Zinoviev: Populist Leninist

Lih, Lars T.. (2008). Zinoviev: Populist Leninist. Retrieved from the University Digital Conservancy, https://hdl.handle.net/11299/186882

The USSR as a “Great Power”: Imperial Narratives and the State’s Status, 1920–1935

The article was submitted on 21.08.2021.Статья посвящена анализу адаптации и ресемантизации понятия «великая держава» в советском публичном дискурсе в период с 1920 по 1935 г. Актуализация этого понятия в указанный период была прежде всего связана с необходимостью осмысления СССР в системе международных отношений, системе «великих держав». После Первой мировой войны и революционных событий начала XX в. Россия была исключена из европейской системы международных отношений, а СССР приходилось бороться за признание нового государственного образования. Параллельно новой власти пришлось отстаивать свои позиции внутри страны. Кроме того, новое государство находилось в сложных отношениях с наследием Российской империи. Отрицая многочисленные имперские установки на идеологическом уровне, СССР был вынужден иметь дело со старыми институциями, в том числе с дипломатическим и властным языком имперской России. При этом новые цели требовали пересмотра неудобных интеллектуальных конструктов. Цель статьи – установить, как понятие «великая держава» было переосмыслено и адаптировано большевиками и советской властью после революции 1917 г. и Гражданской войны (1917–1922). Автор выделяет несколько основных этапов переосмысления понятия в публичном дискурсе и на основе анализа периодической печати и публицистики доказывает, что понятие «великая держава» было ресемантизировано лишь частично; оно приобрело новые смысловые (прежде всего идеологические) коннотации, сохранив при этом значительную часть прежних дореволюционных установок. Выявлено, что уже с начала 1920‑х гг. были попытки присвоения статуса «великой державы» в отношении Советской России. В течение исследуемого периода великодержавный нарратив вновь актуализировался и стабилизировался. Основным фактором, подтверждавшим статус «великой державы», стали внутренние успехи страны, а не внешнеполитические (как это было в имперский период).This article analyses the adaptation and re-semantisation of the “great power” concept in Soviet public discourse between 1920 and 1935. The actualisation of the “great power” concept in the public discourse of this period was associated with the need to comprehend the USSR in the system of international relations, the one of “great powers”. After the First World War and the revolutionary events of the early twentieth century, Russia was excluded from the European system of international relations, and the USSR had to fight for the recognition of the new state formation. Simultaneously, the new authorities had to defend their positions within the country. In addition, the new state was in a complex relationship with the legacy of the Russian Empire. Denying numerous imperial attitudes at the ideological level, the USSR had to deal with old institutions, including the diplomatic and authoritative language of Imperial Russia. At the same time, new goals required revision of inconvenient intellectual constructs. The author aims to establish how the “great power” concept was rethought and appropriated by the Bolsheviks and the Soviet authorities after the 1917 Revolution and the Civil War (1917–1922). The author identifies several main stages of rethinking the concept in public discourse and, based on an analysis of the press, proves that the “great power” concept was only partially resemanticised. It acquired new semantic connotations (primarily ideological) while retaining a significant part of the previous pre-revolutionary attitudes. The author reveals that from the early 1920s, there were attempts to assign the “great power” status to Soviet Russia. During this period, the great-power narrative was re-actualised and stabilised. The main factor confirming the “great power” status is the country’s internal successes.Исследование осуществлено в рамках Программы фундаментальных исследований НИУ ВШЭ. Автор выражает благодарность своему научному руководителю Е. М. Болтуновой за ценные советы при подготовке статьи

Trotsky and the Problem of Soviet Bureaucracy

In 1917 the Bolsheviks anticipated, on the basis of the Marxist classics, that the proletarian revolution would put an end to bureaucracy. However, soon after the revolution many within the Bolshevik Party, including Trotsky, were denouncing Soviet bureaucracy as a persistent problem. In fact, for Trotsky the problem of Soviet bureaucracy became the central political and theoretical issue that preoccupied him for the remainder of his life. This study examines the development of Leon Trotsky's views on that subject from the first years after the Russian Revolution through the completion of his work The Revolution Betrayed in 1936. In his various writings over these years Trotsky expressed three main understandings of the nature of the problem: During the civil war and the first years of NEP he denounced inefficiency in the distribution of supplies to the Red Army and resources throughout the economy as a whole. By 1923 he had become concerned about the growing independence of the state and party apparatuses from popular control and their increasing responsiveness to alien class pressures. Then in later years Trotsky depicted the bureaucracy as a distinct social formation, motivated by its own narrow interests, which had attained a high degree of autonomy from all social classes. Throughout the course of this evolution, Trotsky's thinking was influenced by factors that included his own major concerns at the time, preexisting images and analyses of bureaucracy, and Trotsky's interpretation of unfolding events. In turn, at each point Trotsky's understanding of the general nature of the problem of Soviet bureaucracy directed and shaped his political activities and his analyses of new developments. The picture of Trotsky that emerges is of an individual for whom ideas and theories were extremely important as means of understanding the world, and as a guide to changing it

Crafting the Modern Woman in Azerbaijan: Muslim Women, the State, and Modernity, 1900–1939

This study examines the little-known history of cultural transformation initiated by Azerbaijani reformers between the 1850s and 1930s. Relying on a unique body of sources, which include handwritten manuscripts, literary works, unpublished memoirs, periodicals, correspondence, and political parties’ records, the research explores the new cultural settings that emerged after the incorporation of Azerbaijan into the Russian empire. New means of communication and new types of sociability, in a global context of urbanization and cosmopolitanization, gave rise to secular modernist reformers and empowered both European-educated Azeri male and female elites to express modern ideas on public education and gender roles. The introduction of secular education for Muslim young women, initiated by modern-educated male intellectuals and industrialists, advanced a cohort of independent and publicly active Azeri women who struggled for equal rights with men. Azeri Muslim women articulated their vision of modernity in native print media and public associations established by Muslim women and for Muslim women. After the Sovietization of Azerbaijan in 1920, the native reformers continued to promote their agenda to eradicate the power of Islamic and patriarchal traditions. By participating in the new system and installing themselves as the new political and cultural elite, the Azeri reformers obtained the right to speak for the name of their community. Soviet Azeri political leaders developed their own synthesis between the Communist goals and modernizing aspirations of pre-revolution reformers, introducing their own program to create a new nation, millat, and a New Woman. However, between 1929–1939, the Stalinist regime, with its new norms of socialization, education, and indoctrination, replaced all alternative cultural and political discourses

Creating a Tatar Capital: National, Cultural, and Linguistic Space in Kazan, 1920-1941

This dissertation examines the introduction and implementation of Soviet nationalities policies among Russians and Tatars in the city of Kazan, an important cultural, educational, and industrial capital in the heart of Soviet Russia. Following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the creation of the Tatar Republic in 1920, Kazan functioned as a laboratory in which Party-state authorities experimented with incorporating national minorities into the new socialist society under construction. Soviet nationalities policies allowed Tatars to pursue educational, political, and social opportunities denied them under the tsarist regime. Initiatives such as korenizatsiia (indigenization) and the “Realization of the Tatar Language” sought to bring national minorities into the mainstream of Soviet life by recruiting and training them to work in local Party-state apparatuses, industrial enterprises, and academic institutions. Supporting native cadres would make Soviet power seem indigenous, rather than something imposed by a new form of Russian colonialism. While these endeavors constantly ran into various roadblocks, over time they did attain some success in promoting indigenous minorities into positions of authority within the local Party-state apparatus, giving them an active role in shaping their own system of rule. Speaking to the fields of nationalities studies and urban history, this dissertation shows how residents of Kazan navigated ethnolinguistic differences and political changes in the physical and cultural spaces around them in order to create their own sense of belonging within a new kind of city, a Tatar capital whose public spaces reflected its diverse population. The first three chapters analyze the education, training, and employment of Tatars in schools, universities, and factories. The last three chapters discuss the evolution of Tatar culture, namely its expression in theater, architecture, and public festivals, as a product of I. V. Stalin’s famous dictum that Soviet minorities’ culture be “national in form and socialist in content.” Ultimately, I argue that urban space mediated how residents experienced, articulated, and responded to Soviet nationalities policies, leading to a new understanding of the place and purpose of Tatars and their traditions in Kazan.Doctor of Philosoph