If those interested in Soviet affairs were to confine their reading to the official Soviet press, they would perhaps conclude that all is quiet behind the Soviet front. However since a large body of underground literature has reached the West in recent years, observers have learned of numerous protest activities against the Soviet regime by various groups in the USSR. We know, for example, that liberal intellectuals are criticizing the Soviet leadership for its rigid control over the literary and scientific life of the country. Various religious groups are protesting against the closure of churches, imprisonment of believers, and restrictions on baptisms, proselyting, and religious instruction of the young. Similarly, certain members of national minorities are demanding more linguistic, educational, and cultural autonomy for their nations. Some of these minority nationalities, such as the Jews, Volga Germans, and Meskhi, have formed repatriation movements in order to obtain permission to settle in those areas which they regard as their homelands.

In the original plan (and original drafts) of this paper the attention was focused quite narrowly on colonial policies and the years 1878–1917. However, in the course of research and writing I became convinced that the period I chose to cover was not quite as felicitous, or convenient, as I believed it would, for unless I had access to archival material and put the primary emphasis on the bureaucratic (and mostly local) decision-making level I would not be able to carve for myself a field of research that could be presented in a comprehensible fashion. At the same time, while delving deeper and deeper into the subject, I confess that my interest shifted away from bureaucracy and its colonial policies to colonialism in the broader sense as an expression of certain cultural and demographic trends. My interest shifted because, first, I found it repeatedly difficult to distinguish between what could legitimately be labeled as policy and what was or may have been (who knows really?) merely an arbitrary decision, a momentary whim, of some guberniia or uezd potentate, or perhaps not even his but of his secretary who prepared the document and just pocketed a bribe of a few rubles in exchange for twisting the legal meaning of the decision one way or another. Second, even if I raised my focus above the local bureaucratic level, there would still not be much to chew intellectually. Poland, the Balkans, Central Asia, the Far East–yes, these were areas which attracted the attention of the more powerful minds in and outside of government and policies toward them were formulated in the context of interesting debates. But Bessarabia? Except for a few individuals who, especially at the time of its annexation, had high hopes for the role it might play in the future expansion of Russia, hardly anyone bothered with it. Why, until the turn of the century the St. Petersburg bureaucrats had a hard time even placing it on a map; they thought it was somewhere north.

Among the numerous relations between the rulers of the Imperial Russia and the USSR on the one hand, and Georgia on the other, the question of national self-determination deserves a position of a paramount importance. An adequate treatment of this perplexing topic requires a broader theoretical framework dealing with nationalism in general and its historical significance in particular.

Jean-Paul Sartre once observed that “contrary to a wide spread opinion, it is not the Jewish character that provokes anti-Semitism but, rather, that it is the anti-Semite who creates the New.” This statement seems to have particular validity in regard to communist Poland, where in the years 1967–1968 the authorities carried out a large-scale campaign against the small Jewish minority, numbering less than 30,000, most of whom had long been assimilated.

The heart and soul of a society is often much more fully revealed in its imaginative literature than in such self-conscious statements as political manifestos or constitutions. It is this soul-baring quality of imaginative literature which explains, even if it does not justify, the primacy in Soviet literary criticism of political and ideological concerns over such factors as psychological honesty and aesthetic efficacy. The neglect of the transpolitical, transideological subtleties of literary art makes Soviet literary criticism seem very mechanical and heavy-handed to most non-Marxists. Of course this kind of critical analysis is not inappropriate to some of the hack work generated under the rubric of “socialist realism.” However, Western critics are often equally ideological in their own way, even towards Soviet literature of intrinsic artistic merit. Indeed, this essay itself runs the risk of abusing art by subjecting a charming little Soviet story, “Instructress Asta,” to political analysis.

Marin Pundeff, National Consciousness in Medieval Bulgaria, Reprint from Sudost-Forschungen. Vol. 27 (1968).