Lenin, Gorbachev, and �national-statehood�: Can Leninism countenance the new Soviet federal order? (original) (raw)
1990, Studies in East European Thought
I like philosophical thought. I pursue thought, I pursue the dialectics of the mind. And then, after philosophy, come concepts. What then? Then comes politics. Gorbachev* ABSTRACT. One of the most intractable contemporary problems in the USSR is the Soviet federal dilemma. The late 1980s witnessed competing claims among the national minority groups of the USSR to rights of voice, representation, and cultural, economic, and even political sovereignty. Since the onset of perestro]ka, the principle of 'nationalstatehood' has acquired a new legitimacy. Nationality is one of the pillars of the federal reform. The drive to create a 'new Soviet federalism' has become an important component of perestrojka. But, according to Leninist doctrine, the 'nation' is a transitional formation. Unless there is a significant departure from Leninist theory, the new acknowledgement of the 'rights of nations' in the USSR can only be a political-and thus temporary-concession. Can the ideology evolve in such a way as to provide ideologically-based political legitimacy to the notion of national-statehood? Is Gorbachev's 'dynamic' interpretation of Leninism capable of rejecting one of Lenin's most fundamental concepts? The thesis of this article is that Soviet federal reform requires a substantial departure from the Leninist tradition. The extent to which Soviet leaders are prepared to do this casts light on one of the perennial concerns of socialist thought, namely whether ideology matters at all. Recent political developments in the USSR have provoked new analysis of the theoretical bases of Soviet socialism. Soviet scholars, public officials and members of the educated public have returned to the 'classics' of Marxism-Leninism and even Western socialist thought in an effort to reestablish the theoretical bearings of Soviet socialism, a In November 1989, Pravda presented a summary version of Gorbachev's theoretical justifications for perestrojka. In "The Socialist Idea and Revolutionary Restructuring," Gorbachev challenged those who claim that the architects of change do not "have a clear plan for the realization of the concepts of perestrojka. ''2
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The Soviet legacy and Russian federalism, 1991–93
Manchester University Press eBooks, 2010
Russian federalism and the Soviet legacy According to the 1977 Constitution, 'the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics' was a 'unified, federal, multinational state formed on the principle of socialist federalism'. The federation, which was established according to the dual principles of ethnicity and territory, encompassed fifteen ethnically defined union republics, twenty autonomous republics, eight autonomous oblasts, ten autonomous okrugs, and 159 territorially based regions. But if we adopt the definition of a federation given by Watts in chapter 1, then clearly the USSR was not an authentic federation. For whilst the Constitution proclaimed the republics' rights of sovereignty (article 76), and secession (article 72), the right to enter into treaties with foreign powers (article 80), and local control over economic developments (article 77), such rights were heavily qualified in practice, by the provisions of other articles, which made a mockery of the republic's sovereign powers. 1 And, in any case, whilst the state was supposedly based on federal principles, the party, which declared itself to be 'the leading and guiding force in society', was a unitary body. Moreover, party and state bodies operated under the principle of 'democratic centralism', whereby each administrative level was subordinate to the level above it, and centralised control from Moscow. In 1989 Gorbachev publicly admitted that the republics' rights of sovereignty were largely formal in nature, 'Up to now', he noted, 'our state has existed as a centralized and unitary state and none of us has yet the experience of living in a federation'. 2 This is not to say that the federal subjects in the USSR were totally powerless and subservient to the central authorities or that nationalist demands had been quelled when Gorbachev took over the reins of power in 1985. For paradoxically, the very policies which the communists had used to placate nationalism ended up giving it succour. As Bialer notes,
Taking into account the ideological responses the Soviet Union offered, in its different phases of existence, to the national question, this study aims to offer a diachronical perspective of Moscow's efforts in order to create a 'Soviet people'. Kenneth Jowitt's concept, 'the Moscow centre', applies to the whole socialist camp, both the USSR and to the rest of the communist states loyal to Moscow; however, in the present paper, I have carried out a risky enterprise, and limited it only to the territory of the former USSR, more exactly, to the relation between Moscow and the nationalities and/or ethnies of the Soviet Union, most of them dispersed trough the remote regions of the country and only a part of them having their own federative republic. Recognizing the imperilous potential which the nationalities might have with reference to the Soviet Union as a state, the communists tried both ideologically and politically, to 'forge' a Soviet supranational identity able to overcame this thorny problem. Officially, the Russians also must have 1 The syntagm was borrowed from Jowitt: 1992, p. 159 2 This paper was initially presented at the 2008 edition of the 'Ideologies, values and political behaviors in Central and Eastern Europe' conference, which took place between 5 and 6 of December at the West University of Timișoara. Its previous title was Cohesion or destabilization? Controversial aspects regarding the influence of the Russian Federation on its 'near abroad', where I also took into account the national problems of the former Soviet Union. Finally, I decided to concentrate on the Soviet Union exclusively. The research needed to conceive this paper was partially facilitated by an AMPOSDRU grant which I received from Babeș Bolyai University for the whole duration of my doctoral studies. Political Science Forum renounced their national identity in favor of the Soviet melting pot; in practice, however, the non-Russians were always oppressed by the dominant nationality, although this fact was not ideologically and constitutionally visible. This was one of the main causes which, in combination with others, led to the undermining and finally to the disintegration of the Soviet Union.
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