Attacks on nationalism

The basic contradictions inherent in the Soviet solution to the national problem have always necessitated a constant struggle against any sort of ‘nationalist’ deviation. However, the campaigns against nationalism have varied radically over time in content and aim. For a long time, Soviet leaders and theoreticians differentiated (and, in theory, still differentiate today) between ‘Great Russian nationalism’ and ‘local nationalism’. Their concern with this problem notwithstanding, the authorities began to wage the struggle against the former deviation with any degree of vigour only in the 1920s. It slackened off in the first half of the 1930s, coming to a complete halt in the second half of that decade. However, the struggle against local nationalism – which came to be designated by the even stronger term ‘bourgeois nationalism’ – has been carried out intermittently from 1917 until the present day.

Jewish Communist leaders, who had headed the Evsektsiya for many years, were among those purged from the national cadres in the 1930s. But this campaign of liquidation, which objectively speaking dealt a fatal blow to Jewish national existence, was not directed against them as Jews; in this case, the policy aimed to liquidate the leading cadres of all non-Russian nationalities (the Jews included). As will be seen below, the period after World War II differed in this respect, since the campaign against nationalist deviations and all foreign influence then began to assume a thoroughly anti-Jewish character.