensive analysis of sources and close study of the realities of the period from 1919 to 1922 have cast doubt on established assessments. There are substantial grounds today for claiming that the main program of the Bolsheviks’ activities was determined by ideas about communism and the desire to put them into practice. Indeed, the Bolshevik leaders did not have a concrete plan for building communism in the form of well-defined and consistent actions. But in order to realize their vision of a communist society, which was formed back in the prerevolutionary period, they were prepared to adopt any and all methods, even those that at first glance ran counter to this vision. As far as the latter is concerned, however, the language policy of the Bolshevik government in 1919-33 appears to be consistent and logical. This article will focus above all on aspects to which historians have paid scant attention.
Let us first define the subject of this study. Within the concept of “language policy” I include two interconnected but discrete components. The first consists of the Bolshevik government’s attitude and actions with regard to the use of the Ukrainian language in various spheres of state and cultural life—first and foremost, “linguistic Ukrainization” and counteractions to it. The second is the question of the recognition of the Ukrainian language’s separateness and the Soviet government’s position on the prospects of its formation and development.
Preconditions
Shortly after the coup of October 1917 it became clear that communism could be built only by means of the traditional Russian path of “revolution from above.” Among the views characteristic of Bolshevik cultural planners, one in particular must be singled out: a tendency toward centralized management and linguistic and cultural unification, which determined the strategic course aimed at the assimilation of languages. In his programmatic article “Critical Remarks on the National Question,” written in late 1913, Vladimir Lenin characterized the tendency toward the assimilation of nations as “one of the greatest driving forces transforming capitalism into socialism.” Naturally, the Bolshevik leaders were not ready to repudiate such a driving force. Developing this idea in his article “The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination,” written in February 1916, Lenin emphasized: “The aim of socialism is … not only the drawing together of nations, but also their merger.”
Shortly after the Bolsheviks seized power, the terminology they used changed. Starting in 1918, they spoke about “communism,” not “socialism.” In March 1918 the Bolshevik party was renamed from the Russian Social-Democratic Party (Bolshevik), or RSDRP(b), to the Russian Communist Party (Bolshevik), or RCP(b), and in March 1919 the Bolshevik leadership founded the Communist International (abbr. Comintern). The semantic load of these terms was identical, however. What the Bolshevik leaders wrote in the prerevolutionary period about the building of “socialism” starting in 1918 became a feature of communist construction. Following the introduction of the New Economic Policy (NEP) in the spring of 1921 the concept of “socialism” and related terms came into wide use again. In this article socialism and communism are used as synonyms.
After the October coup the Bolshevik leaders did not set out to build communism straightaway. First, they had to retain and consolidate their power. In light of this, as well as the fact that Soviet power on the territory of Ukraine in early 1918 was short-lived, the implementation of the Bolshevik party’s programmatic principles, including its language policy, was not on the agenda.
The situation changed markedly during the second Bolshevik occupation of Ukraine. The Bolsheviks’ political opponents in Soviet Russia had been removed from power, a clear-cut power vertical was formed there, and most importantly, this period ushered in communist transformations that were also replicated in Ukraine beginning in 1919. Thus, any analysis of the Bolsheviks’ language policy in Ukraine can only proceed from that year. This policy changed depending on assessments of the prospects for building communism. On the basis of a close analysis of sources, I will characterize its main stages in the period from 1919 to 1933—stages that, as will become clear, do not correspond to the accepted assessments in current historiography.
“Dizzy with Success” (February-August 1919)
The consolidation of Bolshevik rule in Russia, the revolutionary situation in a number of Western European countries, and the rapid occupation of the Baltic countries, Belarus, and Ukraine in late 1918 and early 1919 gave the Bolshevik leadership grounds to anticipate a “world revolution.” At the time, many people thought that communism was close at hand and, therefore, the time had come to implement its programmatic principles. The components of the nationality policy—its form and content, its concrete tasks and slogans—turned out to be extremely similar to one another. Thus, analyzing the language policy in Soviet Ukraine in 1919 helps to elucidate not only the specific features of this period but also the Bolshevik officials’ strategic view of this question.
In his prerevolutionary writings Lenin frequently mentioned the Ukrainian national liberation movement, and conceded, in theory, the possibility of forming a Ukrainian state. In 1914 he remarked, “Whether Ukraine, for example, is destined to form an independent state depends on a thousand factors not known beforehand.” Nevertheless, in practice he did everything possible to prevent the creation of such a state. For example, the resolution passed at the Poronin meeting of the RSDRP in 1913, which was drafted by Lenin, noted that political, professional, cooperative-educational, and other organizations working in the interests of the “proletariat” must be uniform for the entire state—that is, the Russian Empire. In other words, associations that might become the organizing force in the formation of Ukrainian statehood were denied the “right to exist.”
In the prerevolutionary period Bolshevik ideologues ignored the Ukrainian language question. But after the total failure, as it seemed to the Kremlin, of the Ukrainian national liberation movement in 1918, in early 1919 the Bolshevik leaders no longer concealed their attitude toward the Ukrainian language, which they perceived as something superfluous or as an obstacle on the way to communist construction. At the Eighth Congress of the RCP(b) in March 1919 Lenin even expressed doubt as to its very existence: “Even as regards the language, it is not clear whether Ukrainian is the language of the common people or not.”
The Communist Party figures whom the Kremlin dispatched to Ukraine expressed themselves more frankly. During the Third All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets, Khrystyian Rakovs’kyi, the head of the Council of People’s Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR, noted: “We have put an end to national differences, we have pushed the great class distinction into the foreground of world history, the division of Europe into states is already disappearing in the darkness of the past; now the division is proceeding not along borders but classes.” At that same congress, in response to the Borot’bist Party’s proposal to enshrine in the Constitution of the Ukrainian SSR a clause about assisting the development of the cultures of underdeveloped nations (oppressed by tsarist rule), People’s Commissar of Justice Oleksandr Khmel’nyts’lcyi stated openly, “I think that if we concern ourselves with the culture of every nation individually, then this will be an unhealthy national vestige.” Even on the eve of the Red Army’s retreat from Ukraine in August 1919, Rakovs’kyi, taking part in a discussion with the Borot’bists held during a meeting of the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee (VUTsVK), declared: “Power should belong to the urban proletariat; therefore we must place its language, the Muscovite language, in first place.”
Describing the situation in 1932, Volodymyr Zatons’kyi admitted, “Precisely in the year 1919 … there was a certain suspicion regarding the Ukrainian language. Such feelings were widespread, even in circles of the revolutionary proletariat and peasantry of undeniably proletarian origin.” He was fond of citing the example of Red Army Brigade Commander Vasyl’ Bozhenko, who, upon receiving a request to stage a Ukrainian-language play, responded in bad Russian, a language in which he never gained fluency: “‘I’m permitting the play, but forbidding it because it’s in a counterrevolutionary language.’ He meant that the play could only be staged in the Russian language, not in a counterrevolutionary language.” At the Eighth Conference of the RCP(b) in December 1919 one of the leaders of the Communist Party (Bolshevik) of Ukraine (CP[b]U), Iakiv Ialcovliev (Epshtein), remarked: “A denigrating attitude to the Ukrainian language has been observed. Every worker of Ukraine will recall a considerable number of such examples.”
In general, the idea that Ukrainian was a “counterrevolutionary” language in 1919 was quite widespread among the members of the Communist Party and nomenklatura of the Ukrainian SSR. As a result, as Mykola Skrypnyk acknowledged soon after the events, “approximately 200 directives … concerning a ban on the use of the Ukrainian language” were approved.
Such actions became a powerful catalyst for the rise of an anti-Bolshevik insurgency in which, just as in 1917, the national and social components were united again. In his “theses on the Ukrainian question,” which Rakovs’kyi forwarded to Lenin on 19 November 1919, the former acknowledged: “The slogan of an ‘independent Ukrainian state’ has become popular once again, and the entire struggle against us in Ukraine took place under it. Our negligent attitude to the national question, our deliberate or unconscious russification policy in Ukraine has reinforced this movement.” In view of the rise of an insurgent movement in Ukraine, which in 1919 was impeding the “world revolution,” Kremlin leaders decided to grant certain concessions. Taking into consideration the fact that the domination of Russian culture was not a specific goal of Bolshevism, it was decided first of all to introduce correctives into the language policy.
Concessions in Anticipation of the Victory of Communism (December 1919-March 1921)
The Bolsheviks’ defeat in Ukraine in 1919 did not lead to an abandonment of the communist onslaught, but slowed it somewhat. The Bolshevik government needed to restore the trust of Ukrainian society, which it had forfeited that year. As Rakovs’kyi noted in his above-mentioned theses, the Ukrainian independence movement “depends on the Ukrainian intelligentsia, especially the teachers’ union, which has more than 20,000 members, and on the Ukrainian Union of Cooperatives, which is a powerful economic organization whose network has encompassed all of Ukraine, especially the Right Bank.” The language question was of extreme importance to the members of these associations, who formed the active part of Ukrainian society. Some Soviet political forces, first and foremost the Borot’bists and the “Popov group” in the CP(b)U, demanded a change in attitude toward the Ukrainian language.
These demands were heeded by the Kremlin. The resolution “About Soviet Power in Ukraine,” ratified on 2 December by the Eighth Conference of the RCP(b), emphasized:
(4) Considering that throughout the centuries Ukrainian culture (language, school, etc.) was oppressed by tsarism and the exploiting classes of Russia, the CC RCP(b) obligates all members of the party by all means to help eradicate obstacles to the free development of the Ukrainian language and culture…. Measures should be adopted at once, so that in all Soviet institutions there will be a sufficient number of functionaries who are fluent in the Ukrainian language, and so that henceforth they will be able to speak the Ukrainian language.
Thus, as the Ukrainian historian Valerii Vasyl’iev aptly has commented, “the leadership of the RCP(b) officially recognized not only the dissimilarity between the Ukrainian and Russian languages, [and] the difference between the [two] national traditions, but also their formal equality. This signified the recognition of the existence of a separate Ukrainian nation, something that the Bolsheviks had never done in previous years.”
For those Bolsheviks who were not committed to Russian chauvinism, the reversal in the nationality policy looked like the adoption of new methods with which to influence the masses, and in the decision to foster the development of the Ukrainian language they did not perceive any threat to Bolshevik power. In November 1919, when this change had already taken shape, Trotsky in his rough notes emphasized the need “to pursue a progressive nationality policy: To provide Ukrainian schooling, provide a Ukrainian press, mercilessly drive out the arrogant attitude to the Ukrainian language in the university as well as in the army…. Turn the Ukrainian language into a powerful medium of communist ideas.” For the most part, however, this change was perceived only as a concession granted to the Ukrainian national liberation movement.
Concession was the subject of discussions around the Ukrainian question at the Eighth Conference of the RCP(b). The concept of concession itself was used there in the sense of a “temporary weakening of the struggle” against the system of views characteristic of the Ukrainian national movement, “a repudiation of the Bolsheviks’ own intentions, views, etc.” in view of the unfavorable situation. The anticipated approach of communism led to a discussion of the degree to which such a “concession” was necessary or whether it was superfluous. Zatons’kyi alone spoke out against using the term: “If we are talking about the Ukrainian language, then this is not a concession…. It is an old habit of comrades to look upon Ukraine as Little Russia, as part of the Russian Empire—a habit that has been drummed into you throughout the millennia of the existence of Russian imperialism.” It should be noted here that among the supporters of the party’s new course were certain individuals who, according to Zatons’kyi’s letter to the CC RCP(b) of 1 December 1919, “just yesterday (and perhaps even today), in private conversations, it is true, spoke about that ‘barnyard language.'” It is clear that such figures were not capable of rendering real assistance to the spread of the Ukrainian language, nor were they prepared to do this, inasmuch as they viewed the language declarations as imposed and temporary in nature.
Zatons’kyi’s warnings were ignored by the conference participants, but their validity was confirmed by subsequent events. In early 1920 among the Bolsheviks of Soviet Ukraine a propaganda campaign was carried out that publicly confirmed the full value of the Ukrainian language. One representative example was an article published in the newspaper Komunist, headlined “The Ukrainian Language Is Not the Language of Petliura.” After analyzing various arguments, the author came to a conclusion that reflected the main messages of Bolshevik propaganda of the time: “The Ukrainian language is not the language of Petliura but generally a language that is like all languages: merely a medium for organizing the working people. To interpret it differently means to be naive, to suffer from russification tendencies, to long for assimilation. In every communist’s attitude to language it must be understood that it is not assimilation but conjugation—that is, the interaction of equal languages—that in the future will produce a single language, one that will be created by the socialist order.”
In late February 1920 Rakovs’kyi, who until recently had been an advocate of the dictatorship of the Russian language, declared his support for the comprehensive development of the Ukrainian language. In a programmatic article published in Ukraine’s main party newspaper he stated: “We want the Ukrainian language to become the dominant language of Ukraine.” In a letter to Lenin dated 12 June 1920 even Artem (Fedor Sergeev), one of the leaders of the Donetsk-Kryvyi Rih Republic that existed from February to April 1918 (and one of the leaders of Soviet Ukraine in 1919-20), acknowledged that “Ukrainization of the city, drawing it closer to the village at least in terms of language, the de-katsapification [de-russification] of the city is very advantageous.”
At the same time, it must be recalled that in early 1920 there was still a substantial number of cases in which Communist Party and state officials—mostly officials dispatched from Russia—tried to outlaw or restrict the use of Ukrainian. Most often this happened on railways and in military departments. The CP(b)U leaders issued a categorical protest against such actions to the Kremlin, in his response to Rakovs’kyi and Trotsky’s telegram of 7 February 1920, Stalin, head of the Ukrainian Council of the Working Army and member of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Southwestern Front, insisted that “the Front and its organs could receive war telegrams from their subordinates only in Russian,” also owing to the lack of translators. Lenin, however, sided with the protesters and their demands were met. in August 1920, despite the opposition on the part of chauvinistic army personnel, at Rakovs’kyi’s insistence and with Trotsky’s support the School of Red Officers adopted Ukrainian as its working language.
A number of important steps were taken to introduce the Ukrainian language into schools, the press, and the publishing sphere, thanks in no small part to the appointment of Hryhorii Hryn’ko, a former Borot’bist, as People’s Commissar of Education. By far the most important of these activities was public school education. On the eve of the Fourth All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets (16-20 May 1920) Hryn’ko wrote: “in its work the Commissariat of Education understands perfectly well that education will become accessible to all working people only when it will be native not only in content but in form. And because of this, at the very outset of work a directive was issued about the opening of all Ukrainian schools that were closed during the Denikin period…. The Commissariat of Education is faced with the task of conducting all educational work in those national forms that are native to the laboring population.” Hryn’ko’s policy of safeguarding and expanding the network of elementary schools, in which reaching out to the masses, rather than promoting ideology, was the chief task, was the logical consequence of Ukrainization in the sphere of education.
As regards the situation from late 1919 to early 1921, it should be emphasized that the rights of the Ukrainian language were expanded and that this process was supported by the Soviet Ukrainian party leadership, if Hryn’ko’s efforts to Ukrainianize education displeased certain party members, they concealed their feelings. Communism was still thought to be coming in the very near future, and even anti-Ukrainian figures in the RCP(b) and CP(b)U were prepared to tolerate the spread of the Ukrainian language in order to enlist the support of Ukrainian society or, at least, to minimize its resistance to communist construction, or to avoid trouble with the Central Committee.
Ukrainization as the Antipode of Sovietization (April 1921-October 1922)
In March 1921 the CC RCP(b) initiated the switch to the New Economic Policy. At the time a peace treaty was concluded with Poland, ending the war in which the “Ukrainian” factor (Petliura, the head of the Ukrainian National Republic, was Poland’s ally) had played a substantial role in the Bolshevik government’s language policy in Ukraine. A considerable proportion of the party and Soviet nomenklatura decided that there was no longer any need to continue pretending loyalty or respect for Ukrainian language and culture. The previously concealed irritation that had been sparked by the Ukrainization of schools and spread of the Ukrainian language in the publishing sphere now began to be displayed.
The first such attempt to “sort out relations” took place during the First All-Ukrainian Party Meeting held on 2-4 May 1921. It was attended by 106 people, 39 of whom had a deciding vote and 67 a deliberative vote. In their speeches during the discussion of the national question, some participants talked about “nationalistic tendencies,” which were understood to mean precisely those actions that were aimed at introducing the Ukrainian language into the education and publishing spheres. The tense atmosphere did not contribute to drafting a well thought-out resolution. Thus, on a proposal introduced by Dmytro Manuil’s’kyi, a decision was adopted “about the unswerving implementation of the resolution from the December 1919 plenum of the CC RCP(b).” Reprinted in the meeting’s final decision was part of the resolution that was ratified by the Eighth Conference of the RCP(b) in December 1919, which stated in part, “The members of the RCP(b) on the territory of Ukraine should in fact implement the right of the laboring masses to study and converse in their native language in all Soviet institutions, in every way possible counteracting efforts, through artificial means, to push the Ukrainian language into insignificance, seeking, on the contrary, to transform the Ukrainian language into a tool of communist education of the laboring masses.” The drafters of the document italicized only that part of the December 1919 resolution which supposedly offered grounds for criticizing the actions of the People’s Commissariat of Education. This was followed by a passage explaining why it was not permissible to use tougher rhetoric: “This resolution, which remains in force to this day, has not been revoked by a single congress or party meeting; it does not need any commentaries and should be decisively implemented by the party.” A clear-cut indicator of the real moods among most of the conference participants was a remark in the text of the resolution concerning the simultaneous struggle against “manifestations of Great Russian jingoism (rusotiapstvo) and Ukrainian chauvinism [!].”
The atmosphere at this meeting led logically to Hryhorii Hryn’ko and Antin Prykhod’ko submitting their resignations. Both men were former Borot’bists. At the time Hryn’ko was People’s Commissar of Education, while Prykhod’ko was the director of the All-Ukrainian Publishing House (Vsevydav) and one of Hryn’ko’s deputies. The Politburo of the CC CP(b)U rejected their declarations of resignation on 10 May 1921. But in view of the fact that the People’s Commissariat of Education had been unable to abide strictly by the directives to bring teachers under political control (this would have inevitably caused a drop in the number of teachers, which in turn would have halted the process of educating the masses), the concept of Ukrainization in the perception of the preponderant majority of the party and Soviet nomenklatura acquired anti-communist and anti-Soviet content. In contrast to 1920, Hryn’ko was now constantly reminded of this.
After a turbulent clarifying of relations in January 1922 Hryn’ko submitted his resignation again, explaining his decision thus: “In view of the way the discussion concerning the policies of the People’s Commissariat of Education proceeded at the Politburo meeting on 21 January, I resigned from the leadership of the People’s Commissariat of Education on the 22nd…. The entire presentation of the question at this meeting, especially the formula of C[omrade] Rakovs’kyi, who demanded a radical change in the policy from Ukrainization to Sovietization, was dictated by a profound failure to understand the process of cultural construction in Ukraine in the last two years.” This time, too, Hryn’ko was kept in his post, and the question of the nationality policy was discussed at the February 1922 plenum of the CC CP(b)U. Even though no final decision was adopted and Ukrainization was not mentioned in the preliminary version, in practice the attacks on Ukrainization intensified.
The problem came to the fore again in the late summer of 1922, and by 20 September Hryn’ko was dismissed from his post for his inadequate implementation of party directives and granted a “one-month leave to complete scholarly works.” In October 1922 Dmytro Lebed’, second secretary of the CC CP(b)U, characterized the situation in the following way: “While one cannot say that C[omrade] Hryn’ko sabotaged the CC resolution with respect to the Sovietization of schools and political education, it is clear that he did not implement it.”
Thus, by the time of the October 1922 plenum of the CC CP(b)U the term “Ukrainization” in the perception of the Communist Party nomenklatura was becoming synonymous with “Petliurization” and “nationalism.” Mikhail Frunze aptly described the position of the CC CP(b)U: “Essentially, it mostly did not concur with this [the December 1919 directives on the national and cultural question in Ukraine—H. Ye.] and tacitly reckoned that circumstances would change in the end and that conversations about Ukrainian culture would be shunted aside.”
In late September 1922 part of the Communist Party leadership of the Ukrainian SSR decided to formalize the direction of the struggle against Ukrainization. With Hryn’lco’s dismissal, this issue was considered settled. These measures were not put into practice, however, because, as was emphasized at the September session of the Politburo of the CC CP(b)U, the situation in the republic at the time was characterized by an “intensification of political and criminal banditry, an intensification of activities among nationalists and Petliurites, as well as the church movement,” all of which were viewed as an “extraordinarily serious threat.” An attack on the Ukrainian language might become an important factor in the activation of resistance to Soviet power, which was none too strong anyway. A different solution to the complex situation was found.
Linguistic Ukrainization as a Tool of Sovietization (October 1922-April 1925): Declaration of Intentions
The Ukrainian party leaders’ shift on the rhetoric of Ukrainization took place at the October plenum of the CC CP(b)U (16-17 October 1922). It was at this very meeting that part of the Soviet Ukrainian leadership, represented by Dmytro Lebed’, tried to liquidate “forcible Ukrainization,” which, in the words of Lebed’ himself, was being carried out by the “public” that “C[omrade] Hryn’ko had grouped around himself.” Referring to the program Lebed’ proposed, Frunze declared: “The new line, if it goes through, will mean a struggle against Ukrainian culture, which Com[rade] Lebed’ is thinking of imposing with the aid of communists who do not know the Ukrainian language.” Pragmatic leaders, like Frunze and Rakovs’kyi, realized that such a shift would not only spark dissatisfaction among part of Ukrainian society and create additional difficulties for the Soviet authorities, but also thoroughly complicate the implementation of modernization.
It was decided to resolve the question of the change in attitude to Ukrainization “dialectically.” Frunze was forced to acknowledge that “at the present time the Ukrainian language is a weapon of the struggle against us,” but he argued that the Bolsheviks had to gain control of this weapon. In particular, he proposed that in all Soviet party schools “Ukrainian language instruction be introduced without fail and only those who understand it and can converse in it are to graduate.” Rakovs’kyi, who had earlier contrasted Ukrainization to Sovietization, now emphasized the need to implement “Ukrainization through Sovietization.” Thus, in the eyes of the majority of party members the term “Ukrainization” was transformed from a negative cliche into a slogan with a positive connotation.
The plenum’s decisions emphasized that expectations of a “new line” with regard to the language question (an anti-Ukrainian one) were without foundation: “There can be no question at all of any deviation from the preceding party line [that is, the one initiated by the decisions of the Eighth Conference of the RCP(b) held in December 1919—H. Ye.] on the issue of the development of national Ukrainian culture.” Vivid proof that this particular plenum was a major turning point, after which a well-conceived movement toward Ukrainization and Sovietization was launched, was the plenum’s request to the CC RCP(b) to keep Mykola Skrypnyk in Ukraine, contradicting a decision that had just been passed at that very time to transfer him out of the Ukrainian SSR. The reason behind the request was clear: “Differences [with regard to the national question—H. Ye.] have been cleared up and, in connection with the CC’s line, he may work.” During discussions of this question a proposal was put forward to add to the resolution words to the effect that “his removal may be interpreted as repression in the struggle against Ukrainian culture,” to which Skrypnyk replied, “That is not necessary.” The Politburo of the CC RCP(b) approved the request of the plenum of the CC CP(b)U.
At this plenum Rakovs’kyi spoke about the need “to purge the Ukrainian language of foreign influences.” As the speaker himself noted, the reference was to Polish and German influences. The position on a linguistic purge was to be set forth by the Politburo of the CC CP(b)U. But the “rehabilitated” Skrypnyk interrupted Rakovs ‘kyi’s speech twice, shouting, “I propose that we not deal with this question. This is ‘absurd,'” and “This is a question of philology, not politics.” As a result, the proposal was not even put to a vote.
Thus, in October 1922 for the first time the CP(b)U leadership conceptually rejected the idea widely held among the Communist Party and Soviet nomenklatura that Ukrainization was opposed to Sovietization. Instead, a decision was passed to pursue a policy of Soviet Ukrainization, a move that sparked considerable discussion. In March and April 1923 second secretary of the CC CP(b)U Dmytro Lebed’ did everything in his power to nullify it. These efforts included the launch of a public discussion in March of the theory about the struggle of two cultures, Russian proletarian and Ukrainian rural. Eater, at the Seventh All-Ukrainian Conference of the CP(b)U held on 4-10 April 1923, Lebed’ justified his negative attitude towards the Ukrainian language by referring to an already completed leap into the future, owing to which the state, subordinated to the Kremlin, had already overcome the major part of the capitalist stage in the development of social relations: “The barriers between the two cultures are a nice and possible thing for the West, but we moved away from this long ago. We are at another historical stage of development…. There, nations are still forming, but in our country the birth of a new economy is taking place.” Nevertheless, Lebed’ failed to insist on his views. His position was harshly criticized by the majority of the other speakers, and it did not find support in any of the conference resolutions.
The Seventh All-Ukrainian Conference of the CP(b)U conceptually confirmed the policy on linguistic Ulcrainization adopted at the October 1922 plenum. It was finally ratified at the Twelfth Congress of the RCP(U), where the party announced the introduction of the policy of indigenization in all republics controlled by the Kremlin, which on 6 July 1923 formally united into a single state, the USSR. The anti-Ukrainian discourse in the corridors of power disappeared, and after the decisions adopted by the Twelfth Congress of the RCP(b), no representative of the Communist Party and Soviet nomenklatura dared oppose the need to promote the spread of the Ukrainian language in Soviet Ukraine.
Instead, the need to introduce linguistic Ukrainization into the milieu of the party and state apparatus became the focus of increasing attention. To a considerable extent, existing problems were determined by the circumstances surrounding its formation. In April 1923 Mikhail Frunze declared: “Our Soviet apparatus in Ukraine is constructed almost exclusively of individuals who do not speak the Ukrainian language because we had to make use of old material that we inherited as a legacy from tsarism.” The party apparatus, of course, was in no way an “old apparatus,” but the problem was the same: According to data cited at the October 1922 plenum of the CC CP(b)U, only 11.3 percent of party members in Ukraine were fluent in the Ukrainian language.
After the course on Ukrainization was confirmed by the Seventh All-Ukrainian Conference of the CP(b)U, Mykola Skrypnyk expressed doubts as to the successful implementation of the approved resolutions. He noted: “It is not enough to acknowledge something; what is needed is to accept and carry out that which has been acknowledged. But on the national question here in Ukraine we have the example of a divergence between these phenomena: [on the one hand] understanding and acknowledgment [of the problem], [on the other] its practical implementation.” He was right. Owing to a number of circumstances that have been mentioned frequently in the literature and whose causes have been identified in the above-cited remarks of Frunze and Skrypnyk, in the first years after the adoption of the policy of Soviet Ukrainization that resolution was implemented in a very lackluster manner in the party and state apparatus. During this period, which came to be known as “Ukrainization by decree,” the need for Ukrainization was constantly emphasized and appropriate decisions were approved, but they were never carried through.
Furthermore, starting in October 1922, the party leadership in the Ukrainian SSR no longer obstructed linguistic Ukrainization in the cultural and educational sphere, as had been the case in the preceding period. Owing to this, the government managed nearly painlessly to liquidate the network of Prosvita, to preclude the development of the Ukrainian cooperative movement, and to establish vigilant control over teachers. Furthermore, this became possible because the period was characterized by a rather liberal attitude toward various expressions of cultural and artistic life in Ukraine. In general, the Soviet state was resolving two important tasks through this version of the policy of indigenization: it improved its prestige among the local population and created the preconditions for an accelerated transition to an industrial society.
The Kaganovich Factor (April 1925-July 1928)
In April 1925 Stalin appointed Lazar Kaganovich to head the CP(b)U. Characterizing the main problems in leading Ukraine, Kaganovich remarked in May 1926, “[This is] an immense country with extremely complicated conditions with a 28-million-strong population, and all the difficulties are even more severe in the countryside and due to the nationality question.” The correct implementation of the language policy was supposed to overcome these difficulties. During Kaganovich’s term of office the policy’s main goal was the genuine transformation of the Ukrainian language into a tool of Sovietization and communist education, which in fact was one of the chief tasks of Soviet Ukrainization. In order to achieve this, it was necessary to insist on the wide use of the Ukrainian language in the party and state apparatus. Among other things, administrative means were also brought to bear on this issue, but the main tools were organizational and agitation and propaganda measures, including the switch to the Ukrainian language at the Radio and Telegraphic Agency of Ukraine (RATAU) and the main party newspaper, Komunist.
Here I will cite an example of propaganda and concealed counter-agitation that was characteristic of this period. In April 1926 Kaganovich delivered a speech at a meeting of the Kharkiv district party committee. After the speech he was asked the following question: “So how much did we spend on Ukrainization?,” the implication being that these expenditures were distracting the party from carrying out economic tasks. Kaganovich replied: “The framing of this question is incorrect. If we are talking about the economy, then here it is necessary to make cuts. If we are talking about policy, the leadership of the masses, then one cannot pose the question that way…. After all, isn’t the majority of the population in our country Ukrainian? Should we grant rights to the language of this population or will we impose another language forcibly, according to the old method?!” Of considerable importance for the advancement of linguistic Ukrainization was the fact that Kaganovich himself often spoke Ukrainian and, most important, in early 1927 the Politburo of the CC CP(b)U began conducting its work in that language.
The authorization of the Ukrainian orthography served as important confirmation of the fact that the separateness of the Ukrainian language was now recognized. In creating the orthography, scholars included linguistic features from both Soviet and Western Ukraine. The decision, based on Skrypnyk’s initiative, to establish the State Commission for the Systematization of the Ukrainian Orthography was approved on 23 July 1925—that is, shortly after the arrival in Ukraine of Kaganovich, who supported this initiative. The draft, prepared by the commission, was studied by the All-Ukrainian Orthographic Conference (26 May-6 June 1927). After the findings of the conference were reviewed, the new orthography was officially adopted, following a decision handed down by the Council of People’s Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR on 4 September 1928 and an order issued by People’s Commissar of Education Mykola Skrypnyk on 6 September 1928. Shortly afterwards the validity of this orthography was recognized by the All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (VUAN) and the Shevchenko Scientific Society in Lviv.
Nevertheless, these steps, which seemed to be aimed at spreading the Ukrainian language and ultimately recognizing its distinctiveness, were only a veil for concealing the destruction of the national content of Ukrainian culture. It was precisely during Kaganovich’s leadership of the CP(b)U that ideological campaigns were launched against so-called nationalist “deviations” in the ranks of the Ukrainian party: “Khvyl’ovism,” “Shums’kyism,” and ” Volobuievshchyna.” Skrypnyk’s attempt to condemn “Tebedivshchyna,” with its stance on the antiproletarian nature of the Ukrainian language and culture— that is, his efforts to launch a similar campaign against Russian “great-power chauvinism”—met with stiff counteraction from Kaganovich, “It is absolutely impossible to draw an analogy between the positions of Lebed’ and Khvyl’ovyi because Lebed’s position in no way meant support for counterrevolution.” Thus, only the deviation toward “Ukrainian nationalism” was recognized as “counterrevolutionary”; that is, it was anti-Soviet by its very essence and thus truly hostile. This approach once again confirms that the goal of indigenization was the Sovietization of society—in fact, conforming it to the Russian revolutionary model.
Linguistic Support Under the Conditions of the New Communist Onslaught (1928-November 1932)
The beginning of the new communist onslaught, better known in the historiography as the “great turning point,” is traditionally dated to 1929, and there are important grounds for this. But extra-economic coercion in the state grain deliveries, attesting to the plans for such an onslaught, was revived in early 1928. In July of that year Kaganovich was recalled from Ukraine, and his departure was marked by the end of a particular stage in the language policy in Ukraine. Subsequently, management of this policy in the Ukrainian SSR was concentrated in the hands of Ukraine’s commissar of education, Mykola Skrypnyk.
Skrypnyk was an advocate of the distinctiveness of the Ukrainian language, and he upheld the view that the influence of politics on linguistics should be minimal. Thanks to this, linguistic studies in Ukraine were able to develop autonomously. In the eyes of the party and Soviet nomenklatura, however, the People’s Commissariat of Education was not the same sort of guiding light that General Secretary of the CC CP(b)U Lazar Kaganovich had been. Thus, after Kaganovich’s replacement by Stanislav Kosior, who was well known in Ukraine, the use of the Ukrainian language within that milieu diminished somewhat.
The main direction of language policy in Ukraine was determined by other factors, however. At the time, there were still hopes for a “world revolution”; indeed, they had increased by the time of the global economic crisis in 1929. The advent of communism seemed more imminent then than in the early 1920s. The language policy of the Kremlin, which sought to underscore its repudiation of tsarism’s russification policies, was also aimed at the further expansion of the communist regime. To achieve this, the USSR introduced the latinization of languages over an extended period of time. Between 1923 and 1935 (mostly between 1929 and 1932) a written language based on the Latin model was created for 31 peoples who had never before possessed one, and 23 languages with an Arabic basis were latinized, as well as 7 others with different bases. Nikolai Iakovlev, a leading Soviet linguist, emphasized, “In discussions of the question of latinization, the Eastern nationalities deliberately chose the Latin alphabet as one that does not have any trace of a policy of russification or forcible missionary activity in its history.”
The Latinization process also took place in Soviet Ukraine. For example, on 29 January 1932 the Politburo of the CC CP(b)U confirmed a decision about converting the Moldovan alphabet to the Latin alphabet, and on 20 February 1932 the VUTsVK’s resolution about the full conversion to the Latin alphabet of all cases of the “written and printed use of the Turkic-Tatar languages” was approved. More detailed information about Latinization and other features of the language policy affecting the national minorities of the Ukrainian SSR can be found in a study by the Ukrainian historian Larysa Iakubova. Nevertheless, the language policy with regard to Ukraine’s national minorities had little impact on linguistic Ukrainization, inasmuch as other factors played the main role there.
On the eve of the new communist onslaught, which many perceived as an abandonment of forced concessions (including linguistic ones) and a switch to immediate socialist/communist construction, the question of the merging of languages soon returned to the agenda of the party nomenklatura. Above all, it concerned Ukraine, where Ukrainian was becoming the “supreme” language and the term “national minority” was increasingly being applied to Russians. Such changes led to resistance among various party and Soviet figures, especially those who did not know the Ukrainian language. These individuals explained their unwillingness to learn Ukrainian by invoking their “internationalist” approach and the perceived imminence of communism. At the same time, they viewed Ukrainization as an obstacle to socialist construction. In order to curb the spread of such views and not produce a result for the new communist onslaught that would be similar to the one in 1919, the Kremlin had to provide theoretical justification for supporting the development of the languages of previously oppressed nations under the conditions of the socialist offensive.
An analysis of archival documents shows that Stalin realized the acute need for such substantiation after reading a letter from Kharkiv written by Ie. Taran (Il’ia Dubrovin). Invoking quotations from Lenin’s prerevolutionary writings, including those cited above, Taran insisted that “national differences, in the given case, differences among languages, are now becoming an obstacle to socialist construction. Of course, the further [things go] the more acutely this obstacle will be felt [Stalin’s emphasis here and below—H. Ye.]” Arguing this thesis, he went on to remark, “The socialist revolution opened up for the first time the possibility of the construction and development of national cultures and thereby carried out the task of the bourgeois-democratic revolution. But this ‘spring’ of national cultures will not last forever_[In the margins Stalin wrote, “That’s the crux of the matter”—H. Ye.].”
Remarking that there was no need to stop at “capitalist stations” on the way to socialism, the author of the letter arrived at the following conclusion: “Inasmuch as the socialist revolution is developing tendencies that are leading to the assimilation of national differences, these tendencies will be overcoming the national elements of culture without waiting for the former to mature and catch up in their development to those national cultures that have outstripped them.” In the margins next to this sentence Stalin wrote: “The real aims of Russian culture.”
The arguments expressed in Taran’s letter called for some response. In the event that the course of the development of the language policy he proposed was implemented (and it was popular within a wide circle of party members), there would emerge the threat of a new fusion of the national and social in anti-Soviet protests and centrifugal tendencies in national regions would intensify. Even if this danger were discounted, the abandonment of the development of national languages would inevitably put the brakes on industrialization. For that reason, Stalin surrounded himself with literature on the national question and drafted a theoretical response. Its main content was reflected in the following thesis: “The essence of the national question under the dictatorship of the proletariat lies in socialist transformation, in enlisting the cultures of previously backward nations that are being liberated today in soc[ialist] construction and in socialism, in the soc[ialist] economy. And in which language can these nations be enlisted in economic and cultural construction? Russian, perhaps? No! In the native language! But for this it is necessary to develop these nations culturally (universal education) in [their] native language. This is culture that is socialist in content and national in form.” It is clear that Stalin identified the concept of “developing culturally” or “national culture” with conducting cultural and educational work in a republic’s native language.
During a meeting of Ukrainian writers on 12 February 1929 Stalin presented the thesis formulated in his reply to Taran: “Besides the native language, no other means exist for raising the masses’ level of culture.” He condemned the position of neutrality “regarding the development of national culture” (in fact, the use of a native language—H. Ye.] by arguing the need for modernization: “We shall not be able to develop any serious industry without making the population literate.” As for the merging of languages, Stalin emphasized that this would not be “either the Russian or French language,” and its creation would begin only once “socialism is consolidated not in a single country but in all countries.” Stalin clearly formulated the objective of the Kremlin’s language policy in a letter to the communist V. Ia. Kasatkin, a member of the Institute of Red Professors, on 22 February 1929: “The blossoming of cultures (and languages) during the period of the dictatorship of the proletariat for the purpose of preparing the conditions for their withering away and merging into a single national culture (and, accordingly, a single, common language) during the period of the victory of socialism in the entire world.”
There were several appeals similar to the ones written by Ie. Taran. Stalin formulated a public response to those communists who believed that the tactic of “aiding” the development of national cultures was impeding the communist/ socialist onslaught in his article “The National Question and Teninism,” written in March 1929. In it, the Kremlin’s vision of the future of various nations and their languages was presented in the form of a theory about three stages in the process of the “merging of nations.”
During the first stage, previously oppressed nations were to actively develop their language and culture. The need for one common, inter-national language, along with the national language, was to emerge during the second stage. It was only during the third stage (after the “victory of socialism” on the global scale) that national languages and differences would begin to wither away and be replaced by a world language that was spoken by everyone. This periodization was set forth once more in Stalin’s concluding word from the Central Committee’s political speech delivered at the Sixteenth Congress of the AUCP(b), but the objective features by which it was possible to define the end of the first stage and the need to proceed to the next one were not identified. This allowed room for amending the language policy at any moment.
Mykola Skrypnyk capitalized on this theory in order to reinforce linguistic Ukrainization. The efforts of his education ministry were directed at both the Ukrainian SSR and the territories of the RSFSR inhabited by Ukrainians. Special care was taken to ensure that the Ukrainian language stopped being a secondary language among the industrial workers of the Donbas region, among whom ethnic Ukrainians already comprised the majority at the time. Skrypnyk was insistent on this particular point: “The path of the conscious proletarian: In order for the Ukrainian peasant to follow the Donbas proletarian [and] to stand on the side of the Donbas proletarian on the social question, it is necessary for the Donbas proletarian to stand on the side of the Ukrainian peasant in national content. Ukrainian culture is one of the preconditions for the victory of socialism in Ukraine.”
The People’s Commissariat of Education of the Ukrainian SSR issued resolutions aimed at the spread of the Ukrainian language until a turning point was reached on the issue of linguistic Ukrainization. For example, in a resolution issued on n December 1932 it was decided “by 15 January 1933 to verify knowledge of the Ukrainian language on the part of functionaries in all institutions and enterprises. Officials who do not demonstrate knowledge of the Ukrainian language must enroll in DI<U [state Ukrainization courses—H. Ye.].” Individuals who evaded these courses or evinced a hostile attitude to Ukrainization were to be dismissed from work without warning, in accordance with the 1927 resolution “On Ensuring Equality of Languages and Assisting the Development of Ukrainian Culture.”
Linguistic Ukrainization, pursued by Skrypnyk, often went beyond the policy of indigenization that was announced at the Twelfth Congress of the RCP(b). For a time the Kremlin ignored this, because during the period of the second communist onslaught this Ukrainization curbed the spread of anti-Soviet moods and impeded the fusion of the social and national in anti-Soviet protests. However, it failed to destroy Ukrainian society’s resistance to communist construction.
A Sharp Turn (1933)
The communist onslaught as practiced between 1929 and 1932 suffered defeat, and the Bolshevik regime struggled to survive. On 19 January 1933 the Council of People’s Commissars of the USSR and the CC AUCP(b) issued a resolution “On the Compulsory Delivery of Grain to the State by Collective Farms and Independent Farms,” by which the Kremlin was forced to admit that crops grown on collective farms belonged to the peasants—an admission that contradicted widespread perceptions of communism. As Holodomor scholar Stanislav Kul’chyts’kyi correcdy noted, “The Kremlin was faced with a choice: Either to recognize the impossibility of building socialism in the form that was imagined by K. Marx and V. Lenin or to alter the view of socialism, as Lenin proposed in his declining years. Stalin opted for the second version and proclaimed as socialism the artificial system that the Bolsheviks had succeeded in creating during the period of the two communist onslaughts of 1919-1920 and 1929-1932.” The expectations of communism’s expansion abroad were not realized. The Kremlin leaders understood that all efforts should be focused on industrialization and strengthening power in the USSR. Among other things, this led to a review of the language policy.
The change in attitude to linguistic Ukrainization was formalized by two resolutions issued by the CC AUCP(b) on 14 and 15 December. These documents emphasized the need for the CC CP(b)U and the Council of People’s Commissars of the Ukrainian SSR “to pay serious attention to the correct implementation of Ukrainization and to eradicate its perfunctory application” in Ukraine, and Ukrainization outside the borders of Soviet Ukraine was abolished. The causes and consequences of this decision in the context of the nationality policy have been analyzed by this author in another article. Here I will only remark that as a result of this change in the nationality policy in Ukraine, in November 1933 the CC CP(b)U proclaimed “Ukrainian nationalism” as the chief danger in the sphere of the national question. During the process of finalizing this decision—without any kind of discussion whatsoever—a new orthography was ratified that brought the Ukrainian language closer to Russian.
At Stalin’s insistence, Ukrainization, including its linguistic form, was divided into “Petliurite” (hostile) and “Bolshevik”; that is, despite the repressions targeting the Ukrainian intelligentsia, the change of orthography, and the hunt for “Petliurite ulcrainianizers,” the Kremlin did not repudiate linguistic Ukrainization as one of the principles of the nationality policy. This was because modernization could not be carried out without implementing Stalin’s above-mentioned directive “to develop [the non-Russian nations] culturally.”
However, the strategic goal of the communists in the national question—the “fusion of nations”—remained unchanged, and as a logical continuation of the struggle against “Pediurite Ukrainization” the government aimed at “the rapprochement of nations and their languages.” This is attested by the language policy in the Ukrainian SSR in 1933-37. Such an understanding of the tasks of the nationality policy is also confirmed by Stanislav Kosior’s remarks in a conversation with his assistant in 1937: “Our current tasks lie in ensuring the flowering of national cultures not in general, but of those national cultures that would display a tendency toward drawing closer and integrating national and international components. Without this, the slogan of the flowering of the national culture of a socialist nation is a profoundly reactionary slogan that does not pull us forward but back to capitalism.” This shift was not publicized, however.
In summary, it should be emphasized that between 1919 and 1933 the ideals and vision of communism among the party and Soviet nomenklatura remained stable. It viewed the drawing together of nations and languages as an organic result of communist construction, which in its turn was supposed to be realized by means of a “revolution from above.” The pace of this construction was corrected depending on practical conditions, but as the example of Ukrainization on the territory of the RSFSR showed, the party leaders were prepared to alter their tactics in the language question within the space of mere days. As of 1933, the Kremlin had not formally repudiated its recognition of the Ukrainian language as such, a recognition that had been ratified in December 1919 (again, formally). The Ukrainian language remained a basic element in the cultural and education process in the Ukrainian SSR, but the main tendency of its development was supposed to be convergence with the Russian language.