H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by [log in to unmask] (April 2007)
Francine Hirsch. _Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the
Making of the Soviet Union_. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005.
xviii + 367 pp. Charts, graphs, maps, bibliography, index. $59.95
(cloth), ISBN 978-0-8014-4273-5; $27.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8014-8908-2.
Reviewed for H-Nationalism by Mara Kozelsky, Department of History,
University of South Alabama
The first Soviet census in 1926 was a collaborative exercise between
Soviet leaders, ethnographers, regional and local elites, and the
mass of citizens being counted. It took months to accomplish,
following years of debate. Well before census takers appeared in
remote Soviet villages, ethnographers predicted that no set rubric
could categorize the Soviet Union's various peoples, for those in the
West identified themselves in national terms, those in Central Asia
by religion, and those in Siberia mostly by tribe. Still others self-
identified by city (Vladimirian or Kostromian) or by economic status,
such as the _Teptiar_, a term denoting a tenant in Bashkir (p. 113).
Most Soviet citizens, census takers bemoaned, were too backward to
place themselves within a _natsional'nost_ (nationality) or even
_narodnost'_ (which roughly translates to ethnicity), much less
capable of understanding the distinctions between the two. In the
end, census takers formed 191 different _narodnosti_ for the census.
Ten years later under Joseph Stalin, that number shrank to 62.
Francine Hirsch explains how in just over a decade, the Soviet Union
lost nearly 130 peoples.
_Empire of Nations: Ethnographic Knowledge and the Making of the
Soviet Union_ begins at the turn of the twentieth century (1905) and
ends with World War II. Throughout, it traces the cooperation
between ethnographers, geographers, and anthropologists with the
state in the creation of Soviet identity. She offers rich anecdotes
throughout, detailing individual responses to their absorption into
group identities not of their choosing. Hirsch borrows from Bernard
Cohn, Benedict Anderson, and a host of other scholars of European
nationalism to frame her analysis around the "cultural technologies
of rule"--the map, census, and museum. The book makes an outstanding
contribution to the field and has been recognized in Russian and
Eastern European Studies by the Wayne S. Vucinich Book Prize in 2006,
and it was a co-recipient of the European Studies book prize. As the
above suggests, Hirsch's work has the ability to cross over from
Russia Area Studies to offer insights to scholars interested in
nationalism elsewhere.
Hirsch's study of the "cultural technologies of rule," is in itself
nothing new--scholars have been investigating social sciences and
identity construction for quite some time. Nor is her challenge to
the "prison of peoples" thesis that had long dominated Soviet studies
terribly earth-shattering, for revisionist history in the last
decades has already shown that the Soviet state was not monolithic,
and that the masses of the Soviet citizens to some degree or another
participated in the process of rule. Thus, it is her findings about
the construction of Soviet identities that are most illuminating and
thought-provoking. Most striking, perhaps, is her analysis of "state-
sponsored evolutionism" and the struggle between Revolutionary Soviet
ideology and European nationalism, two strains of thought that
ushered the formation of the Soviet Socialist Republics.
When the Soviets consolidated power in the wake of the Revolution and
the subsequent Civil War, they were confronted with the challenging
task of organizing the diverse territory of the former Russian empire
into a new state. Not only were there peoples of different
languages, religions, ethnicities, and tribes, but, as Lenin
remarked, peoples of the Soviet Union existed at different economic
stages. They ranged from those in the East who were still in the
"feudal era," to those in the West who were at "developing stages of
capitalism" (p. 64). Officials recognized that Tsarist boundaries
had long exceeded their utility and investigated ways to reorganize
borders and peoples more efficiently. Following Lenin's lead, Soviet
officials sought ways to move all peoples to the same economic level,
a civilizing mission which Hirsch maintains was undertaken with
greater sincerity than by Western colonial powers that tended to
create gaps between colonizers and colonized.
Hirsch creates the term "State-sponsored evolutionism" to describe
the Soviet concept of nationality. "State-sponsored evolutionism,"
according to Hirsch, was based on the Marxist-Leninist belief that
nation formation and national consciousness constituted a crucial
stage in the evolution toward socialism. The Soviets believed that
they could speed forward the nation building process, just as NEP
(New Economic Policy) was to speed Russia through the advanced stage
of capitalism, the necessary precursor to communism. Consequently,
these forward looking Soviet officials supported a "double
assimilation": citizens were assimilated into nations at the same
time that they were assimilated into the Soviet Union. Ethnographers
assisted the state in this process by counting and grouping peoples.
Yet how to define Soviet peoples was not immediately clear. Should
they prioritize race, ethnicity, religion, language, or _byt_, a word
that translates roughly to "way of life?"
Numerous theories were also put forward about structuring the new
territory. The two greatest contenders were those advanced by
Gosplan (State Planning Commission) and Narkomnats (People's
Commissariat for the Affairs of Nationalities) both of which employed
social scientists. The two bureaucracies represented different
versions of Marxist-Leninist ideology (that at times competed, and at
others cooperated), advancing the Soviet Union on principles of
economic planning or regional self-determination. Narkomnats, the
mapping wing of the Soviet Union staffed typically by scholars who
often had liberal and not Bolshevik leanings, insisted upon
ethnographic principles for organizing the new state. In most cases,
Narkomnats advocated the autonomy of nationalities. Narkomnats also
strongly insisted throughout its existence that Soviet citizens had
the right to choose their own nationality, a necessity for peoples
who typically had mixed parentage, multiple tongues, and distant
homelands.
In contrast, Gosplan, which was the economic-planning organ of the
state, insisted that the Soviet Union be organized strictly along
economic principles. Officials at Gosplan argued that distinctions
among Soviet peoples were more economic than ethnic. In contrast to
Western (and later Nazi) thinking that blamed "backwardness" upon
innate racial or biological traits, Gosplan (and Soviets in general),
believed that "all peoples could 'evolve' and thrive in new Soviet
conditions" (p. 9). Consequently, Gosplan advocated dividing the
Soviet Union not into ethnographic administrative units, but large
economic units that emphasized regions' potential productivity. For
example, officials redrew imperial borders and divided present-day
Ukraine into the "Southern Mining Region," and the "South Western
(Agricultural) Region" (p. 77). Ultimately, the Soviet state settled
on a compromise between Gosplan and Narkomnats, "a program of
intensive economic development" coupled with the promotion of
nationhood. This position was advocated by Stalin, then the
Commissar of Nationalities (p. 96).
Over time, the early compromise between Narkomnats and Gosplan
produced an awkward map of the internal regions of the Soviet Union,
a map which continues to haunt the territory after the Soviet Union's
collapse. Ultimately, the Soviet Union was broken into 53 units
divided between 15 SSSrs, 20 Autonomous Republics, 8 Autonomous
Provinces, and 10 Autonomous Regions, a division that makes little
sense in the twenty-first century, particularly to the many peoples
forced into alliances they would not choose for themselves. In fact,
much of the discord in the post-Soviet era has been an effort to
shake free of old Soviet boundaries. Nevertheless, Hirsch's
voluminous research on the stages of debate between Gosplan,
Narkomnats, and other state bureaucracies shows that organizing the
vast Soviet territory was no easy job and, at least in the 1920s,
evoked sincere debate about how to administer the space in ways most
beneficial to citizens.
Good intentions came to an end with the ascension of Stalin in 1929.
Stalin's regime exposed the contradictions in Revolutionary plans for
federation, while the ethnographers who so carefully abided by their
own conscience were gradually cowed into compliance by the threat of
Terror. In fact, many ethnographers who provided the Revolutionary
government with maps, careful analysis of populations, and the 1926
Census themselves became victims. Ethnographers who conducted the
second Soviet census (but the first "census under socialism") in the
1930s were under duress, just as any other Soviet bureaucrat, to
prove that Stalin's predictions about socialism in one country had
actually transpired.
In 1936, Stalin gave a speech announcing that the Soviet Union had
achieved socialism in one country: collectivization,
industrialization, and the assimilation of "smaller peoples into
larger peoples." He shocked ethnographers when he described the
Soviet Union as consisting of "sixty nations, national groups and
_narodnosti_." With the preparations for the Soviet Union's second
census (the first under socialism) underway, ethnographers had to
quickly realign their research. Using Stalin's 1913 definition of
nationality as their rationale, Soviet ethnographers had to show that
indeed, the 191 _narodnosti_ listed in the 1926 census had
amalgamated into approximately sixty peoples. The significance of
official categories of identity was immense, for groups excluded from
the list of nationalities were also excluded from state support for
languages, education, and building.
After much debate and rejected plans by Moscow elites, ethnographers
managed to produce a list of Soviet populations that complied with
Stalin's statement. They did so by combining groups that shared
several, but not all, traits. For example, some ethnographers
combined the Muslim Ajars with Christian Georgians, arguing that
these peoples lived in the same geographic region, spoke the same
language, and that under socialism "ancient religious differences"
had become irrelevant (p. 287). Ethnographers also derived a
separate category for what they termed the "Diaspora Nationalities,"
or those groups living in the Soviet Union such as the Volga Germans,
Poles, or Bulgarians. Such groups were not counted among the native
Soviet nationalities. Because Diaspora Nationalities had affiliation
with other nations elsewhere, according to ethnographers, they could
never truly assimilate. Consequences of the ethnographic crisis in
the 1930s remain tragically apparent today. On one hand, groups
forcibly combined are still disentangling themselves from each other
and, on the other, groups identified as "Diaspora nations" were
targeted for Deportation during and following World War II. Thus, by
virtue of their selection process, Hirsch implicates Soviet social
scientists among the worst crimes against humanity in the twentieth
century.
As show trials unfolded and the Nazi regime consolidated power, the
People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) began to identify
potential enemies based on perceived allegiances to nations outside
the Soviet Union. The internal passport system, which was introduced
in 1932, initially allowed citizens to self-identify their
nationality. Thus, a man born in Poland to a Lithuanian mother and a
German father who had spent his life in Moscow and spoke Russian as a
first language, could conceivably identify himself as "Russian." The
principle of self-identity was crucial to early Soviets as a matter
of personal liberty and socialist consciousness (if someone
voluntarily counted themselves as a Soviet citizen, why should it
matter who their parents were). By 1937, however, the NKVD
eliminated the possibility of self-selection, requiring citizens to
adopt the ethnicity of their mothers. Individual citizens balked at
this change and fought unsuccessfully through whatever legal channels
were available to them.
Despite its antithetical stance to the biological determinism of Nazi
Germany, the Soviet Union, by the 1930s, ended up classifying its
citizens according to ethnicity. This was not however, because the
Soviets perceived that races were inferior or superior, for it
retained its belief in nurture over nature. Rather, it was because
of the impending war and the fear of "imperialist encirclement." In
1934 and 1936, the German government made two separate pacts with
Poland and Japan respectively, while the 1938 German capture of the
Sudetenland raised "immediate concerns about Nazi interference in the
Soviet Union's Western borderlands" (p. 274). In other words, Soviet
officials did not question the equality of races, but the loyalty of
peoples. This distinction, however, mattered little to the massive
populations who suffered under Stalin's paranoia.
It is at this point, the gathering clouds on the eve of World War II,
that Hirsch ends her book for most intents and purposes. She does
include a brief epilogue that summarizes ethnography and social
science through the Gorbachev era. Yet, this epilogue is
disappointing, for it does not match the depth of previous chapters.
Given her last large chapter on terror before the war, one cannot
help but imagine that a different epilogue, one that explored
ethnography in light of the Deportations of peoples after the war,
would have been more powerful. Overall, however, the work is highly
readable and informative. Its discussion of Soviet efforts to
construct economic identities in the 1920s provides a rich
counterpoint to emphasis on nationalist racial theories of the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and gives a reminder that
alternatives existed.
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