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American Sovietology's Great Blunder: the Marginalization of the Nationality Issue

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Orest Subtelny
Orest Subtelny*
Affiliation:
York University (Canada)
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Extract

Sovietology's gross neglect of the nationality issue is now embarrassingly evident. It was, indeed, a blunder of vast proportions, one that raised doubts about the basic assumptions that dominated the field and the sound judgement of many of its leaders. By analyzing the Soviet past and present, Sovietologists attempted to predict Soviet behavior in the future. For this purpose they produced a variety of models, approaches and scenarios. But if there was one scenario or prognosis which they regularly discounted, it was the one that actually occurred: the disintegration of the multinationalist USSR due to the forces of nationalism.

Type
II The USSR and Beyond
Information
Nationalities Papers , Volume 22 , Issue 1: Special Issue - Ethnopolitics in Poland , Spring 1994 , pp. 141 - 155
Copyright
Copyright © 1994 Association for the Study of Nationalities of Eastern Europe and ex-USSR 

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Footnotes

*

This article is based on a paper presented at the Conference on Soviet Union and Disunion held at the University of Toronto in November 1991.

References

Note

1. See the lists of Ph.D. dissertations compiled by Jesse S. Dossick and published annually in the Slavic Review. For more data dealing with the Russocentric bias in the field see Stephan M. Horak, Soviet Nationality Studies in North America (Littleton, 1982):20–21. Also see Alexander Motyl, “Sovietology in One Country or Comparative Nationality Studies,” Slavic Review 1 (1989):83–88; James Critchlow, “Nationality Studies: Where did They Go Wrong?” Journal of Soviet Nationalities, 3 (1990):23–32; Gregory Gleason, “The ‘National Factor’ and the Logic of Sovietology,” and Alexander Motyl, “The End of Sovietology: From Soviet Studies to Post-Soviet Studies,” in Alexander Motyl, ed., The Post-Soviet Nations (New York, 1992): 1–29 and 302–316. See also the forthcoming article by Ronald Suny in Slavic Review.Google Scholar

2. For example, see Harold H. Fisher, American Research on Russia (Bloomington, 1959) and Walter Laqueur and Leopold Labedz, eds., The State of Soviet Studies (Cambridge MA, 1965).Google Scholar

3. The influence of these Russian scholars was noted by Stephan M. Horak, “Periodization and Terminology of the History of Eastern Slavs: Observations and Analysis,” Slavic Review (1972): 853–862 and especially note 8. During the interwar period seventeen Russian emigré historians taught in American universities and a number of them produced highly influential textbooks. Also see Marc Raeff, Russia Abroad (Oxford, 1990): 156–186.Google Scholar

4. See John Armstrong, “Comments on Professor Dallin’ s ‘Biases and Blunders in American Studies of the USSR'” in Slavic Review (1973):83. Incidentally, Alexander Dallin's article, which appeared in the same issue, did not include the neglect of the nationalities issue among its list of Sovietology's biases and blunders.Google Scholar

5. See Alexander Motyl, “ ‘Sovietology in One Country’ or Comparative Nationality Studies?”: 83–88.Google Scholar

6. See Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone, “The Study of Ethnic Politics in the USSR,” in George W. Simmonds, ed., Nationalism in the USSR and Eastern Europe (Detroit, 1977), 22–23. In the 1970s, scholars who argued for methodological innovations in Soviet studies did not find the nationality issue to be worthy of their attention. See Fredric Fleron, Jr., ed., Communist Studies and the Social Sciences (Chicago, 1969); Roger F. Kanet, ed., The Behavioral Revolution and Communist Studies (New York, 1971); Jerry F. Hough, The Soviet Union and Social Science Theory (Cambridge MA, 1977).Google Scholar

7. Karl Deutsch, Nationalism and Communication (Cambridge MA, 1953).Google Scholar

8. For a discussion of the tendency see Donald L. Horowitz, “How to Begin Thinking Comparatively About Soviet Ethnic Problems,” in Alexander Motyl, Thinking Theoretically About Soviet Nationalities (New York, 1992): p. 13.Google Scholar

9. See, for example, Hans Kohn, Nationalism in the Soviet Union (New York, 1933); Alec Nove and J.A. Newth, The Soviet Middle East (London, 1967): 132.Google Scholar

10. See his “America and the Russian Future,” Foreign Affairs (1951): 360.Google Scholar

11. See Uwe Liszkowski, Osteuropaforschung und Politik (Berlin, 1988) vol. II: 448 ff.Google Scholar

12. See Gerd Voigt, “Aufgaben und Funktion der Osteuropa-Studien in der Weimarer Republik,” in Joachim Streisand, ed., Studien über die deutsche Geisteswissenschaft, vol. 2: 369–399 and Michael Burleigh. Germany Turns Eastward: A Study of Ostforschung in the Third Reich (Cambridge, 1988).Google Scholar

13. Gerhard Simon, Nationalismus und Nationalitètenpolitik in der Sowjetunion (Baden-Baden, 1986) and Andreas Kappeier, Russland als Vielvölkerreich: Entstehung, Geschichte, Verfall (Munich, 1992). Simon's book is also available in English translation, Nationalism and Policy Toward the Nationalities in the Soviet Union (Boulder-San Francisco-Oxford, 1991).Google Scholar

14. See Sergiusz Mikulicz, Prometeizm w polityce II Rzeczypospolitej (Warsaw, 1971).Google Scholar

15. Ibid., 217Google Scholar

16. See Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Political Implications of Soviet Nationality Problems”, in E. Allworth, Soviet Nationalitv Problems (New York, 1971) pp. 72–82.Google Scholar

17. E. Allworth, Soviet Nationality Problems, pp. 1–22.Google Scholar

18. Among the members of this cohort were Audrey Alstadt, Muriel Atkin, William Fierman, Abbot Gleason, Nancy Lubin, Martha Olcott, and Ronald Wixman.Google Scholar

19. See, for example, Brian D. Silver, “Soviet Nationality Problems: Analytic Approaches,” in Problems of Communism (1979): 71–76. Also see the work of Rasma Karklins and Ronald Suny.Google Scholar

20. Allworth, Soviet Nationality Problems, 1–22, and Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone, “The Study of Ethnic Politics in the USSR,” in George W. Simmonds, ed., Nationalism in the USSR and Eastern Europe (Detroit, 1977): 20–36.Google Scholar

21. John Armstrong, “The Ethnic Scene in the Soviet Union: The View of the Dictatorship,” in Erich Goldhagen, ed., Ethnic Minorities in the Soviet Union, (New York, 1968): 3–49.Google Scholar

22. For the Revisionist “manifesto” see Russian Review (1986): 213–234.Google Scholar

23. See issues 1 and 2 of Journal of Soviet Nationalities.Google Scholar

24. Mary McAuley, “Nationalism and the Soviet Multi-Ethnic State,” in The State in Socialist Society, 179–210.Google Scholar

25. Peter Rutland, “The ‘Nationality Problem’ and the Soviet State,” Ibid., 167.Google Scholar

26. Ibid., pp. 151 and 178.Google Scholar

27. See her “Ethnonationalism and Political Stability: the Soviet Case,” World Politics (1984), pp. 355–80.Google Scholar

28. See, for example, Mark Beissinger, “Ethnicity, the Personnel Weapon and Neo-Imperial Integration: Ukrainian and RSFSR Party Officials Compared,” Studies in Comparative Communism (1988), pp. 71–85 and Murry Feshbach, “Trends in the Soviet Muslim Population,” in Yaacov Roi, ed., The USSR and the Muslim World (London, 1984).Google Scholar

29. Prior to the appearance of the numerous works on the topic by Ukrainian authors, the Ukrainian-Canadian film, “Harvest of Despair” and Robert Conquest's Harvest of Sorrow (New York, 1986) whose publication was supported by several Ukrainian-American institutions, Sovietologists hardly mentioned the Great Famine.Google Scholar